ASTRONOMY:
A Media Darling Thrives on Publicity
James Glanz
The practice of embargoing information to increase its impact touches all scientific disciplines. But nowhere do embargoes, and the people who enforce them, influence the public release of results as completely as in the publicity-saturated field of astronomy. The magnifying glass of astronomy shows that embargoes and publicity change how scientists communicate with each other, how they assign priority for discoveries, and how they secure funding for projects.