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ScienceDaily is an American website launched in 1995 that aggregates press releases and publishes lightly edited press releases (a practice called churnalism) about science, similar to Phys.org and EurekAlert!.[1][2][3]
The site was founded by married couple Dan and Michele Hogan in 1995; Dan Hogan formerly worked in the public affairs department of Jackson Laboratory writing press releases.[4] The site makes money from selling advertisements.[4] As of 2010,[update] the site said that it had grown "from a two-person operation to a full-fledged news business with worldwide contributors".[citation needed] At the time, it was run out of the Hogans' home, had no reporters, and only reprinted press releases.[4] In 2012, Quantcast ranked it at 614 with 2.6 million U.S. visitors.[5]
As of August 2023, ScienceDaily mainly has five sections, Health, Tech, Enviro, Society, and Quirky, the last of which includes the top news.[6]
Meanwhile, sites like ScienceDaily, Eurekalert and PhysOrg provide the pretence of journalism while actually acting as staging grounds for PR.
In cases where the scientists are not contacted about their research, we have 'churnalism' — news released based largely if not totally on press release alone. We also have pres-release [sic] farms such as PhysOrg and ScienceDaily that seem to me to do little else but repackage press releases one can find on science press releases sites such as EurekAlert.
