That is an incomplete summary of her credentials...
Hello! I’m a freelance science journalist living in New York with my ball python, Agamemnon Fang. I spent the last few years as a marine geochemist by day, contributing editor for CBS SmartPlanet at night. Before that, I was a news intern for Nature in Washington, D.C., an editorial intern at Discover in New York, and a reporter for the infamous Point Reyes Light in West Marin, California.
In 2008, I graduated from the Earth & Environmental Science and Journalism dual-master’s program at Columbia University. I conducted my Earth Science master’s research on, broadly speaking, Climate Change and Human Evolution at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, where I used geochemical analyses to understand paleoclimatic changes in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean. And for my Journalism master’s project — “Salamander Eggs and Hyena Phalluses” — I narrated the discoveries of two novel life histories (or biological oddities). At the University of California, Berkeley, I studied Integrative Biology (evolution and natural history) and English literature (19th-20th century novel and experimental fiction). I spent a couple years at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology as a georeferencer, a curatorial/field/research/lab assistant, and I skinned and stuffed birds and rodents. (You can also find my immortalized birds at the American Museum of Natural History, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, and Yale Peabody Museum.)
Rather than summarize her credentials, I was attempting to point out that perhaps an intern writer at Nature.com is not someone we can refer to as "a scientist" and reference as such.
Yes, she has a degree and experience. No, I'm not prepared to accept interns 2 years out of college as authoritative experts when it comes to planetwide ecological policy.
If you just say "intern" the inference is high school or college student. So it is an indirect attack on her credibility. She may not be an authority, but by quoting more of her bio, it at least gives better perspective.
How do you know I wasn't referring to one of the scientists she interviewed for the article, more than one of whom suggested that we could live without mosquitoes?
Hello! I’m a freelance science journalist living in New York with my ball python, Agamemnon Fang. I spent the last few years as a marine geochemist by day, contributing editor for CBS SmartPlanet at night. Before that, I was a news intern for Nature in Washington, D.C., an editorial intern at Discover in New York, and a reporter for the infamous Point Reyes Light in West Marin, California.
In 2008, I graduated from the Earth & Environmental Science and Journalism dual-master’s program at Columbia University. I conducted my Earth Science master’s research on, broadly speaking, Climate Change and Human Evolution at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, where I used geochemical analyses to understand paleoclimatic changes in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean. And for my Journalism master’s project — “Salamander Eggs and Hyena Phalluses” — I narrated the discoveries of two novel life histories (or biological oddities). At the University of California, Berkeley, I studied Integrative Biology (evolution and natural history) and English literature (19th-20th century novel and experimental fiction). I spent a couple years at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology as a georeferencer, a curatorial/field/research/lab assistant, and I skinned and stuffed birds and rodents. (You can also find my immortalized birds at the American Museum of Natural History, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, and Yale Peabody Museum.)
http://janetfang.wordpress.com/about/