Of course the famous title “Audacity of Hope” belongs to U.S. president Barack Obama, whose election was the biggest story of last year. But another story also scored very high on news editors' radars: the Large Hadron Collider story, LHC, which makes some heavy lifters of news and information very hopeful and optimistic about the future science journalism.

We all know them: The scientists whose research is always exciting and who are never stuck for an interesting opinion. You can call them anytime and their quotes are always pithy. But can you really trust such sources? How do you know whether the researcher you’re relying on is truly brilliant, just a marginal figure in his field, or even a complete idiot?

This hands-on workshop was run by Chris Smith, founder of The Naked Scientists and Jon Bohannon, contributing correspondent for Science and writer for The Gonzo Scientist.   

It was a confirmation of the age-old journalism school lesson – that the best stories are often the ones that directly impact us; this session featured four science journalists who have ‘changed the world’ with their incisive reporting.  The panel was made up of three specialists in health and medicine - issues everyone effortlessly relates to. The fourth journalist on the panel has consistently crossed the line between good science journalism and good science by backing up her stories with personally conducted research surveys, complete with bar graphs and pie charts.