Long-awaited blog on climate skepticism

Part 3 in a series on climate change journalism

Sometimes you wait a long time for something and then it just lands in your lap when you're not looking. Or maybe it is under an embargo you can't break.

Either way this is a ripe time to write about climate skepticism in the media. First of all, Bob Ward, climate change communication guru at the Grantham Research Institute at LSE wrote a 'Viewpoint' in Weather at the tail end of last month in which he advocated climate researchers taking more responsibility for countering the claims of climate skeptics in the aftermath of Climategate and the IPCC errors.


The nasty shock of the 'recoil effect'


The increased prominence of skeptical views in the media the past year is described by Adam Corner, a researcher into understanding risk at Cardiff Universtiy, as a 'recoil effect' - occuring despite the fact that climate science has since been cleared. Big fat caveat: climate researchers may have a role to play in this but ultimately the buck of misleading climate change coverage stops with journalists and editors. Margot O'Neill described the challenges facing the media in a blogpost for ABC, chiefly the aftershock of Climategate and the ensuing "public confusion about whether there is a reliable scientific consensus".

Ward suggests scientists need to communicate more effectively with the public and the media; on the subject of personal integrity as well as scientific results. He also adds that: "More leaders will be needed who can skillfully take on confrontational media interviews and go head-to-head with slippery opponents."

He explains this is because climate skeptics often: "take advantage of scientists' sensitivity to allegations of bias or subjectivity and take advantage of this by accusing researchers of being advocates if they suggest that greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced. Researchers need to be smarter when dealing with such tactics and the rhetorical tricks that their opponents use in public debate."

And hey presto! In a probably completely unrelated event, the LA Times and Grist published a truly remarkable piece about climate scientist in the US mobilising to counter-act the pervasiveness of skeptics in climate change journalism. According the the LA Times this week:

"On Monday, the American Geophysical Union, the country's largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.

John Abraham of St. Thomas University in Minnesota, who last May wrote a widely disseminated response to climate change skeptics, is also pulling together a "climate rapid response team," which includes scientists prepared to go before what they consider potentially hostile audiences on conservative talk radio and television shows."

John Abraham is a proactive kind of scientist. Earlier this year he 'eviscerated' Lord Monckton's climate skeptic arguments in a painstaking point-by-point presentation, and further responded to the litigious peer's criticisms on the Skeptical Science site. Hopefully Abraham and others like him will be as skillful at manipulating the media as the climate change skeptic lobbies. But will they be skillful enough to drown out the minority of highly vocal dissenters from the scientific consensus?

The fight begins.

Ref:
Communicating Climate Change, Robert Edward Thomas Ward, Weather, DOI: 10.1002/wea.683 [sadly no free version for me to link to]

Investigative science journalism

One of the big, important topics covered in the Science Media Centre's report on science journalism for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), was the plight of investigative science reporting. Here's an extract, below.

One concern that was raised repeatedly by commentators on science journalism including academics and even one journal editor was the domination of the news agenda by stories from the weekly science and medical journals. Curt Supplee45, a former science reporter in the US claims that 60-70% of the weekly quota of science stories comes straight from the pages of four or five big journals including Science,

Nature, the BMJ and the Lancet which he described as ‘a pretty dumb way to cover science from the public’s perspective’. Another commentator said that we need to ‘challenge the stranglehold of medical journals which are essentially setting the agenda of science with very little challenge’. Some linked this trend to the absence of any tradition of investigative journalism within science writing and others argued that science journalists tend to ‘go native’ and refrain from asking scientists the really tough questions.

You get the picture - and it ain't pretty. My favourite solution suggested by the report is a 'Before the headlines' service for time-strapped journalists feeding analysis, context and so on to them before the event that they churn out another story based on a press release. This idea came from the popular 'Behind the headlines' service from NHS Choices. Check it out for evidence-based blazing of media stories.

Other possible solutions are funding investigations or training with the non-profit Bureau of Investigative Journalism and funding for month-long investigation fellowships. Also the report looked the the 64 million Dollar question: how else are we going to fund investigations into health, technology, the environment etc?

Putting questions to the pros

So, I was at the City University debate on whether science in the media was "In rude or ailing health?". Actually it turned into a bit of a spat about the (it seems) age-old blogger vs journalist argument. My favourite comment of all time was Ed Yong comparing the blogger/journalist debate with the film The Titanic - it is tedious and never ends up going anywhere (please forgive the paraphrasing, Ed). There are a couple of blogs that covered the City debate here at Chalk and Cheese by Charlotte King and here at A Life of Pi by Harriet Vickers. The hashtag was #scimedia for those that want to check out comments and links to more blogs on Twitter.

The other exciting thing was that Fiona Fox announced £77,000 to go towards training journalists in science, hoping to improve newsroom science literacy.

I thought that although the debate was very entertaining, it did seem to miss any sensible opinion on the future of funding investigative science journalism – not just critical analysis, which should be par for course. So I thought I'd straw poll the panelists on what kind of solutions they would favour for future funding.

Fiona Fox from the SMC said a lot of interesting things, as follows:

"In the States it’s all philanthropy and Pro Publica their model is brilliant – they take money from philanthropists but they also work jointly with papers on investigations [who pay them]."

The problem with this, as Fiona admitted to me, is that we haven't the same history with philanthropists digging into their pockets for journalism in this country. She is seeking to reverse this by lobbying science minister Lord Drayson to divert some science prize funds towards science journalism.

Two other solutions she's in favour of are gaining institution funding:

"I think as long as there are really strong protective walls between the funding and the journalism why not in The States the National Science Foundation funds all kinds of journalistic ventures but it doesn’t have editorial control".

And also research council funding:

"It’s not automatically corrupt. The BBC is funded by the government but I see no evidence that the government interfers in the day to day business of the BBC – why can’t we look at some of these models?"

Andrew Jack of the Financial Times said he was for encouraging investigative journalism within media organisations, but also for more "external stimuli", such as awards for science reporting. He also sees a future for: "institutions, whether academic or non-profitboth be funding directly in some form, either through their own resources or funding scholarships."

Ed Yong agrees that Pro Publica and also Spot.us, which describes itself a a community-powered journalism, are possible funding models for the future. He cites the case of Lindsay Hoshaw's New York Times story on the garbage patch as a Spot.us success story, funded by donors on the site on the basis of Lindsay's pitch. Here is how it worked, and see below to hear about it it Lindsay's words.

However, Ed highlights this is tentative: "if anyone knew the answer of how to fund... [investigative journalism], then I wouldn’t be sitting here being interviewed I’d be sitting at home getting massaged by Rupert Murdoch." Fair point.

The Economist's Natasha Loder is also tentative about the BIJ and Spot.us as possible ways forward as she thinks there are possible costs incurred to organisations who might take on investigative work in terms of fact-checking and legal risks, but are a good idea on the whole to cure what she calls "inefficient" science journalism:

"If you could only get a handful a week of new and novel and original stories, funded by a different source, you can immediately diversify what’s being published."

However, Natasha says her favourite idea is for the ABSW to give month-long fellowships to reporters to produce investigative work. I wonder whether this will apply to freelancers too or only the small handfuls of science specialists already employed full-time by organisations? Hmmmm. When Natasha pointed out there were only 80-odd staff positions in the UK it made a lot of us MA science journalism and sci comms ponder and scratch our heads. Heigh-ho: here's to the future, here's to new funding models and entrepreneurialism.

Science Online 2010: The emotion session

Plenty, and I mean PLENTY, of other people have and will be blogging the Science Online conference of science geekery in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park much more comprehensively than me. Two who pipped me to the post are Henry Gee, on Nature Networks, here; and Jonathan Eisen's top 11 (okay, 12) things learnt here.

So I decided to take a different angle on proceedings, inspired (or is it just the jetlag?) by a feature in the New Scientist on 'new' emotions recognised by scientists. So we still have the usual suspects: sadness, anger, joy, blah, blah, but now also have shiny new labels for other emoted states of being - much more interesting. Here goes:

1. Elevation

Described as a feeling of uplift. I felt inspired by sharing of tools for blogging at Dave Munger's workshop (ditto Henry Gee). Also, by the infectious enthusiasm that scientists have for their fields, such as Miriam Goldstein in the Talking Trash session.

Even science journalists seemed optimistic about the future of science journalism online and elsewhere in the Re-booting Science Journalism session. Even Carl Zimmer, who had apparently intended to put forward a cynical angle – somewhere along the way, via duck's penises (corkscrewed, in case you were in a dark hole somewhere and missed that one) – ended up with an optimistic vision of how we can make science exciting and accessible by giving it intriguing hooks, such as writing about science tattoos or science sculpture.

One more example that reminded me why I love blogging is what David Dobbs was saying in the fact-checking session about how you can easily put up all your references when you are working online, or you can post an entry with sources to support a print article - online rocks. Simple.

2. Interest

Well, obviously there was a lot to be interested in at the conference. And journalist-blogger hybrids are notoriously curious. So the challenge to this was being online as an audience member. If something was engaging enough I focused. And if it wasn't (purely subjective, and subject to what was elevating me at that particular moment), I was probably only listening with one ear: the risk/benefits of the interwebs at conferences.

(More on what I was interested in above and below this, but not exclusively)

3. Gratitude

This is easy. It's relationship glue. And for me this was the most important thing at Science Online: the people. No question. Of course, I would like to thank Anton and Bora for inviting me to come and moderate a session, and giving me the opportunity to meet all these wonderful science bloggers and authors. Thanks to anyone that came to the session that Connie St Louis and I chaired and for all your brilliant contributions.

I would also like to thank Michael Specter for writing his book Denialism so I could win it (Q: how many times a day do rats have sex? A: 20. I tweeted 21. How I knew this, don't ask) and get lots of other lovely clever people to sign in his absence. And Specter was so nice about it.

Also a million times thanks to everyone – it would make a very long list to namecheck – who made me feel welcome and like my bouncy self.

4. Pride

This is a tricky one. According to the NS article there are two types of pride: one good, and "authentic" versus the nasty "hubristic" one. I don't actually think there's that much wrong with a wee bit of pride for that reason - it can be alright if you have good and humble intentions. Personally, I reckon it is spreading a bit of joy about. Why not? There are worse things you could spread from person to person. You might even affect people you haven't met, according to this piece on Connected in Sunday's Observer.

So, I was proud of the fact I managed to moderate the trust and scientists session without: hyperventilating, passing out, swearing, or other potentially embarrassing behaviour. No, seriously, I was pretty pleased with how it went for my virgin conference - there was some good discussion, quite a bit of controversy in the room and over Twitter, and some solutions put forward, such as a greater transparency on the part of the scientific journals with annotated entries - see here for a starting block on article level metrics of the type they are pioneering at PLoS.

Otherwise, what else came out of it was the need for scientists and journalists to work together to bridge the trust gap - this can be tricky from a journlistic point of view, as we discussed in the fact-checking session with Rebecca Skloot, David Dobbs and Sheril Kirchenbaum. There was debate over whether journalists should let scientists check their copy - in some cases this is against house policy so this is worth checking if you are a freelancer. Although I don't know how this applies to publishers in the UK.

5. Confusion

It seems wrong to end on lukewarm note, as I feel happily lucid about Science Online, the people I met, and the things that I learnt. But actually I do occassionally feel puzzled in the way that it discusses in the New Scientist piece: as a kind of "time-for-change" emotion. For me this time for change seems distant in my future, when I have to decide what to do when I finish my MA in Science Journalism in June. Still pondering...

One very thought-provoking issue is how I, and other nascent science journalists, are going to make money if we decide to go freelance. And I do want to be freelance, to mix it up with different media, to be independent, to be able to investigate. In the current economic climate this is probably going to be a challenge. But now I have connected with several other science journalist-bloggers that have similar values and want to strike out in similar ways, which equals support for each other. So despite the confusion, I feel shored up against the grey skies.

PS. If you think you spot Michael Specter's signature, it is cheeky fakery

PPS. Accurate to best of my abilities - if anyone has any corrs please comment. Thank you

Which scientists can you trust?

Suggested listening: [Morcheeba – Who Can You Trust?]

How do you sort the "good" scientists or the "bad" without actually going to check out their labs? This was part of the question asked by Daily Mail science editor Michael Hanlon at the Goldacre vs Lord Drayson debate at the Royal Institution last week.

This is an important question in light of the over-blown MRSA scares only a few years ago. Ben Goldacre has written a multitude of articles and blogs about this, exposing the so-called “expert” used by newspapers Dr Christopher Malyszewicz as a fraudster with a lack of proper qualifications, who “got false positive results from his garden shed laboratory”.

Actually checking out people’s labs is something that Dr James Logan PhD says is impractical and can be misleading:

“A trained scientist could even find it hard to tell what quality of research is going on in a lab just by having a look around – after all, in my area we get some high quality research coming out of labs in Africa and most of their labs are very run down and poorly resourced, yet the quality of the science that they are able to do there is not necessarily compromised.’

So what can journalists do to ensure that their sources are bona fide proper scientists? Of course, the quality of the scientific method of an individual research paper and its peer-reviewed context are the most important things to look at, rather than its author (more on this if you read on).

“Obviously though, reputation and previous can influence opinion, but in an ideal world a reporter should be only assessing the quality of the work,” says Adam Rutherford, editor at Nature, “Does it affect the quality of Goodfellas that Age of Innocence was pony?”

However, chatting to Vaughan Bell, blogger for Mindhacks.com in the aftermath of the Godacre vs Drayson debate (which was a re-enactment of their previous widely-publicised stances, read more here), many questions were raised in my mind about the scientists themselves.

Especially in the light of research that Goldacre highlighted in his talk about how people, and indeed scientists, are influenced by the popularity of a science story in the MSM. In the case of the scientists, they tended to cite studies with more frequency if they are covered in the media. See here for details of the study, in which academics were influenced by coverage in the NY Times. (Phillips DP et al. N Engl J Med. 1991;325:1180-3.)

Also worrying is this recent article from the Guardian about scientist selling their signatures to big pharma research. 

Another reason that quantity of citations is not a good indicator of a good scientist or the quality of a paper is that studies can be cited as examples of controversial or bad research that the paper wishes to contradict.

Bell says using Google Scholar to see how many times studies have been cited can be a fairly good indicator of relevance – but whether this is for good of bad reasons, we must bear in mind its popularity is also tempered by the influence of the media.

All in the rep

So how else can we assess if a scientist is “good” or “bad”? A lot rides on reputation. Dr Logan says that “Reputation is probably a good indicator, and would be assessed by talking to peers.” This kind of snooping around can prevent another Dr Christopher Malyszewicz-style disaster.

Of course, reputation becomes a lot more relevant when you are not looking at a research paper, but something else as a basis of a report. This could be notes from a conference plus an abstract of the research, the result of a meeting, press conference or other less- or un-scrutinised channels.

“Then assessing credibility becomes much more relevant,” says Rutherford, “At this point I think looking at publication record can be a useful way of assessing the quality, impact and import of a researcher.”

Of course, we have to be prepared that we might be surprised by a scientist deviating from their track record – “As happens with reputation in every other walk of life,” says Bell, “How do you know Tom Cruise isn’t going to make a good Hamlet?”

Even if a scientist’s reputation is good, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all of their claims are founded in good science. Mark Henderson, science editor at The Times, nudges me in the direction of his blog on Tracy Alloway’s controversial statements about Twitter dulling the memory – which she then admitted wasn’t substantiated with any research whatsoever. Just a hypothesis, then.

Would now be an appropriate time to mention Ida? 

Rutherford comments: “Some of the members of the team behind the world’s greatest ever scientific discovery in the world ever that changed the universe for ever aka Ida the lemur, made claims that were not supported by the peer reviewed evidence. Any further publications from those team members should be treated with the same levels of scrutiny as any other academic peer reviewed paper.”

Peer pressure?

Tricky stuff; at least with a peer-reviewed paper you know that claims about it are based on research that has been given the stamp of approval by reviewers. But can the hallowed tradition of peer review also be susceptible to bias?

In theory, no. But in reality, almost certainly. Occasionally, “bits of “science junk” slip through [peer review] – even in journals like Nature, Science and PNAS,” says Dr Logan. See this analysis of retraction of research papers by Nature.

And here is an example of  dodgy science in PNAS (via Ed Yong).

Dr Logan also says that this is not down to lack of rigour in the peer review process, in his experience. So that leaves the shifty-looking candidates of unscrupulous editing, or nepotism amongst reviewers. Of course the opposite can happen: “Competing scientists can slam a manuscript simply because they don’t like the authors or because they want to be the first people to publish that work,” says Dr Logan.

One scientist, a biological physicist I chat to over Twitter, Dr Ian Hopkinson PhD, agrees that there is politics operating within the scientific community.

SmallCasserole@christineottery Yes - politics exist. Diversity of sources probably best. Many sources should give equally good answers.

@SmallCasserole Ooh thanks for that. So majority rule?

SmallCasserole@christineottery Unless you know your scientist well, I'd say "yes". Scientist tend to be a bit protective of their turf

Outside the box

This leads me to pondering about one so-called maverick scientist that I have recently heard speak at a Skeptics in the Pub meeting: Aubrey de Grey.

De Grey claims that “The first 1,000-year-old is 20 years younger than the first 150-year-old.” And guess what? He thinks they’re alive now.

His idea for increasing longevity is to combat disease in the body by creating therapies to treat the onset of aging, such as de-fuzzing arteries of cholesterol. He proposes this can be done by isolating the genes in certain strains of bacteria used to break down cholesterol, for example, to formulate as part of an injected panacea.

Not having read any of his research papers, I couldn’t comment on the quality of the science. However, I was fascinated by De Grey as a character, and it seems he has both his opponents and, er, non-opponents in the scientific community. I was curious whether he was too marginal and outlandish to be important or whether he was in fact some kind of genius visionary. Only the rigorous testing and verification of his theories will prove this one way or another.

Rutherford makes the point that with someone like De Grey, even a sidelined position can grow to appear more mainstream then it is within the media. This is probably because it is interesting, as in unorthodox, and also because hunger of the press to regurgitate pithy soundbites. Rutherford says: “A good journalist would only reiterate this... if the argument was sound or the evidence compelling.”

Mavericks are shown over time and testing to belong to one of two camps. One: Their “heretical” ideas are supported by evidence and embraced by conventional science, such as Lynn Margolis on endosymbiosis (a theory that parts of cells originally came from bacteria) or James Lovelock’s Gaia theory.

Two: Or, their maverick status becomes “self-selecting” – in other words their work is not proven and they therefore chose to be regarded as anti-establishment. For an example of this see this piece by Rutherford on Rupert Sheldrake.  

Ahead of such a time when a scientists' theories are proven or dismissed, how should the media handle mavericks?

Henderson tells me it is fine to write up a maverick’s untested views as long as the caveats about lack of proof and peer criticisms about their work are high up in the article. He warns: “Ask yourself, though, if the hypothesis is plausible, and whether it contravenes things that are thought to be well-established. If so, it's worth applying the maxim of extraordinary claims needing extraordinary evidence.”

Scientist-journalist relations 

These are worth forging as a journalist. Time to get connected.

Henderson suggests that beyond ringing the authors and independent scientists for their views on the research, it can be useful putting papers you are reading through “a kind of informal peer-review” by running them past scientists you know in the relevant field to get their comments.

Dr Logan agrees, and would like to see more scientists’ views represented in articles. He says: “It is rare that the journalist will change the piece to be more balanced when they have a skepticism from another scientists – after all that will ruin a perfectly good and interesting story! It’s usually tagged on the end.”  (BTW, Dr Logan big-ups the New Scientist for “giving a fair and balanced review of controversial research”).

From Dr Logan’s experience working with journalists on a skills exchange initiative run by the Wellcome Trust and Documentary Filmmakers Group, he would like to see more media training on “how science works and how scientists think”.

But this is a two-way street. Dr Logan also reckons that scientists need to buck up their ideas and engage more in communication with the media. He says: “A lot of scientists are too scared to communicate in case their reputation is compromised, which is a shame.” Perhaps understanding this, as a journalist, is one small teeny tiny step in the right direction for scientist-journalist relations.

NB Had to interrupt my science literacy series to blog this, part two coming v soon, promise.

In a land far, far away: the future of science journalism

So far I’ve discussed some of the problems facing science and health journalism. Here is one more that I’ve touched on but not gone into depth on, and it’s pretty crucial.

Alok Jha says: “Unfortunately science is basically the direct opposite of news, which is short, sharp, to the point, and science is incredibly the opposite of that, if you invert all those values. Now, which one is correct? Which one is wrong? Well, neither are. But to be honest, when you’re trying to shoehorn science into the news, it’s not the happiest of fits.”

According to Nick Davies, the particular problems faced by science journalism are that science is complicated and subtle, and the ‘news factory’ likes simple and clear stories. So, it struggles to get in the news, especially versus popular sports and celeb stories. Stories can get ‘distorted’ in the process of making them simple and sexing them up with an angle for the readers.

So science and news aren’t a match made in heaven. That’s a given. But, always liking to leave things on a positive note, I asked myself, and a whole host of very busy journalists, what possible solutions to the challenges faces by science journalism are?

Nick Davies pinged over: “In principle, it would help to have more specialist science writers, who would have a better grip on the underlying material and, therefore, be better placed to convert it into journalism. The trouble is that that costs money, which is precisely what is missing in newsrooms at the moment...” That’s why people such as myself are forking out a truckload of cash to get the training off our own backs.

Anyway, sounds pretty depressing. Not into feeling depressed, so here are some rays of light:

Critics, we like you

Criticism of science journalism is very healthy at the moment, which can maybe keep journalists and editors on their toes. For example, I do think for the most part coverage of swine flu has been pretty responsible. Of course there have been disagreements over that, but it’s just my general impression.

Blogging and tweeting

Jha says that some science blogs are brilliant, such as Ed Yong’s, who was poached to write for the Guardian’s science blog: “He’s just very measured, and his blog is great. He’s good at critical analyses. He complains now and then [about media coverage of science] but I don’t think he feels particularly superior to anyone.”

Jha says that one crucial difference between journalism and blogging is that bloggers tell the story they want to tell and journalists write with the audience in mind, and tell other people’s stories.  “Neither approach is necessarily better than the other,” he says. “They're just different. We're going to need both.” An example of the two can work in synthesis is how blogs informing journalism by putting their very specific and specialist knowledge out there, rather than just commenting on reporter’s groundwork – although criticism is sometimes vital, too, as I mentioned above.

As well as the internet, social media is finding a place in the dissemination of science journalism. Rowan Hooper, news editor of Newscientist.com, says that New Scientist uses Twitter (@newscientist) to alert over 28,000 followers of stories on the website, and also as a “news gathering-tool… being able to see, real-time, what’s going on in the world.”

How can you get followed by @newscientist? Probably by being a scientist. Hooper would like to see more scientists tweeting, and says: “It would get really interesting because if scientists can talk directly to people they don’t go through journalists or even journals in the way that they used to – and then the game really changes. You’re not going to get much data out there in 140 characters, but they can make assertions, for sure. We’d check those out like we would any statement from scientists. I think it’s all healthy and interesting and a good way of getting information out there”.

Streamlining

Pondering on our chat about the future of not just science journalism but journalism as a whole, Jha tells me that he thinks that the role of the journalist will be streamlined as a reaction to bloggers and citizen journalists. “We'll be a leaner industry, probably more specialised and perhaps more professional. When you have a million sources of information online, how d’you know which to trust? Perhaps journalists will be the trusted guides, weighing things up, checking sources, guiding us to the most valuable information.” 

I can see his point. With the proliferation of all kinds of information sources it is tricky to sift the nourishing stuff from the useless, baseless, beige stuff - this is why good journalism in any form will become even more important in the future. However, ideally, journalists should already be doing this job, in my opinion, but I can see how that doesn’t reflect reality. I wonder how this specialisation will come to pass while journalists continue to churn and all the other multitude of journalistic sins? And where will the money come from? 

Or perhaps it is just a case of the cream rises to the top of the bloodbath, with the best journalists naturally being the best journalists because they specialise - and they're the ones that have work and so have a voice. 

Non-profit agencies

In Flat Earth News, Nick Davies talks about a non-profit investigative news service in the US that is successful. I don’t remember its name right now but here is a list. But, surely this model could be replicated for other specialist, time-consuming and butt-kicking work such as a specialist science agency?

Specialist sources

We’ve been talking mainly about the science journalism in the mainstream media. Hooper reckons that: “The way newspapers work it's often not the science journalists, who set the tone of a story so much as the subeditors and news editors who take a story and put their own spin on it. It makes a strong case for relying on specialist outlets such as New Scientist!” Good plug. But I do love the New Scientist, so I’ll let it go.

Another option, less to do with journalism, but more a kind of raising of science consciousness among the masses, is this:

A science literate society

Journalism cannot be held solely to blame for people’s misinformation. Jha says that journalism’s purpose is not only to educate, but to be interesting and entertaining and relevant, so people should rely other sources. For example, their education, and state information such as the swine flu website (when it’s not busy crashing). The pressured state of our newsrooms also shifts some responsibility for learning critical analysis onto the audience. Good luck with that, everybody.

Jha says that on that fundamental basis he agrees with Goldacre: ‘He [Goldacre] rails on journalists because they are a soft target, I think, when really what he wants is a more science-literate society.’

*** Next blog on how we achieve a more science literate society!

Can humanities graduates do it? Actually write science journalism?

I bloody well hope so. I am a future science journalist. I am a humanities graduate. I feel there’s a huge amount of work ahead of gaining background knowledge, contacts and plenty of nosing around to do if I’m going to do the best, most thorough, job I can. Seems like a mammoth task but my plan is this: work hard.

Hooper says: “You have to have a broad enough knowledge of stuff to know if something is genuinely new or not. And even if it is new, it might not be interesting. So you have to just judge whether that story is of broad enough interests. You have to bear in mind your audience. It might be something new but actually only a few geneticists are going to be interested in it... It’s not specialists, it’s members of the public. Will they care about it?”

Jha makes the point that “there are lots of very good reporters who write about science, and have no science background, but have reported science for ten years and I would say know more science than most scientists.” Also, non-scientists might ask questions from the perspective of relative ignorance that scientists might not ask, therefore serving the interests of the not-so science literate masses.

But then, surely even science grads are non-specialists when they are writing outside of their chosen field? Hooper agrees: “It helps if you have a degree in astrophysics and you’re working on some cosmos story, but that’s not going to help you on a stem cell story.”

However, there are advantages to being a science grad, says Hooper: “The best thing to be said for having a science degree or scientific training is the similarities with journalism. It means you have to question claims, look for evidence to support what’s being claimed. That’s what you do as a scientist and that’s what you need to do as a journalist, so there is that sort of similarity.”

Connor infers a degree of agreement with Goldacre about the fact that humanities graduates are the bane of science journalism: “I’d like to see more science graduates in science journalism… They understand that science is complex, the world is complex.” Connor thinks humanities-background science journalists might make the mistake of simplifying stories into pitching two scientists against each other without giving the context about their credibility needed for the reader to fully understand the significance of what’s being said.

Connor also tells me he’s concerned that Goldacre’s attitude could put off science grads from entering the profession. He says: “It’s not true that they can’t write. And they have the intellectual hinterland…”

But surely anyone with the intellectual hinterland to comprehend science, regardless of their degree background, should be able to write it? This smacks of an intellectual superiority complex to me. Jha says: “Surely everyone, anyone, should have the opportunity to write about, play with and enjoy what science is? If not then scientists are just talking to themselves.”

Is science journalism a danger to public health?

I love Twitter. About a month ago I clicked on a tweet to discover this: www.badscience.net/2009/07/steve-connor-is-getting-eggy/

In brief: A month ago a mud-slinging match started between Steve Connor, science editor at the Indy, and Ben Goldacre. On his blog, badscience.net, Goldacre wrote: “mainstream media's science coverage is broken, misleading, dangerous, lazy, venal and silly.” Connor responded in an Indy column saying critics did not understand the time and money constraints of the mainstream media. He tells me at the Indy the past year has seen a 30 percent cut in newspaper income and a third of journalists have lost their jobs because of the recession.

It’s true some health stories are misleading and this is an extremely serious business. A well-publicised case wrongly linked MMR and autism, the product of decades’ tangled mess of analysis and reporting by lifestyle and other non-specialist journalists based on the work of a scientist with a ton of vested interests (Andrew Wakefield). Throw in a dash of hysteria via lobby groups of concerned parents and it becomes the most vexed issue of science journalism to date. Serious business, as increasing numbers of children are contracting measles and mumps. Read more here. 

Alok Jha, science correspondent at the Guardian, thinks that in his chapter on MMR in Bad Science, Goldacre makes a mistake lumping science journalists with lifestyle journalists that misinterpreted the scientific evidence. Jha says:

“I think Ben’s a bit disingenuous, because he writes ‘science journalist’, and then when you read what he writes he doesn’t talk about science journalists. That’s a slight issue, and he’s admitted that, but I think he uses it so that it’s polemic. So, I don’t use his arguments massively seriously.”

Rowan Hooper, news editor at Newscientist.com, says: “Bad science [journalism] can damage your health – but remember – so can bad doctors. If anyone knows a doctor who is good at analysing statistics, perhaps one who is also a good writer, we might ask him to try and assess the deaths that can be attributed to poor science reporting and those attributable to poor medical practice.”

Enough of this verbal sparring, boys – the biggest problem facing science journalism’s credibility is churnalism, the “cut and paste” recycling of press agency and PR copy into stories. Hooper says: "You might not have taken the trouble to verify things with independent experts and the danger is you have taken them at their word when it may well require extra reporting." This can result in inaccuracies and “loony claims about cancer”, for example. In Nick Davies’ book, Flat Earth News, he blames pharma PR-led stories on fabricated disorders, such as female sexual dysfunction (my example) or  “social anxiety disorder – otherwise known as shyness”.

However, despite errors and bloopers by editors and journalists that encourage a skepticism towards science journalism – which might be dangerous if readers ignore stories when they do provide vital and accurate information – I’d argue science journalism is not a completely “broken” profession.

MSM’s treatment of stem cell research is something that Jha states as an example of “critical friend” science journalism done good: “Members of the science journalism community took the issue on board and analysed the effects and talked to audiences about why this is important.” The result: new legislation passed through government to allow the creation of hybrid embryos, for example, and therefore possible future advances to public health.

Also, MMR might actually have had, in some ways, a positive influence on subsequent health coverage in the media, for example SARS, or depending on which camp you sit in H1N1 (some good and informative, some shown to be overblown in the context of ordinary flu stats). There does seem to me to be an air of not wanting to fuck up in the same way again. Ever. Jha puts that down to newspaper editors realising that they need people on their staff that can be responsible to sort out complex issues.

Jha says he doesn’t know many scientists in UK who complain about science coverage – bar one or two. Evidence for this is a paper published in Science by a UCL researcher (Steve Miller) who interviewed 1,000 stem cell scientists to see what they felt about stem cell coverage in the media, and virtually all of them were happy with it.

 

Science journalism in crisis?/Will I have a job when I finish my MA?

Was speaking the other night to Mikey, the deputy editor of Men’s Health (thanks JT for the introduction) and he said something that relieved me… a lot: there’s a dearth of specialist health journalists with the right contacts, going to the right conferences, and all that jazz. Fitness and nutrition journos, sorted; health hacks – harder to find. They almost-but-not-quite poached one off a broadsheet. While this is not good news for Mikey, it is music to my nascent science journalist ears.

Especially because I have been working on an assignment for the course which involved answering the question: “What are the challenges facing science journalism?” Where do I even start?

Easy: scepticism. Ben Goldacre graciously obliged over email with a polemic viewpoint – Thanks! Self-sacrificing of him, who relies on science journalist blunders for 90% of his material, to posit that we should just get rid of science reporters all together:

“We need fewer science writers, and more editors. Radio 4 is the best place for interesting, challenging popular science, and there are some fascinating structural issues here. 70% of the words in a Radio 4 documentary come directly from the mouth of the scientist who has done the work. This makes for better clarity, better diversions, better nuancing, greater accuracy, and so on.

“You're in very big trouble, when academics and other bloggers can do it better themselves. I think the mainstream has talked itself out of a role in popular science, except for wacky dumbed down stories about miracle vegetables. It won't be missed.”

I have a few of problems with this (except what he says on science blogging, on which more later). You might say that’s because I am about to join the ranks of evil science journalists (shudder, shudder, gnash teeth) myself, but it’s not only that. Here’s why:

Editors sometimes make bad decisions too. Think MMR. Whose choice was it to commission generalist and lifestyle journalists to write about this complex and incendiary issue?

Also see this shocking example of hypocritical editorial stances from the Mail. [VIA http://www.layscience.net/node/507] In Britain the Daily Mail ran a series of anti-vaccine stories while in Ireland their campaign urged: “Roll out the Vaccine now”. Which stance reflects the bulk of scientific evidence? Do the editors care as long as they stir up a bit of controversy and sell some papers? 

Goldacre uses the example of Radio 4 as what he sees as best practice science editing. The BBC, while they’re not disinterested in ratings, are relatively freer to act out of public service, whereas the news factory clearly has to sell, sell, sell. I don’t know how he proposes to change this, beyond, like a white knight coming down from the clouds riding a unicorn, buying up the MSM and turning it back to it’s less commercialised roots.

Also, there is another issue at work here, and it’s not purely semantics. Editors and producers are, essentially journalists. They package the words of the scientists into tiny soundbitey portions. I chatted to Alok Jha, the Guardian’s science correspondent who makes the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcasts. He says: “Someone will have spoken for half an hour and only 90 seconds gets used in the final programme. Their words are juxtaposed against other people's, advancing a wider argument that they themselves may not be making.”

Who has the control? Ultimately, not the scientists, still the journalists, so it’s not really the panacea that Goldacre suggests.

Besides which, historically, publicity-shy or perhaps slightly arrogant scientists may have impeded the progression of science. For example, back in the day there was a bloke called Slipher that worked as an astronomer and made loads of important discoveries. But it was left to others, including Hubble, about 15 years later, to shout about things like ‘the universe is expanding’.  Why? Because, as Michael Brooks writes in his book 13 Things that don’t Make Sense: “Slipher had a habit of not really communicating his discoveries”. It follows that specialist communicators are a boon, to tell the public what they deserve to know about taxpayer-funded research.

“Sometimes what you need is a straight report of what’s happened and then you can discuss it after that.” Says Jha, “Frankly, if we didn’t exist, neither would the blogs, because they wouldn’t have anything to complain about or link to.”

Jha tells me he’s had this debate in the office before with (probably) Goldacre. He says scientists that wanted to communicate their stories would end up basically being reporters, because that's the way the industry works: “It’s no accident that newsrooms work in the way that they do, however messy they are… this is the best way that you get news into newspapers.” I don’t know about this. But it would be an interesting experiment to get a scientist to work in a newsroom and give feedback on their experiences. Any volunteers?

“Get rid of a whole swathe of journalists?” Steve Connor, the Indy’s science ed, tells me, “We need more good science journalists, not less.” He explains that not many people have time or inclinations to pore over hundreds of science papers in journals in the same way journalists do. (Looking forward to it, already.)

Chomping at the bit to find out more about the (crisis?) state of science journalism, I asked my interviewees three questions (or rather more if you’re poor Alok Jha who I had on the phone for almost 25 minutes). These were:

• Is science journalism a danger to public health (Goldacre thinks it is)?
• Can humanities graduates write good science journalism (Goldacre thinks major prob with media is humanities grads “wearing ignorance like a badge of honour” – from Bad Science)?
• What’s the future of science journalism? (Please let there be one).

As well as Jha and Connor I also spoke to and Rowan Hooper, the news editor of the New Scientist, and even Nick Davies. I’ll blog my scintillating findings in instalments this week. Will tweet as I publish.