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.