In a weird example of synchronicity, Dr. Free-Ride posted about science journalism yesterday, and Inside Higher Ed offers a viewpoint piece by Michael Bugeja on the same topic this morning. You might almost think it was one of those “meme” things.
They both agree that there’s a problem with science reporting, but come at the problem from different ends. Bugeja is mostly concerned with the supply side of the problem, talking about the difficulties scientists have with communicating to the public:
These professors rank among the most ingenious, passionate people I have ever met.
Put some of them in front of a reporter, however, and all bets are off.
Being misquoted in the media is commonplace, especially when the topic concerns science. Depending on the error, a quotation out of context can catapult a scientist into the national spotlight where the person gets to clarify the remarks and do it again, only this time for a mass audience.
Janet, on the other hand, has a crazy idea for attacking the problem from the demand side:
If there were an actual clamor for science reporting that was detailed, informative, and grounded in fact — a clamor not just from scientists but from the people, speaking in large numbers — then news organizations would have no choice but to provide it, lest they lose their audience (and ad revenue) to someone who would. Right?
I think they’re both right, in the appropriate limits. It’s definitely hard to present science in a way that is comprehensible to the general public without being misleading. Scientists could do a much better job of feeding information to journalists, and putting it in a form that is better adapted to the constraints of modern mass media.
At the same time, the constraints of modern mass media are themselves part of the problem. If it really were possible to create a wider market for detailed and informative reporting, that would make everybody’s life easier.
What about the poor writers caught in the middle? This is as good a place as any to drop a link to Jennifer Ouellette’s recent post on the life of a science writer. It’s a few weeks old, but it’s really good stuff. I’m tempted to print it out and give it to the senior seminar students when I talk about non-academic careers in physics (which will be, um, tomorrow…).
(Really, I’d just put a link to it on the course web page, but it starts off with a link to my blog, which I try not to publicize at work. Which is silly, because I know the students know about it, but it still feels weird…)
I think the problem lies in the process of science journalism. As Bugeja says, there are plenty of enthusiastic, articulate scientists out there. The whole process of science depends on communication, after all.
What is missing is a pool of science reporters who can really understand what the scientists are saying, and then translate it for the public. (There are some very good ones, just not enough.)
Too often I read science stories in which it is obvious the journalist really doesn’t get what the scientist is saying, and consequently misinterprets it when trying to “simplify” it for the reader. They tend to hare off after idiotic “hooks” — like the obligatory Star Trek references in any stories about quantum teleportation.
There is also the bad habit of trying to gin up “controversy” and portray every new theory as some kind of battle pitting brave truth-tellers against the stodgy establishment. This makes journalists incredibly prone to report crackpot ideas as serious science. Again, because they don’t have the knowledge base to tell the difference.
Personal note: in my two journalism “day jobs” at weekly papers, in both cases I was the de facto science expert on the staff. At one paper I was a summer intern, at another I was the proofreader. Presumably papers without proofreaders or interns with a layman’s interest in science have to get along as best they can.
Jim Cambias
Zygote Games
About half a year ago I posted excerpts from an article by Dennis Dieks (Professor of the Foundations and Philosophy of the Natural Sciences at the Institute for History and Foundations of Science, University of Utrecht) entitled THE QUANTUM MECHANICAL WORLDPICTURE AND ITS POPULARIZATION. In the ten years since it was published, this article about the predicament of a science journalist has lost nothing of its importance.
“If it really were possible to create a wider market for detailed and informative reporting, that would make everybody’s life easier.”
The problem is not with science journalism, it is with journalism in general. There is precious little informed, thoughtful, accurate journalism on any subject, unless you consider political reporting to fulfil any of those qualifications. As I have said before and will probably continue to repeat, journalists are in general the least well educated of all professionals. It’s possible to cite exceptions in science journalism, but for every good science journalist we can recognize, there are many more uninformed, thoughtless, inaccurate science journalists.
I think the only solution is to kill all the journalists, burn the newspaper and TV buildings to the ground and blow up all the J-schools. Then start all over again. OK, that might be a little extreme. At least we could do away with journalism as a college major (Journalism as a major? What about recognizing the spoken language and writing complete sentences as a major? Operation of a computer keyboard?) and insist that journalists know something about the subjects they cover. OK, that’s probably a little too extreme, too, given that we don’t even really require that of our public high school teachers.
The problem with journalism is a serious one. Modern journalists are NOT supposed to know anything. They are simply supposed to report what each side says. Why do you think “intelligent design” is actually taken seriously? Why do so many Americans conflate 9/11 and Iraq? Since the 1980s, this trend has accelerated in every area of news coverage, and we are all worse off for it.
One possible solution is something like the Daily Show for science. While ostensibly watching for entertainment value, Daily Show viewers are better informed on politics, world and national affairs than most Americans. Perhaps we could get Marc Abrahams of the igNoble awards to do something similar.