I haven’t posted much here lately as I have been touring Scotland (holidays) and on a quick trip to London (you call that business?). Yesterday was my first day back in Dundee and found this article reading the paper. The Guardian has a weekly column that writes mostly about the way that science is reported in the mainstream media. This week’s seems to be about the dodgy connections that some journalists make between a scientific discovery and its implication to society.
The point in case is a statement made by The Daily Telegraph that red wine could help to prevent cancer. That comes from some research that shows that some component in grapes used to produce red wine, resveratrol, has an effect that, among other things, does reduce the chances of DNA damage. Unfortunately red wine is reported to contain alcohol, which is known to cause DNA damage.
It is interesting that, although scientists are always eager to highlight the potential benefits of a discovery, even when the connection is tenuous, it takes a journalist, even more eager to produce a catchy headline, to come with something like this. Are mistakes like this the necessary price to pay for making scientific discoveries relevant to the rest of society?
The general public isn’t interested in science mainly because it requires them to think hard, the media are aware of this, hence the alacrity to interprete any scientific discovery in the most eye catching context.
Hi James, thanks for your comment. I mostly agree but I don’t think people are incapable of thinking. Obviously there is that much one could ask from people if they lack enough background and the aim does not seem important enough. The question is if it is possible to communicate science without making misleading statements. I guess the answer is yes but we should accept that sometimes (how often?) mistakes like those pointed out in the article, happen.
David, I think that writing about cancer research is especially difficult – I wrote about a similar news story yesterday. But if we have a success story of basic science leading to a successful cancer treatment (e.g. imatinib for chronic myelogenous leukemia), we can hopefully interest a lot of people in the basic science leading to that discovery.
On the question of wine and cancer, Ben Goldacre did his customary excellent job in the Guardian yesterday, and on badscience.net .
Martin: I agree with you. So you are suggestion a many-layers approach in which the news are initially told as to reach the widest audience possible and then different degrees of complexity trickle down according to the interest shown by the general public?
David: You got it right…that is exactly the article I talked about in my post.
My first response here was to think of the old Joe Jackson song Cancer:
“Everything
Everything gives you cancer
Everything
Everything gives you cancer
There’s no cure, there’s no answer
Everything gives you cancer”
which of course reminds us that this level of reporting is not new, and is unlikely to improve without good science journalists – a few of whom exist.
Perhaps on a more serious note the issue of communication of science to the public is essential, since we all basically rely upon taxpayers or charity donors to fund our work. Therefore keeping them interested and, to a degree, involved is critical. Over the years there have been a number of outstanding folks – Carl Sagan and Richard Attenborough being excellent examples. As a child I remember the excitement that James Burke used to bring to many ideas (we were both a the same high school, so that’s an unashamed plug!) Of course in the 1960’s and 70’s the space program was a major source of excitement and technological advances were obvious. Current significant advances – for example less people in the US dying of cancer in 2008 vs 2007 or in 2007 vs 2006 go rather unheralded.
Someone involved in making science documentaries for the BBC – it might have been Attenborough – once said that you should never overestimate the knowledge of the public or underestimate its intelligence. His point being that people can think if things are presented to them in a reasonably digestible format.
So I guess we need good science teachers at all levels and good people in the media to promote the sheer excitement of this discipline.
Hope that’s halfway coherent! I’m going back to my vacation.
Hi Simon, nice comment!
I agree that science communication is a very important matter and that being paid by the taxpayer means that researchers should do an extra effort and have an extra responsibility in transmitting their discoveries and their relevance to those that support them. Maybe science bodies should encourage not just publications in scholarly journals but also in more accessible media?
That is of course a separate thing from the role of journalists and their responsibility in reporting things accurately while at the same time reaching a wide non specialist audience. You point out that some people (interestingly, not professional reporters) manage to do great work by not overestimating the knowledge and not underestimating the intelligence of the public. This unfortunately does not happen that often given that to TV programmes tend to be evaluated more for their capability of not overestimating the knowledge of the public and very seldom for not underestimating their intelligence.