End of the line for science journalism?
Maxine Clarke
Thursday, 18 June 2009 16:33 UTC
Many researchers see science journalists as a public-relations service or as an ally in spreading the news about their work, asserts a Nature Editorial this week (459, 1033; 2009 – free to read online). The Editorial points out that there is a deeper value of journalism: to cast a fair but sceptical eye over everything in the public sphere — science included. This kind of scrutiny is easy for researchers to applaud when a news report questions dodgy statistics or dubious claims about uncertainties in evolution. It is not so easy when the story takes a critical look at animal-research practices, overblown claims about climate change or scientists’ conflicts of interest. But such examinations are to the benefit of society, which needs to see science scrutinized as well as regurgitated, and journalists are an essential part of that process.
This week’s Nature special issue, of which the Editorial is a part, shines a spotlight on the profession in changing, troubled times, and is published to mark the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists from 30 June to 2 July 2009 in London.
Scientists can do little to stem the current bloodletting, in which readers and advertisers are deserting publications that are downsizing or folding at fast pace. But, argues the Editorial, they can make worthwhile attempts to ensure that questioning and informed science journalism persists in whatever new forms might emerge from the carnage. If the future of the media truly is a dire landscape of top-100 lists, shouting heads and minimal attention span, then such efforts might at least defer the grim end. A good start would be to have a look at the advice for academics speaking to journalists provided by Brad Delong and Susan Rasky. And from the other side of the coin, the Washington Post‘s national environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin and its executive editor Marcus Brauchli discuss the future of science coverage in their newspaper in a Nature Books&Arts Q&A.
But do newspapers even matter? Blogs and microblogging services like Twitter are opening up conferences to those not actually there – how is this direct to web exposure affecting science journalism, and indeed scientists themselves and their options for peer-review and publication of their research? A range of angles on these questions are covered in a Nature News feature, including the story of a recent ’blogostorm’ about a Cold Spring Harbor meeting in which scientists seemed free to report what journalists could not.
In other articles in this week’s Nature, Toby Murcott in Toppling the priesthood argues that the process of science needs to be opened up to journalists; Boyce Rensberger (Too close for comfort) tracks the progression of scientific correspondent from cheerleader to watchdog; and Nadia El-Awady in The Arab boom suggests much room for improvement in local journalism in Arab countries. The bottom line? To what extent should scientists help — or care? We’d love to know what you think.
(All the Nature articles mentioned and linked here are part of the science journalism special in the issue of 25 June 2009. The three Essays and the Books&Arts article are free to read online for 2 weeks from the publication date.)
Updated 24 June 2009 21:13 UTC
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Intriguing to me that point 7 in that list of advice (for economists) when speaking to journalists is “Remember that the plural of anecdote is data. Help journalists understand how to find and use anecdotes that are representative of genuine trends.” I sometimes use or think the expression “the plural of anecdote is not data” when I see silly things written on the internet (eg extrapolating general conclusions from a tiny study). But of course, looking at it from the perspective of a journalist or other person who is aiming to communicate something scientific or technical to a general audience, the anecdote that illuminates the “data” is a valuable tool to fix a concept in the reader’s (listener’s/viewer’s) mind.
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This article is in the June issue of Nature Biotechnology 27, 514-518 (2009)
Science communication reconsidered by Tania Bubela al. Abstract:“As new media proliferate and the public’s trust and engagement in science are influenced by industry involvement in academic research, an interdisciplinary workshop provides some recommendations to enhance science communication.”
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Good point Maxine, my first impression when I read “Remember that the plural of anecdote is data” was NO!! And from a scientists perspective I like your version better. But in the context of explaining a story in a meaningful, relevant way, anecdotes or analogies are my favourite weapon.
Remembering that this advice was directed towards economists, maybe there is something to be read into the different ways economists and scientists operate ;)
I often bemoan the lack of critical thought/analysis in many “science” articles in the media (as discussed in Toby’s article) but there is another side to this story that is worth thinking about too. There is increasing pressure from govt and other funding bodies on universities and institutes (particularly in medical research) to demonstrate the relevance or “translation” of their research. Hence, the growth of communication/PR/public engagement units who pump out swathes of press releases, often making very tenuous links between the latest research findings and a cure/treatment for the diseases in question. I think this runs the very real risk of causing most people to tune out to the message, if it hasn’t happened already.
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My contribution turned out to be sort of long-ish, so I posted it to my blog.
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I also left a longer comment on my blog .
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Bjorn and Daniel – how about summarising your views here, rather than directing readers off to another site? I am sure readers of Nature Network would be interested to know what you think and to discuss your opinions.
Best wishes
Maxine. -
Maxine wrote:
_"Intriguing to me that point 7 in that list of advice…when speaking to journalists is:
“Remember that the plural of anecdote is data. Help journalists understand how to find and use anecdotes that are representative of genuine trends.”"_
This exact point often comes up, in a slightly different way, in medical student teaching. My University uses one of the “student discussion driven” medical curricula, so a lot of what happens is students talking about things in a group. Obviously you regularly get people saying “well, my gran…” or a version thereof. Obviously this kind of personal experience is valuable, particularly in bringing home the impact of health and disease on patients, BUT you have to push and push to get the students to contextualise it properly.
SO: the main thing you repeat endlessly as a tutor when this happens is something like: “OK, how does that anecdote illustrate what you have been finding out about XYZ? And from what you’ve been reading, does A’s gran’s experience represent the general or the exceptional? In what respects in particular?”
Relevant to both the scientists and the journalists. Of course, I wonder how much this features in the general training of either.
I suspect – based on comments from colleagues who have deal with the print and broadcast media – that this kind of “context” is something that specialist reporters, and perhaps those doing extended in-depth features, are sensitive to. However, quick-fire general news stuff tends to miss this, and a lot of people have told me that as scientists they had to struggle (e.g. when being interviewed) to put in the context / caveats, while the news reporter wanted a one-sentence generalisation, or “hook”.
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Maxine, it seemed odd to have a number of comments that were each longer than the post, but yes, a summary might be of help. So here’s my try:
Björn emphasized that opportunities for science journalism are missed in large numbers because many journalists do not have access to the currently prevailing container of science, i.e. articles in scientific journals. Science journalists should thus be expected at the forefront of the Open Access movement, but this is not what we observe, and he wonders why.
I made a similar point in stating that making any container of science (not only articles in scholarly journals) systematically more accessible would provide direct and indirect benefits to the public. The indirect ones relevant to science journalism include the possibility to report about science as a highly dynamic and always ongoing process instead of a set of facts that is updated once in a while.
Election campaigns elicit dense journalistic coverage because during this time, there is daily interaction between politicians and the public — just imagine what journalistic opportunities would arise if there were daily interaction between scientists and the public. Fora suitable for this are about to emerge, and places like Stack Overflow , Fundscience , Citizendium or Friendfeed provide hints on what some of the crucial features might be.
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Austin – I agree. The argument “my granny smoked 100 cigarettes a day and was run over by a bus at the age of 125” is something one does hear or read quite often. Good to know that your experience with specialist journalists is that they tend to appreciate these distinctions.
Daniel- thanks for returning. Journalists who write up scientific papers do have access to them – the journal makes them available, in advance under embargo conditions. (My experience is that journalists have zero interest in covering a paper “after” it is published – but if a journalist were writing a feature on a set of papers and wanted to read one in a journal to which his/her publication didn’t subscribe, the journal would provide it I am sure.) The open access point does not seem to me relevant as what journalists are interested in seeing is the paper before it is published, i.e. seeing an embargoed copy in advance of publication, not the business model that is used to publish it.
(An aside, Nature, in addition, provides contact details of the News and Views author on its press release, if there is an accompanying News and Views, so that the journalist has one person to contact for an independent view if they wish to use that.)
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Maxine, three brief points:
- Michael Nielsen has tackled the question Is scientific publishing about to be disrupted? in a very insightful and comprehensive blog post yesterday that may be of interest to readers of this thread.
- As Björn pointed out, journalists have to provide context, and if properly done, this would involve having a closer look at a broad spectrum of the relevant information, not just that one paper or press release.
- It may well be that journalists have nearly “zero interest in covering a paper after it is published” but I am certain that they would be much more interested in covering the process that classically leads to a paper if they could follow any of its elements. Election results are of very transient interest unless something went wrong with the vote counts, but journalists thrive in covering many potential paths from early on before converging on the few remaining options, and their customers value the information highly. I see many parallels to science in this process if we exchange the election results for a scientific paper, the individual electoral votes for data points obtained in scientific contexts, rivaling parties or candidates for rivaling hypotheses and methods, and so on. Surely, not every research project will be of interest to a large audience, but given that many of humanity’s most pressing issues have a strong scientific component, opening the process of scientific data generation to the public certainly provides for ample opportunities to do good science journalism.
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