At the recent Science Blogging London 2008 conference, science blogger extraordinaire Ben Goldacre suggested that we should do away with science journalists as much as possible, using scientists direct in the media.
While he has a point that generalist journalists are often irresponsible in their presentation of science – the MMR scandal and Channel 4’s Great Global Warming Swindle are just two exaamples – I think many science journalists (and, dare I say, writers of popular science books) do an essential job.
There are three problems with relying just on scientists. One is they rarely have a wide enough viewpoint – modern science is very highly focussed. Secondly, there is an element of truth in the stereotypes. Many scientists really do communicate intensely badly to the public. And thirdly they sometimes get carried away in a way that a seasoned writer wouldn’t. When the COBE satellite results were published, Stephen Hawking called it ‘the greatest discovery of the century, if not of all time.’
There’s no doubt that COBE result was an important one for cosmology, but bearing in mind it was by no means detailed enough to be definitive, and was anyway such an indirect measurement that it could only ever suggest a particular theory was right, Hawking’s comments seem over the top. That same century had seen the discovery of the structure of the atom, quantum theory, relativity and DNA to name but a few, making his claims more than a little exaggerated.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have plenty of horses’ mouths input from scientists in science broadcasting and writing – but there is a useful role for good writers too.
Hear, hear. I think Ben G’s talk was a rhetorical tour de force, but I don’t agree with the main tenet of his agument. Possibly this is because he is looking at one corner of the blogo/mediosphere, medical quackery, and not the full gamut.
BTW, John Diamond wrote an excellent book on medical quackery, Snake Oil. He died before he could finish it, but it is all in there. Ben G is continuing that honourable tradition, but I loved John D and miss him terribly.
I just listened to the Guardian podcast with BG and he was “attacked” rather thoroughly by the entire crew, including their Arts chief, for his view. I agree with Maxine that as rhetorical argument goes (and standing by your guns) it was great work, but I don’t agree with his thesis. However, it’s an essential argument and one we need to have.
Secondly, there is an element of truth in the stereotypes. Many scientists really do communicate intensely badly to the public.
and this was exactly the point made by the Guardian science write (name gone, sorry). He said he was often amazed at how scientists who knew so much about their topic could be so bad at trying to explain it. Like they didn’t try, “They’ve forgotten what is like to not understand”. Excellent!
I read Snake Oil, too, and thought it wonderful – spoiled only by an unnecessary preface by He Who Must Not Be Named. But what we want, really, are scientists who can write. They do exist. HWMNBN is one example of a select few. The BA Media Fellowship scheme and others of that sort — in which scientists get a taste of the media — are essential. However, I have a feeling that good writers are born, not made. Practice can hone a talent that is already there, but as my grandma always used to say, you can’t polish a turd.
I heard the Guardian podcast too and concur fully with Ian’s comments. It’s well worth a listen as, the different viewpoints emerged from a really good conversation.
Henry, I recall the preface as being written by Dominic Lawson, then brother-in-law of J. D. Also perhaps someone better not named as well as HWMNBN.
One of the many things I liked about Snake Oil was its last sentence, found on J.D.‘s screen after he had been carted off to hospital for his (as it turned out) final visit. The sentence was: “Let me explain why.” A fitting epitaph for anyone’s tombstone.
Yes, I agree too (with points clearly explained – neatly adding further strength to your case, Brian!).
I’m not so convinced that good writers are born, not made. Not all the “made-writers” will win the Pulitzer Prize, but I think everyone can learn how to write (better). You can be talented, but writing is a craft that can be improved by practice. Once I re-read my last four years articles and I noticed a great improvement between the first and the last.
I think that what a good scientist needs when he starts to write is a good editor, better if he has an experience as journalist or broadcaster.
I absolutely agree we need more scientists who can write, but I still feel that a good science writer has more time to look across a wide area to put a subject into context, while the scientist inevitably has a very narrow (but immensely more knowledgeable) viewpoint. And, dammit, I like my job and I don’t want it taken away, thank you very much.
@ Henry – but as my grandma always used to say, you can’t polish a turd. Unless it’s a coprolite.
Marco, I agree with you and I think your comment explains very well one reason why blogging is a good thing. It enables one to practice and refine one’s writing skills, on a more regular basis perhaps than one can do by writing papers ;-)
@Brian – a good science writer has more time to look across a wide area to put a subject into context
I think that’s very true – as a scientist I am oft-times ashamed by the narrowness of my vision, especially when trying to address children’s questions. They’re damnably clever sometimes! But at least I am vaguely aware of the problem; loitering around Nature Network is one way of forcing my horizons to expand a little…
@maxine maybe, rethinking BG speech at sciblog, what we really need is more scientists who blog. we would have first-hand insight on their work, we could interact with them more easely, and the readers could decide to read the stories form the medias or directly from the scientists themselves. I think that web and socila networks, expecially blogs, are a tool (as somewhere else has already been said) that offers multiple choices. This is the preminente benefit of blogs.
@Marco: In the Guardian podcast BG big-ups science bloggers as a “a bunch of postdocs who really care enough” (paraphrase). Nice sentiment.
I think that what a good scientist needs when he starts to write is a good editor…
Damn straight and I offer endless psalms of thanks to the skill, determination and patience of mine
I am nothing but her humble polished turd.
…wait….hang on, that sounds wrong…
Well of course I think editors are an under-appreciated species.
Unfortunately, being editors, they tend to speak their minds rather than say what other people want to hear, which is one reason they are endangered.
One day the world will realise that it is better off with us orney beasts, rather than without.
My daughters were watching a Dr Who episode not too long ago in which the baddie was called The Editor. They have looked at me somewhat askance ever since.
(Sorry, Stephen, this is probably not the kind of horizon-expanding you had in mind when you wrote those kind words about Nature Network.)
After Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence he sent it to Benjamin Franklin for editing…“For you to peruse as you see fit with the light of your broader horizons” (paraphrase)…
people were indeed, as Isaacson notes, much kinder to their editors back then…
So long as they don’t make us polish certain objects, Ian!
I don’t think Ben was excoriating all science writers, but he was criticising science journalism. He did admit that not all scientists are good at communication, but suggested that many of them are and therefore more of them should get involved in communication.
He noted the success of Radio 4’s science programmes and that makes me wonder about the difference between talking and writing. It sometimes a much harder task to write coherently than to talk coherently.
Aren’t good editors often pretty good writers too? To edit well you surely have to know and recognise good writing, which would mean you must have some chance of being able to do at least a decent job of writing yourself.
On the subject of “scientists who can write”, the blogs show that there are a lot of them. But most are very young – I definitely felt like their uncle – and I think there will come a time when many have to choose “being a scientist” or “being a writer”. This also relates a bit to the goal set at the end of the ScienceBlogging COnf about “getting senior people to blog”.
A few years back, when the Universities were first getting twitchy about “public engagement”, I wrote something about this for the Physiological Society’s in-house mag which I think might be apposite (forgive me the cut ’n’paste, my first time here):
Now, I wrote that just over three years ago, and it is true that blogs possibly take off some of the “time overhead” since you can blog from either your work desk or home. But even blog posts take time, if they are trying to explain complex science in lay terms. And that time has to come from somewhere.
Sorry, rather over-long and a bit off-topic. But you get the idea.
Yes, that’s a good point, Frank – Nature’s podcast was and is immediately an extremely popular service, and that consists essentially of scientists being asked questions about their work.
I agree that we (or some of us) have perhaps slightly exaggerated Ben’s position, as indeed his talk was presumably an intentionally exaggerated picture in order to gain attention. As Marco and others say, scientists and everyone can and do get better at things with practice. Writing, being interviewed for audio or video, etc – I think it is worth putting in the effort to improve these skills rather than thinking “scientists aren’t good at communicating so I won’t bother”. (Not that anyone probably does think that, I’m now the one who is oversimplifying).
There are also, of course, good editors and not so good editors – audio, video and written media all have editors – and this can also make a huge difference.
I think some of the older generation of scientists: Maddox, Medawar, Haldane, Maynard Smith, Freeman Dyson, Sagan eg al, obtained many of their basic skills via a “good all-round education”. Many of them were or are proficient in several languages, to boot. I suspect that in some countries at least, education is much narrower these days, which does not equip people with skills outside the actual practice of their discipline on which to build.
One last point, Brian I agree that a good science writer can do great things to explain and make a scientific story have a much more compelling reach than perhaps a scientist him or herself might be able to do on his or her own. However, a lot of very good science writers have been scientists themselves for years (in some cases) before becoming science writers – Jared Diamond, Ian Steward, Steve (J S) Jones, Olivia Judson, et al. Similarly, many of them were editors (hooray!): Phil Ball, Dava Sobel, Natalie Angier etc.
One might suspect that there must be other people – ordinary mortals? – within the science base who could contribute usefully to science communication, if they could find the space and time.
and of course, the “failed” postdocs >:(
My commment above “crossed” with Austin’s, so I hadn’t read his when composing mine. What you write makes sense, Austin. Various people have written about lack of “rewards” for informal activities such as blogging (and peer-reviewing, which is undertaken by many more scientists than those who blog!). (eg in the Citation in Science forum on NN in some of the entries about Impact Factors.) It is an important issue for some of these science 2.0 activities but it isn’t limited to science 2.0 of course. (It is surprising, on the face of it, that there no formal “reward” for peer-review has been developed considering how long-established it is. I suppose scientists have seen it as a circular community service- the reward is a good system so that when one’s own ms is peer-reviewed, the review is of similar high quality as the effort you put in to that person’s ms when you reviewed it last year, etc).
Apart from the “circular community service” thing, I think scientists also peer review because it is seen as part of having a research career, and in particular of bulding (and being a badge of) “standing in the research community”. You know, you publish papers, then you get invited to peer review, then if you do enough reviewing and publish enough you get invited to be on the editorial board etc. etc. There is, I think, a widespread view that being on editorial boards marks you out as being a “player” in research, and such recognition has other benefits. And even if that is me being cynical, being a peer reviewer and especially an editor is clearly what in RAE-speak one would call an “esteem indicator”.
Being a PhD examiner is another of those “largely reward-less reciprocal activities”. The nominal fees for examining PhDs are really neither here nor there, so again people are doing it for reasons of what the ethicists might call “within-community reciprocity”.
One thing that being asked to be a peer reviewer does mark, I think, is the point as which the research community really regards a researcher as being “fully trained”. I think of getting a science PhD these days as being more of a “Union Card” – a sort of recognition of initial training that in turn allows you to do more advanced work in research science, and gather experience, so that you eventually become fully trained.
This last bit is relevant to newspaper science reporters. There are some with PhDs, but few with postdoctoral experience and probably none who would have been what I would call “fully trained scientists” before going into journalism.
…Which is neither good or bad per se, but is relevant to the issue of whether they can understand the things they are writing about, or even the scientific process (in the broad sense) that has produced the things they write about.
For my two cents, I’d like to add that I also think that science writing should not be left solely to career scientists, not least because the job is a full-time one. Each of my articles or news reports takes days of research and an ability to interview a variety of people, with lots of perspectives, and building a fair picture. It’s not just about deciphering a research paper.
When journalists get it wrong (as I know they often do) it’s not because they are bad scientists, it’s because they are bad journalists.
That said, I would love to see more scientists switch to careers in journalism. Indeed many have, and they’ve done a great job.
Angela wrote:
“Each of my articles or news reports takes days of research and an ability to interview a variety of people, with lots of perspectives, and building a fair picture.”
Glad to hear it, Angela. As it should be.
I didn’t just mean “the ability to decipher a paper”, BTW – I was also implying “understanding the way the whole scientific process (inc community) works”. It was blindingly apparent in the MMR farrago, for instance, that many / most of the journalists writing about it:
i) didn’t understand how scientific (and especially medical) evidence is assessed / integrated into wider picture;
ii) didn’t bother to try to find out or ask anyone who did know.
Non-scientists certainly can do this – e.g. Brian Deer’s MMR work has been absolutely brilliant. But the BadScience blogs are full of examples of media stories where it hasn’t happened. Bad journalism, poor editing, time pressures, predetermined editorial line – you tell me.
PS That was a genuine question, by the way – always interested to get science journalists’ takes on this…
“sometimes a much harder task to write coherently than to talk coherently”.
I have the opposite problem. Maybe it’s a good thing I couldn’t make the conference; this way you can continue to think of me as more or less coherent.
Austin, you are completely correct that good science reporting has been a casualty of tighter newsroom budgets and lower staffing levels. And yes, good editors should discourage sensationalism, especially when people’s safety is in question.
But the laziness of some doesn’t seem to me to be a good enough reason to do away with science writers altogether. I’m sure that’s not what you’re proposing anyway.
Sounds like we all, science journalists and scientists alike, need to be given a little more time and support to make useful contributions to science communication… and hopefully raise the bar.
@Angela: Sounds like we all, science journalists and scientists alike, need to be given a little more time and support to make useful contributions to science communication…
Alas, I suspect that we will have to make the time needed – it’s unlikely to be given freely. Sounds like a job for a talented physicist…
Austin did make an interesting point earlier that the successful scientist communicators ‘somehow’ seem to have a special skill for handling extreme workloads. I’d love to know the secret, though I fear there isn’t one…!
An example I’ve just read about demonstrates the sort of problem with narrow vision that sometimes comes when scientists rather than science writers are let loose.
I gather the American Physical Society allowed the global warming sceptic Christopher Monckton to contribute to one of their newsletters on the assumption that he was a climate scientist. In the accompanying editorial, presumably influenced by Monckton’s input, the APS said ‘there is “considerable” debate within the scientific community about the IPCC statement that global warming is anthropogenic.’ (See Lawrence Krauss’s article for more details. Apologies – full article only available to New Scientist subscribers.)
Might I suggest that no science writer worth their salt would mistake Monckton for a legitimate client scientist?
I ought to stress that I’m not down on scientists writing for a general audience. Some of my favourite popular science books are written by ‘real’ scientists. But I think it’s foolish to overlook the important contribution made by good science writers, whether for a publication like New Scientist or in writing popular science books.