What have Michael Jackson and Darwinius masillae got in common?
- They are both dead;
- They had their biggest hits quite a long time ago;
- They have been massively overhyped by the media.
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I, Editor by Henry Gee
This is the Nature Network and therefore Terribly Extremely Very Serious foothold for Nature Senior Editor Henry Gee. If you want fun and games, visit http://cromercrox.blogspot.com/
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Michael Jackson and the M*****g L**k
- Date:
- Saturday, 11 Jul y 2009 - 16:41 UTC
Media hype is something that I should have gotten used to a long time ago. After all, we at Nature actively court media attention, and some of the stories we publish do attract a great deal of press. In the past, I have been happy to live with the occasional inaccuracies and distortions as the price of getting any science at all before the public.
Lately, though, I have begun to think again. Conventional news outlets do have a way of sensationalizing news stories beyond the bounds of accuracy, if not taste, and many press releases promise far more than the research delivers.
Back in the day, when I started in this game, I thought that such distortions were the price of a culture in which science is seen as an optional extra, in which news editors all had degrees in politics from Oxford and so would be completely undiscriminating when faced with a science story.
But that was more than twenty years ago. There are people who weren’t even born when I started at Nature who are now old enough to vote, marry, procreate, drive cars, operate heavy machinery, get killed in wars and even – whisper it soft – buy alcohol in some parts of the
Glorious Nation of Kazakhstangood ol’ U. S. and A.Most science correspondents are literate and discriminating in the stories they cover. Graduate programs in science communication have sprung up like nettles in the Jardin Des Girrafes. There are even some press offices specifically geared to promoting science stories in a sober and responsible way.
So why has nothing changed? Why are we not living in a
Socialist Utopiamedia environment in which science is treated responsibly? Why did the mainstream media completely fall for the medicine show that was the Darwinius debacle? Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near? Why are scientists still depicted in white coats and referred to as ‘boffins’?And,
round my partsin my particular bailiwick, in which I spend a great deal of time as a professional science editor thinking about fossils and human evolution, I find that perfectly sane, reasonable, educated and otherwise quite normal journalists go all breathless and orgasmic when they meet a story – any story – involving fossil hominids (or dinosaurs, for that matter)?I am forced, repeatedly, to explain to my more puppy-eyed colleagues that just because the story has fossil hominids in it does not automatically make it a
major breakthroughgood story. There are good, sound, workaday, interesting papers about fossils, just as there are good, sound, workaday papers about other things, such as, and notwithstanding inasmuch as which, the release of calcium from intracellular stores. Only a very few stories in any discipline deserves the hype routinely heaped on fossil hominids (or, as it may be, dinosaurs).It’s all about having a sense of proportion. If, as often happens, the puppy-eyed colleague still persists, saying, as they do, something along the lines of the fact that it’s because the news item concerned is about fossil hominids that makes it important (with the unstated implication that the actual advance doesn’t matter), I then respond with the fine distinction between erotic and exotic.
Erotic is a feather: Exotic is the whole chicken.
In the final
anal lysisanalyis, I give up. Hype bores me. From now on I’m only going to discuss important papers in my field with bloggers such as Laelaps or Carl Zimmer, to name but two, who seem to be able to write about such things without going all cross-eyed and tumescent (which, at my age, is inexpressibly tedious, as well as messy). People in the mainstream media, lovely though they are, and many of whom have been good friends for many years, will have to do without my services.And if no-one is interested, I’ll just talk to myself. At least I’ll be doing it with someone I love.
Last updated: Saturday, 11 Jul 2009 - 16:41 UTC
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Comments
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Molting Lark?
Melting Lick?
What is this fantastic breakthrough paper about a hominid fossil representing the latest missing link that set off this post, Henry?
@Kristi: Mending Lunk.
@Steffi: I’m still smarting about Darwinius, and so are a lot of people. I was at a conference on Friday on craniofacial biomechanics, and a lot of the people there were anthropologists. They were still smarting too. Which is why the whole thing came back to mind.
If I may be so bold: one big difference between the two is that one changed everything while the other clearly did not; I leave it up to you do determine which one did. Those of classic rock persuasion may be confused.
….and by classic rock I don’t mean precambrian…
You’ve confused me.
Doesn’t take much.
I admit it. Buses and stations, Richard: buses and stations.