At long last, the theme section on the ethics of science journalism that I put together at Inter Research is finally completely complete. Yes, that includes an introduction – I read the proof and trust that it will be posted shortly. Go read the article by Maxine if you’ve managed to miss it before (or any of the other fantastic contributions).
There’s only one thing missing… an image for the front page.
I would be extremely grateful for any brilliant (or even a not so brilliant) idea of how to illustrate science journalism ethics. The only vague idea I’ve come up with is a fake photo with all our most favourite headlines: ‘Scientists have discovered…’ ‘…according to scientists, this may reduce…’ ‘A cure for…’. Surely, any one of you can do better than that!
And yes, this is a shameless plug.
How about a photoshopped gel, that spells out “Cure for Cancer”?
I can’t photoshop.
I can does Photoshop. Gimme a half decent/relevant background layer and I’ll work on this tomorrow.
Anyone have a good image of a gel? I wonder though how many people will actually know what it is and get it.
Well, usually on CSI and other TV-shows/film when they are “doing science” they have some kind of genotyping gel where bands go past on a computer screen and then starts blinking when they find the criminal, or something. So maybe people would recognize a gel. But I’m not sure putting a message in writing like “cure for cancer” is the best way, maybe it draws to much attention to the message in itself? Maybe a gel with many different bands turned into one with only a couple or so left (and not the most prominent ones) – with a before or after picture? Or choosing just two spots from a whole microarray and emphasizing them? But this also feels pretty lame, it’s a tough one.
I think we may be expecting a bit much even of CSI viewers to make the connection from a gel to sci journalism ethics. Is my idea with the headlines really so terrible?.. :(
p.s. I just noticed that I wrote ‘science journalsism’ in the fat link in the post. Just corrected that. Lesson one: pay attention to what you’re writing…
Ah sorry, I didn’t put the gel idea in connection with your headline idea (early in the morning, no coffee yet…). I think the headline idea is really good, but maybe not as one single message spelled out on one gel only – that got me thinking about that message in itself. But as a part of many headlines/pictures that would work just perfectly.