Shock horrors or sound science?

"Before an audience of 400 scientists and journalists at the Royal Institution..." Don't assume we were all scientists and journalists. Others are also interested in this field, some getting involved themselves (through blogging) whilst some don't. Whilst I did a science degree (physics) I'm not a scientist and won't be going into a science career. I am however still interested in science and want to access good science reporting that isn't dumbed down or over-sensationalised. I'm one of the nerds that Goldacre spoke about who is rarely catered for in the mainstream media. That's why I was there.

Yes, the (maybe accidental) implication that the audience was just "scientists and journalists" is wrong. Like Tristan I am a science graduate, but not a scientist, who attended out of interest in the subject matter. The law blogger Jack of Kent was also there. I was amazed when Drayson cited the coverage of the Large Hadron Collider as an example of good practice! The press ran many scare stories with headlines like "Are we going to die next Wednesday?" and even stated that one of the scientists involved was going to destroy the world: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1053091/Meet-Evans-Atom-end-world-Wednesday.html Drayson claimed that this scaremongering got people interested in particle physics! What it really achieved was to terrify children and reduce the time that would have been spent on explaining what the LHC was actually going to do. He seemed determined to argue that the press has got much better, despite the evidence. Also, at the end Drayson was asked about the threat of libel laws to the criticism of pseudoscientific claims (as in the Simon Singh case), and he gave a completely evasive answer. I was very unimpressed by Drayson's case.

The sorts of pseudo-science stories appearing in the mass media that irritate me the most are those that suggest, purely on statistics, that one thing may cause another, without any indication of what the physical link might be. So you get things on the lines of “Eating mangoes can make you less musical”. Of course, there are statistical coincidences it would be foolish to ignore. That was the case when it was first suggested that smoking tobacco may be a cause of lung cancer. Yet it still took some years before the real, scientific link could be shown. With these “coincidence” headlines, you rarely get a follow-up saying that the investigators think the link may be that substance X reacts with substance Y to produce substance Z. The headline just shrieks and people stop eating mangoes.

The main problem I had with this, as I have had with most of Goldacre's axe-grinding until now, is that for the purposes of all this debate, "science journalism" has become a proxy for "health journalism". Yes, many of the most egregious examples of shite reporting are in health and medicine, and those are the stories that touch the most people's lives. But lots of outlets have a sharp divide between their health and their science reporting, and he's tarring the whole of science journalism with the same brush. Doesn't anybody reckon that plenty of not-health science journos truly are familiar and careful in their dealings with flawed methodologies, statistics, natural frequencies, etc - all Goldacre's bugbears? Yes, bad reporting is bad reporting, and it shouldn't be tolerated any more on page 19's article on astronomy than on front page scaremongering. I just reckon the Goldacre cult - as justified and laudable as its efforts are - would serve the cause better if it was rebranded as bad health or medical journalism. Frankly they're frightening the crap out of - and making timid and reticent - the physicists and chemists and geologists and astronomers and neuropsychologists etc I need to interview for less contentious stories.

"Lord Drayson compared media coverage of the MMR vaccine scare, genetically modified foods and BSE with more recent reporting of the human-animal hybrid-embryo debate, the swine flu pandemic and the switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider". As others have mentioned (here and elsewhere), the sensational coverage of the LHC in the mainstream media was unhelpful. While I haven't looked at overall press coverage of swine flu, I have written about specific articles in the mainstream media that I was distinctly unimpressed by: particularly Richard Halvorsen in the Times and Dr Crippen in the Guardian. I have also written about the Daily Mail's coverage of swine flu vaccination and tamiflu. http://jdc325.wordpress.com/?s=swine There has also been criticism of articles written by Simon Jenkins on this topic (most notably by blogger Gimpy). All in all, I'm not sure that the LHC and swine flu are particularly good examples of the "more informed discussion of scientific issues in the press" that we apparently have now.

I do wonder how many practising scientists were there, people who have to struggle for grants and try to find time to think while coping with teaching and HR-bollocks. Not very many I suspect. I was also a bit disappointed that the problem of science as PR was barely mentioned.. We are all encouraged to be involved in 'public engagement' (good) but only too often it is made clear that the aim is to improve the image of the university rather than to explain the science (not good). At its best, good critical journalism can be better than self-promoting PR. What a pity that there is not enough of it.. http://bit.ly/1cRk2T

Many of the examples cited by Goldacre - the formula for the perfect bacon butty for example - stem from press releases produced by attention-seeking "scientists" themselves, who must share some of the blame. Ben does a good job highlighting failures in science journalism, but by cherry-picking those failures to sell his book, he is as guilty of selective reporting and sensationalism as those he sets out to denigrate. The problem with reporting of science is part of the wider generic "churnalism" problem in the media at present - for a better perspective of this, see Nick Davies' excellent "Flat Earth News". Drayson is right, however, to warn of the "Goldacre effect" leading scientists to withdraw from engaging with the media about their work, which has a potential impact on the profile of science, particularly among young people.

"Many of the examples cited by Goldacre - the formula for the perfect bacon butty for example - stem from press releases produced by attention-seeking "scientists" themselves, who must share some of the blame." While I agree that there are some attention-seeking scientists, I imagine that some of the blame for press-releases that sensationalise research must lie with the academic institutions that employ both researchers and a PR department (see David Colquhoun's comment above re "the aim [being] to improve the image of the university rather than to explain the science"). It is also clear that, at least in some cases, press releases for stupid formula stories are prepared by commercial organisations who have essentially paid for the scientist's name to be attached to their formula.

"While I agree that there are some attention-seeking scientists, I imagine that some of the blame for press-releases that sensationalise research must lie with the academic institutions that employ both researchers and a PR department" says James. True - but as a scientist, I accept responsibility for the content of press releases about my research, working with our press office to prepare them, just as much as I accept responsibility for the content of my research papers. Every sensationalist press release out there has been signed off by the lead scientist involved - and they need to take those outputs more seriously in many cases. Of course, journalists also have a responsibility not just to recycle press releases as news stories, but actually to do the job of journalism and provide some critical evaluation of information.

Here is my blog post ( http://wishfulthinkinginmedicaleducation.blogspot.com/2009/09/tech-addiction-harms-learning-really.html ) about this week's "Tech addiction 'harms learning'" article on BBC News Education. I actually paid to access the original research which unfortunately was just as poor as I expected. I'm not sure whether to be more concerned about the poor science or the poor journalism which publicises this bad science. It seems that even the BBC are resorting to ever more alarming headlines in the hope of getting clicks. Sensationalism may have it's place, but it'snot justified when the science is so bad. And yes, the Cranfield University press release is also poor. What can we do except try to draw attention to this problem when we see it. Science bloggers unite! Anne Marie