I want to take a moment to call your attention to a fascinating discussion on what defines good science journalism resulting from a conference earlier this month at the Royal Institution in London.
The meeting, on March 13, was billed as a conversation on how scientists and journalists can both contribute to improving science communication. It was organized by Alok Jha, a senior science correspondent at The Guardian and chaired by science blogger and Imperial College teaching fellow Alice Bell.
But – not surprisingly – it was far more than an easy going look at the profession. Or as the British science blogger Ed Yong put it, with some understatement: “It allowed a variety of viewpoints to rise to the surface.”
One of the most fascinating discussions (at least to me) concerned the question of whether science journalists routinely read the scientific paper they are reporting on or merely go by abstract, press release, and interview. And whether they should read the paper. As James Randerson reported in The Guardian, the question produced “a surprising amount of dissent in the room.”
His story includes informal survey of how many science journalists insist on seeing the paper before doing a story – that would be most of them but not all. But he also points out that it’s often difficult to get a paper on deadline; press officers rarely include it in a release, journals protect accessibility, and far too often reporters are forced to make that call. (Disclosure: I always want to see the paper before writing. I don’t think you can really assess the work otherwise. It’s reasonably easy to get an advance copy from the big journals but from smaller ones, it can be difficult enough that I sometimes just pay out of pocket. And this, I agree, is a system that needs fixing. )
There’s a further, terrific discussion of this issue in a post by Matt Shipman at Nature’s Soapbox Science blog and in the comments that follow. And also here at blog.devicerandom.
There was plenty of criticism of standard journalism practices as well. In his post titled, “More from the peculiarly introspective world of science journalism”, Yong listed some of the concerns that he’d voiced in the conversation, including this one:
Many science journalists have come to accept a frankly unacceptable level of mediocrity in our practice, including playing an odd blame game whenever mistakes are made, and tolerating stenography.
For me, this brought to mind the pitch-perfect parody of on-line science reporting from a couple years ago by Guardian blogger, Martin Robbins, “This is a news website article about a scientific paper”. It still makes me laugh and cringe at the same time because it’s so exactly right. In fact, this is a good place for me to note that The Guardian is really doing exceptional work these days, both in reporting on science and on analyzing that reporting. Here’s another Robbins’ piece from early March, which challenges journalists to lean less on the “scientists say” approach and do more thorough reporting instead.
There was, as Yong also notes, plenty of criticism of journalism practices during the March 13 meeting. Many of these complaints – stenography, for instance – are frustratingly long-standing ones. But as neuroscientist Chris Chambers, from the University of Cardiff, posted after the meeting, he didn’t get a same-old, same-old feel from the discussion: I refuse to buy into the argument of disenpowerment: that scientists and journalists are pawns on some enormous chessboard controlled by remote gods in the clouds…
And Bell followed up the meeting in that spirit with a post titled “Questions Scientists and Journalists Still Need to Answer.” She predicts that we’ll be wrestling with these issues into the indefinite future. And on that point, regretfully, I couldn’t agree more.
— Deborah Blum
If you want to watch the UK event, you can find the video on the Royal Institution channel here.
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