More on Science Journalism…
19 Oct, 09 | by Iain Brassington
This thought hit me over the weekend in Tesco’s car-park; I was still mulling over the reliability, or lack thereof, of science reporting in the media. I was also thinking about the PCC and how powerless it is, largely because it’s simply a boys’ club for editors.
However, in my finding-a-trolley reverie, it occurred to me that there could be a solution. There’s already a couple of papers that run debunk columns - the most high profile of these is obviously Ben Goldacre’s “Bad Science” in the The Guardian (with its corresponding blog, to which I’ve linked from here more than is absolutely healthy), but there’s also Tim Harford at the FT whose “Undercover Economist” pieces throw light onto often highly-spun news stories; he also presents Radio 4’s “More or Less”, which does its bit to look behind the headlines. From the blogosphere, Lay Scientist, Ministry of Truth, and many, many others all provide sterling work evaluating science, the reporting of science, and the integration of science into policy. (Peter Sinclair’s films on global warming, for example, are wonderful.) There’s no shortage of people that care about accuracy.
What they have in passion, they lack in organisation.
So here’s the idea: its that there should be convened a panel of independent experts drawn from science, medicine and a few other fields: most importantly, statistics. Every so often, this panel would meet and give news media a “reliability rating”. In return for this, each member of the panel would be given a small honorarium - say a couple of grand a year - from a fund supported by the newspapers (rather as they fund the PCC). Or maybe fewer members would be able to farm out consultancy work to academics. Whatever - let’s not sweat the details yet. Newspapers then would be able to print a little logo - say, a test-tube that’s more or less empty - next to their titles, to give readers a sense of the paper’s scientific trustworthiness. The odd daft story would get through, but over the course of, say, a year, it’d be possible to build a picture of reliability. The papers themselves would have an incentive to contribute to the scheme, and to be as reliable as possible, because they could use their trustworthiness as a selling point. Papers that don’t participate in the scheme would, by omission, be flagging their own worthiness for scepticism. Granted, there’re weaknesses in the picture: my guess is that people buy the Daily Fail for its scientific insight. But they’d at least have an implicit warning that, if they were going to believe its on-occasion utterly daft health reporting, they’d only have themselves to blame.
There has to be a fatal flaw in this scheme (unless it is, so far, so sketchy right now that there’s nothing in which there could be a flaw). Tell me what it is.
If not this, what about the equivalent of an Ignoble award.
PHB
October 19th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
The problem with a “mark of shame” - which is, I presume, what you mean (since the real Ignobels do reward good, albeit counterintuitive, research) - is that the media themselves wouldn’t support it. With my notion, they’d have an incentive to buy in, because it’d be an endorsement.
Iain Brassington
October 19th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
“So here’s the idea: its that there should be convened a panel of independent experts drawn from science, medicine and a few other fields: most importantly, statistics.”
Bit worried about the “statistics.” The use of statistics might give the impression of
objectivity and neutrality. It is not and can never be objective and neutral when applied to reliability ratings. To successfully explain this to a public that has difficulty in understanding simple percentages would in itself solve the problem of the public understanding of science.
I think the numerous science writers and journalists associations (Association of British Science Writers, European Union of Science Journalists’ Associations, World Federation of Science Journalists, etc.) should organise a ‘What the Papers Say’ type award for the best writers and journalists. They do have their awards, but there is nothing that gets big awards publicity. Some of the media might support this which would leave the rest out on a limb. Having said that, I cannot stand awards ceremonies.
Keith Tayler
October 19th, 2009 at 2:30 pm