Why I hate popular science reporting

As part of my effort to reduce the backlog of unread books in my life, I'm currently reading Bad Science, a fantastic book by Ben Goldacre, who also writes a column for The Guardian, and a blog, both of the same name.

Given the topic - the endemic misunderstanding and misrepresentation of science in society and the media - I thought that I would re-publish an article I wrote in November 2006 in the first edition of Phaeton, the London History of Science Society's magazine, which (not coincidentally) I edit. It touches on many of the same themes as Ben's book.

What's interesting is that I only began reading Bad Science (the column and blog) after I wrote the article [I've no idea how I missed it for so long - I blame my parents for being readers of The Torygraph :-)].

Anyway, despite independent thinking, there's an eerie similarity between the points that Ben and I make, and I'm very chuffed. When I write the full article I'll compare and contrast our views but in the meantime I hope that the original article is of some interest...

- - - - - - - - - - -

Why I hate popular science reporting - by Nick Seeber, Phaeton, Issue 1 (Nov 2006)

I hate popular science reporting.

My friends find this odd. As a self-professed science geek, surely I should love reading about discoveries being made by scientists doing cutting-edge research in weird and wonderful fields of human endeavour? Surely I should applaud the effort to bring an interest in science to the masses: to allow several generations, who in the most part are completely baffled by even the most rudimentary science, to take part in the thrill of scientific knowledge and technological achievement?

Maybe I should – it’s demonstrably obvious that the general level of science knowledge shown by even supposedly well-educated non-scientists is pretty appalling. Ask an English student to explain the first law of thermodynamics and they’ll probably reply ‘thermo-what?’, even though this is the science equivalent of asking who wrote “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known” or maybe even enquiring who fictionally said “To be or not to be – that is the question”.

Any university student worth their salt, regardless of their subject, would be expected to know that the answers are respectively (for those of you still thinking) Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities and Shakespeare’s Hamlet; but no-one would expect anyone but a chemist or physicist to be able to explain the concept of entropy, a fundamental principle of thermo-dynamics. Science knowledge is limited almost exclusively to scientists – it isn’t taken for granted in the way that, say, knowledge of history or literature are amongst the general educated public. 

Surely this widespread and almost pathological ignorance requires some urgent remedial action by scientists and the media? Perhaps there should be more documentaries on interesting science research or more news coverage of high-tech discoveries? I disagree. The state of affairs where most people know very little about science has come about not because science is innately difficult to understand, but as a result of the well-cultivated perception that the process of doing science is somehow special or unique and that scientists think and act in a way that is fundamentally different to other people. 

Which, of course, is all garbage.

The basis for the contemporary dichotomy of belief – that science is at once both specially challenging and also boring or tedious – has its roots, I believe, in the unique way in which science is reported to the general public, and in the way scientists choose to portray themselves.  

When researching my dissertation, a study of various scientific research projects involving high-tech imaging of archaeological artefacts, I read numerous ‘popular science’ articles written in broadsheet newspapers and magazines covering these projects. Unusually for me, in this case I was in the privileged position of having done a good deal of independent personal research into the projects.

I could see, therefore, which aspects of the projects these articles were reporting and, far more interestingly, which they were leaving out. In the process, I reached a number of conclusions about the unwritten rules which seem to dictate the way such articles are written. Handily, I’ve summarised them here:

• Patronise your reading audience by assuming that none of them will be interested in anything more than a cursory summary of the scientific concepts being discussed. Focus instead on something frivolous or irrelevant, even if it has only a tenuous link to the subject matter.

• Rather than treating the project or endeavour as a collaborative effort, make the focus of the article an obsequious mini-biography of the project leader, usually culled from a personal interview. If at all possible, make out that he is uniquely brilliant in his chosen field.

• Describe the possible outcomes of the project in the rosiest of terms and always be optimistic when making claims about the effects of new technology on standards of living.

• Never criticise or seriously question the scientists or their goals.

This reverent, deferential way of reporting on science has the undesirable effect of putting scientists on a special intellectual pedestal and in the process removing them from the healthy criticism of a free press, to which all other projects in the public domain are subjected.

Imagine an article on a politician’s pet project (EU subsidies, say, or regional devolution, or more cheap housing in rural areas, or whatever) written in the same style as such journalistic reports on science projects or theories.

It would be ridiculous.

It would be ridiculous because reporting in this way is not responsible or ethical: it doesn’t convey the whole picture of what ordinary science is about, in the same way that a politician’s report on his own projects could never be relied upon to provide a balanced critique of his own activity.

By airbrushing human traits such as greed, laziness, incompetence, avarice and even everyday office politics from the reporting of science, journalists are doing the public a grave disservice. We need ‘the dirt’ on science in the same way that we need the dirt on politicians and corporate figures; as the basis for making informed decisions about how much we trust them to be acting on our behalf.

A large amount of science is funded directly or indirectly by the government – so many scientists do in essence work for us, the general public. We have a right to know about the science they are doing, reported not in black and white, but in realistic shades of grey. Extremist treatment of science in the press, as either all good or all bad, results in the public outrage seen when a scientific institution or project spectacularly fails to deliver on its promises. This sort of reporting is hypocrisy – seeing what is with the rose-tinted spectacles of what should be, where what should be is a carefully cultivated myth generated by the scientific establishment to legitimise itself and inoculate the public against criticism of science.

Science should be able to provide clear-cut answers; it should be able to make the world a better place in which to live; it should provide cures for disease and end poverty; but without a public willing and able to make science a tool of democracy and not the other way around, science does not and cannot accomplish these goals. Unless science is treated with the same realistic expectations and is subjected to the same criticisms as other fields, the unique position in which it sits, alternately idealised and demonised, will remain unchallenged.

So, the reason I hate popular science reporting is that when I read it, I feel like I’m being brainwashed. I wish that science journalists would take off the kid gloves and actually investigate their stories. I wish that they would develop balanced perspectives rather than simply repeating, verbatim and unquestioned, what a scientist involved in the project wants them to report.

Why don’t they ask the difficult questions, the ones the scientists would prefer not to have to answer? Why don’t they demand more than slick sound bites and clever-looking diagrams that distract readers from the real, crunch questions?

Maybe, the problem is that essentially there are (with some exceptions, of course) two sorts of people who report on science: scientists, who don’t want to ask difficult questions for fear of somehow “damaging the public image of science” (which, after all, provides the basis for their expertise); and non-scientists, who simply don’t have enough science education to know which questions to ask or to be able to tell when they are being fed misleading information. Neither can realistically be expected to provide adequate journalistic coverage of science.

I don’t know how this situation can be remedied, but I can offer some opinions. A good start would be a mandatory course in philosophy of science for all science undergraduates (on which subject I am unashamedly partisan, having studied History and Philosophy of Science at the best HPS department in the world). Students of philosophy of science gain an appreciation of the underlying problems facing scientific enquiry which are not discussed by scientists themselves: questions like what is science?; what makes experimental knowledge special?; how can anything be known for certain?; what’s wrong with thinking that past experience allows us to predict the future?. These are questions which scientists don’t usually ask themselves, but which inculcate a more sophisticated understanding of how science functions as a human, social, political activity.

Even reading some key texts – maybe Thomas S. Kuhn’s  paradigm-creating The Structure of Scientific Revolutions or Theodore Roszak’s thought-provoking The Makings of a Counter Culture – would be an excellent start.

All people, not just scientists, must understand that science is ultimately a socially-mediated enterprise, prey to the effects of personal foibles and the influence of charisma just like all other human activities. Scientific truth is rarely, if ever, absolute: and science should not be a religion, requiring doctrinal faith and implicitly or explicitly forbidding criticism.

To thrive, science necessitates internal conflict and disagreement, a dynamic equilibrium which promotes creativity and free thought. To understand that it is this permanent warfare of ideas that makes science so interesting, the public must be shown that science is not a staid cumulative progression from Aristotle to Copernicus to Newton to Einstein, but rather a battle ground in which only the strongest or best supported ideas and theories will survive.

The sooner science is taken from its pedestal, the better.

Comments

[katie]

How true. The media is fraught with science stories that have no real substance. I am a journalist myself and i admit I don't necessarily have a good grasp of the topics I write about. Science is especially tricky because much of the knowledge is esoteric. What's alarming is that most people will believe these reports without taking a grain of salt. it would really help if editors are well versed in science with an independent stance (I believe politics is just as rampant among science academics)