According to BlogTO’s tech writer, the key to science journalism is to go into it with no background in what you’re writing about. He mentioned these words of advice at last year’s panel on science journalism at The Varsity — which sent yours truly, a self-described “science journalist,” halfway to an existential crisis.
The writer’s reasoning was that if you actually do understand the science behind the article you’re writing, you will be more likely to write the article in technical jargon. On the other hand, if you don’t understand the science, you will be more likely to write the article in layman’s terms.
I guess the better, third alternative never occurred to them — understanding science, but having, you know, communication skills.
In the spirit of clearing up this mess, we bring you a review of the good, the bad, and the ugly of science journalism, according PhD candidate Geoff Fucile and Professor David Guttman at U of T’s Department of Cell and Systems Biology.
The Good
The Higgs Boson (“God particle”) is getting well-deserved coverage in the media. If they find it, it could unify a lot of fields of physics. The media interest is great and important, for all sorts of philosophical reasons too. — GF
Andy Newman’s “What Women Want (Maybe),” published in the Fashion & Style Section of the New York Times, is an insightful, scientifically accurate work. The piece analyzed the growing tend of young female bisexuality through the lens of Meredith Chivers’ recent psychological sex research at CAMH in Toronto. The mainstream media rarely mentions this issue, and Newman did so by presenting solid evidence from sexologists. Too often in our culture, dialogue concerning bisexuality has been filled with snap judgments and insufficiently backed opinions. Newman brought these fallacies to the reader’s attention: “bisexuality still tends to be treated as a novelty, a titillating fluke, a phase or even a cover for homosexuality.” — DC
The Bad
Stem cell technology reports are usually pretty bad. For example, a study came out on the structure of an enzyme that has to do with plaque development in teeth, and the pop media announced that “we might not have to brush our teeth anymore.” — GF
The Mitochondrial Eve story, released 10 or 15 years ago, was “really ridiculous.” Basically, geneticists sequenced part of the human mitochondria genome and found the most recent common ancestor of a little sequence in it. As a joke, they called the common ancestor “Mitochondrial Eve.” This was picked up in the mainstream media as the scientific discovery of Eve herself. It was even the cover story for Time magazine. — DG
Dan Savage misinterpreted Chivers’ study in his advice column, telling a reader that her bisexual male cousin was actually gay because the study “means, of course, that female sexuality is a fluid and male sexuality is a solid.” Savage quoted ScienceDaily in his column instead of quoting the primary source, which stated, “our results […] do not imply that women’s sexual orientation is inherently bisexual.” The conclusion of the scientific paper specifically denounced the sort of inductive leaps that the authors probably anticipated from the mainstream media. — DC
The Ugly
[Scientists] want to get lots of money for their research. They need to get media hype. They need to sell their work. Which, in my opinion, is not good. — GF
There is a lot of good science journalism, but oftentimes it doesn’t make it beyond the fairly restricted, refined audience who pays attention to science journalism. It only makes it out to the mainstream journalists when it’s flashy and big. And that often requires a spin that takes it a little farther than the story should be taken. — DG
