I can’t help thinking that you went for the wrong target in Winston – the problem is not that his kind of programmes get made (and the ads thing was an unfortunate diversion), it’s what doesn’t get made. There should be dumbed-down science in the media, just as there should be dumbed-down art and history. But attacking it distracts from your more important point: the paucity of anything for a science-literate audience. Perhaps taking the line that “that’s all very well, but…” would serve you better.

Most of the problem, as with a lot of the poor coverage, is simply that there are hardly any science-literate journalists. All too many times I’ve tried (and all too often failed) to impress on news desks the bad science behind a story they wanted to run, and they weren’t interested because they didn’t understand it, and they were happy to make a macho show of not understanding it. And I can’t see that attitude, that the cool kids don’t do science, shifting until it’s compulsory to study it to at least age 18.

(By the way, did you watch that godawful out of Africa thing? Twenty minutes in, having learnt that she’d always wanted to go to Ethiopia, where there were guns, that evolution happened by people peeling their skin off, and that she looked OK in a tight white top, I gave up.)

I can’t accept watching 30 minutes of an hour-long programme and not learning anything that wasn’t stated in the first 5 minutes. I just get too frustrated about the constant restating of the premise to various bits of library science-y images, irrelevant CGI and climaxing orchestral music – “Just tell us what happened to the bloody bees already!”

Most Horison episodes would be better if they were reduced to about 20 minutes. The Brian Cox ones tend to have a good level of pacing though, with an acceptable amount of repetition.

This kind of thing annoys me as much as dumbing down. In most recent science documentaries, there’s a completely unnecessary recap after every single advert break. I refuse to accept that our attention spans have become so short that we can’t remember the subject of the show we’ve been watching for the last half hour. It seems more like an excuse to get away with less, dumber and more poorly-researched content.

Iidon’t know if it’s one of the general-interest Open University collaborations that have been on in recent years on BBC or if that effort is still going. I think indeed [Rough Science] was theirs. But I seem to remember seeing something about their getting out of the broadcast telly business, now that there’s broadband perhaps. They also did [The Mark Steel Lecture] for TV with an after-announcement saying more online, come and get it.

In the old days they had course material broadcast in the small hours on BBC, making concessions to mature learners but not to casual viewers. In one of Clive James’s book collections of TV reviews from late 60s to early 80s, he observed you could get a free education that way (as well as otherwise of course), and was delighted that they had entire Greek tragedies on, done economically but professionally.

There’s quite a lot of science coverage on BBC radio. A lot of features appear twice in different edited versions on Radio 4 and World Service. Some shows are podcast. [Case Notes] has just done a possibly briskly reserched half hour on swine flu.

And the other day I looked at Stephen Fry’s Twitter and noticed he was having a medical examination for the insurers of a new series of [QI], or something on those lines, so there’s that to look forward to. I mean, assuming he’s fine.

Ooh, she likes “Rough Science”… and there’s another one. Not my lucky day.

Nowadays a typical episode features a couple of scientists talking about their ‘in progress’ research (so not simply received wisdom) and amateur ‘nerds’ doing their own observational work. So a rare example of science in action, including at an amateur or lay person level. Astronomy is one rare area where amateurs still do science. Especially now that chemistry sets, for example, are so sanitised!

And I agree with an above comment about Mythbusters – seeing science experiments actually done, where outcomes are unclear, even on relatively trivial topics, has got to have serious educational value.

I find it disturbing when I see scientists pat each other on the back blaming everybody – specially journalists, but also schools, government, corporations, PR departments, etc. – for the poor quality of science coverage in the media, except themselves!

Some of the criticisms in this thread hit the mark. But many, as well as the solutions suggested, are naive or unrealistic. However, my point is that, as the primary source of scientific information, scientists can be part of the problem as much as journalists.

I find that scientists are very often poor science communicators. They don’t prepare seriously before an interview (but they complain if the journalist is ill prepared). Some make no effort to be understood and become quickly impatient. Many have no idea of the scientific literacy of the public. Some speak as if everybody had a college degree in their discipline. The result is that scientists themselves can be responsible for misleading journalists. And let’s forget about confusing press releases issued by their own University/research center… and scientists who complain when in fact they just can’t recognise good scientific journalism.

And there is always that paper/segment on biology that biologists criticize because it’s “dumbing down” the science while physicists find it very interesting.

Scientists and journalists should join forces to confront the problem of poor science coverage. But this self-righteous indignation from scientists who thinks they’re so good that everybody else, except them, has to change and adapt doesn’t help at all.

I’m a former scientist (PhD in molecular biology) turned into a science journalist.

As a child I was an inveterate science programme watcher. The fact that I ended up in medicine owes quite a lot to Jonathan Miller’s “The Body In Question” series, but Horizon was required viewing whatever the topic (and I remember Connections fondly, too).

On the day the LHC went “Live”, the BBC showed a programme showing how it had covered the Big Bang theory over the past fifty-odd years, and I remembered quite a lot of the clips from Horizon episodes of the 70s and 80s. Sometimes the science had moved on since, but they generally stood out as fantastic reporting of an evolving concept.

This served to show how poor most modern Horizon episodes are – on the odd occasions I bother to look at them. Being a medic leaves little time for keeping up with other science – physics/ cosmology was once my other interest, and I was probably far more up with the latest ideas thirty years ago than I am now. Yet I can still tell that Horizon, and much other TV science shows are far less challenging than they once were.

Certainly, a high proportion of newspaper reporting of the subject I Do know about, medicine, verges on the scientifically semi-literate. I tend to assume that its reporting of other subjects about which I know less, whether other science disciplines or non scientific, would demonstrate similar poor understanding of the issues to those in the know.

As for quality science programming, it’s hard to come by. I too watched Marcus du Sautoy’s Horiazon with Alan Davies and was incredibly frustrated at the lack of actual content. His BBC4 series the Story of Maths was, on the other hand, a joy. The Professor Regan stuff I actually found OK. I did find this little snippet @32 quite interesting:

“As far as “educating the public goes”, then we do have the BBC trying something with the “Professor Regan” series which has come up with some reasonably if rather plodding conclusions. It was interesting that they turned down the placebo affect of Homeopathy whilst keeping on the shelves the similar effects of big-named branded aspirin and the like over generics.

I think I’d also make a case for Darren Brown. His program “The System” demonstrated more clearly some of the issues with probability, subjectiveness, personal experience and anecdotal evidence than anything else I’ve ever seen on the subject. All within the scope of an entertainment programme.”

As far as I saw in the Regan show, homepathy was binned because it performed no better than placebo, while the use of brand-name drugs did exhibit a better than placebo (and generic) performance. In fact, I just happened to be reading the same chapter in Ben’s book the night I watched it and thought the TV show did a reasonable job of explaining it, though Ben talked about the cultural part of placebo effect in more detail. It wasn’t that dumb though, by any measure.

I’d agree with the Derren Brown thing too, almost like a TV version of John Allen Paulos. It was exemplary in explaining risk and probability and, unusually for C4 didn’t insist on endlessly summarisng before and after each nd every commercial break; this is something that vexes me so much I can hardly bear to watch C4 any longer most of the time.

The great science programmes don’t have to be full of hard-core stuff. The oft quoted example of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos is a perfect one. This is the programme that, at 9 years old solidified the interest in astrophysics and cosmlogy that led me to the degree I did and that lasts to this day. It aksed more questions than it answered and made me want to find out more. It also made me search out his writing. And for that reason I’m thankful because it meant I found The Demon-Haunted World, which is one of the best science books I have ever read (even including yours Ben – sorry!).

The problem seems to coalesce around a few issues:

i. there are very few scientists working in TV (as a trivial example, notice in the last series of University Challenge the Professionals: how many scientists took part in that? Answer: not not that many)

ii ‘artists’ ( and accountants now ) make tv programmes

iii in some places an ignorance of science is almost worn as a badge of honour. You hear people blithely admit that they “aren’t good with numbers”, who would be appalled if they heard someone admit that they “had atrouble with word”. What’s the difference?

iv. in some places there is a contempt for the audience amongst programme makers (this is by no means universal, but that doesn’t mean it’s not significant)

v. there is sometimes an attitude of: I don’t understand this. and if I can’t the audience won’t either, after all I m educated and they’re not (see iii).

vi. a culture exists of “science is hard”. and if it’s hard it’s dull, right?

and @44: I agree, Euler’s identity is a thing of beauty indeed. And so’s the Golden Ratio. Now there’s something good for 8 year-olds! I remember learning about it when I was 8 because of Johnny Ball and Think of A Number. See, even kids don’t get science programming as good as we did.