We’re having a meeting in a pub tonight, it’s free to get in and open to all, we’ll talk about the problems with science journalism. Apparently science journalists won’t tolerate this.
Steve Connor: Lofty medics should stick to their day job
Science Notebook: Doctors claim media coverage is “lazy, venal and silly”
Independent, Tuesday, 30 June 2009
The sixth World Conference of Science Journalists is underway in London. I can’t say it’s going to change my life, as I missed out on the previous five, but I did notice that it has attracted the attention of a bunch of medics with strong views on the state of science journalism today.
Related articles“A few of us felt they were might [sic] not adequately address some of the key problems in their profession, which has deteriorated to the point where they present a serious danger to public health,” according to the Bad Science website of Dr Ben Goldacre, who is turning into the bête noir of science journalists. The medics met in a pub in London last night to explain why the “mainstream media’s science coverage is broken, misleading, dangerous, lazy, venal and silly”. All three speakers are gainfully employed by the public sector so they don’t actually have to worry too much about the sort of pressures and financial constraints the mainstream media are under. But they nevertheless condescended to offer some advice on the sort of “best practice guidelines” I should be following, for which I suppose I should be eternally grateful.
But their arrogance is not new. Medical doctors in particular have always had a lofty attitude to the media’s coverage of their profession, stemming no doubt from the God-like stance they take towards their patients. Although I wouldn’t go as far as to say their profession is broken, dangerous, lazy, venal and silly – not yet anyway.
Genius.
Interested to see if they publish our brief letter.
Dear Sir,
Your science journalist Steve Connor is furious that we are holding a small public meeting in a pub to discuss the problem that science journalists are often lazy and inaccurate. He gets the date wrong, claiming the meeting has already happened (it has not). He says we are three medics (only one of us is). He then invokes some stereotypes about arrogant doctors, which we hope are becoming outdated.
In fact, all three of us believe passionately in empowering patients, with good quality information, so they can make their own decisions about their health. People often rely on the media for this kind of information. Sadly, in the field of science and medicine, on subjects as diverse as MMR, sexual health, and cancer prevention, the public have been repeatedly and systematically misled by journalists.
We now believe this poses a serious threat to public health, and it is sad to see the problem belittled in a serious newspaper. Steve Connor is very welcome to attend our meeting, which is free and open to all,
yours
(Drs) Vaughan Bell, Petra Boynton, Ben Goldacre
It seems journalists have a lot in common with homeopaths when it comes to rage.
Update 2/7/09
Just FYI really, my email to Guy Keleny, the letters editor at the Independent. I think it’s a shame that mainstream media are so intolerant of discussing these problems, and I really do think they’re serious. Oh well. Shame if they don’t print our letter though.
hi guy,
i think it would be good to print this letter from all three of us. we
all take the issue of misleading science and health reporting very
seriously, and feel passionately that patients and the public need to
be well informed to make good decisions about their own health.unfortunately the media do often make serious errors in their coverage
of health and science, we don’t think it is unreasonable for us to
hold a small meeting in a pub to discuss this, and i think it’s part
of the problem that the profession of science journalism and
journalism generally are so unwilling to face up to the problems,
discuss them, and engage with criticisms.a good example of that, sadly, was steve’s column which was, sadly,
repeatedly factually incorrect. it talked about a meeting that hadn’t
happened yet as if it had, it described us all as medics, which we’re
not, and it failed to address any of our concerns about the serious
negative impact that misleading reporting can have on public health. i
would have hoped that this is exactly the kind of social justice and
patient empowerment issue that the independent might take a serious
interest in.i should say i like steve’s work, although we’ve never met, and
there’s nothing personal about this, i just think it would be good if
you could correct on ther factual inaccuracies and give us the chance
to have a small say on such a serious issue by printing our letter.i’m copying in petra boynton and vaughan bell, which i hope is ok,
ben
apgaylard said,
July 2, 2009 at 2:03 pm
“All three speakers are gainfully employed by the public sector so they don’t actually have to worry too much about the sort of pressures and financial constraints the mainstream media are under.”
Oddly enough, financial constraints were the reason I left the public sector. Life in the private sector (depending which bit of it you are in) can be very harsh. From my necessarily limited personal experience, life can be tough on either side of this divide, even if the specific challenges differ.
The Biologista said,
July 2, 2009 at 2:27 pm
@spk76:
Well if you read it in the context of the whole comment over on the Indo website, it really doesn’t seem to be sarcasm at all.
Bill Bigge said,
July 2, 2009 at 3:20 pm
A bit OT but …
Anyone fancy a genuine homoeopathic cure for thirst!
spk76 said,
July 2, 2009 at 5:00 pm
The Biologista:
Sorry, have to disagree:
OK, so he thinks that the pressures on a science journalist are so much greater than those on a doctor who has to consider financial, regulatory etc constraints and the patients health; granted, he doesn’t know one date from another; and sure, I’ll give it to you that he was capable of reporting what was said at an event that he stated he hadn’t been to and hadn’t actually happened yet.
That’s obvious sarcasm.
But, like, whatever, dude. It’s too hot to argue. Maybe you’re right.
DS said,
July 2, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Let’s not forget the elephant in the room: he’s talking about Ben Goldacre here, that’s Ben Goldacre who writes about science for a national newspaper and is, by defintion, a de facto science journalist. So, was Ben invited to this journos gathering? Probably not.
Steve Connor just sounded peeved that there are some who are actually subjecting his profession’s work to scrutiny. One would have thought that this would, for a scientist, have been rather desirable.
timheyes said,
July 3, 2009 at 2:51 am
look. you’re all being very mean to a journalist who was under enormous pressure to get his feature out. it’s clear that in his eyes accuracy is subordinate to meeting a dead-line.
Ben you black beast , you!
NeilHoskins said,
July 3, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I think Steve Connor has a point. People turned to “alternative” medicine because of the medical profession’s arrogance and ineptitude in the first place. Their trying to regain the scientific high ground now is quite sad when you consider that it was they who brought science into disrepute in the first place.
paul8032 said,
July 3, 2009 at 4:27 pm
unmedicated — on the issue of “humanities graduates”; in these desolate culturally relativistic times everyone considers their view as worthwhile as an expert’s. Humanities graduates included.
So when, say, Julia Stephenson (who may or may not be a graduate in something but go with me here) writes about buying tin foil hats to ward off harmful radiation from wifi networks, some science graduates point out the most glaring of the junior school scientific failings in her argument (for example failing to distinguish between radiation and radioactivity etc). But as a good cultural relativist Julia KNOWS she is right, and accuses the “men in white coats” (her phrase) of stifling debate, arrogant hectoring, whatever. She’ll probably throw in a quick “science dosen’t know everything” or a “science says the bumblebee can’t fly” as well. So the fact that her scientific illiteracy is absolute is ignored.
THIS is what frustrates us about humanities graduates – the times when they can’t grasp the scientific rebuttals offered and ignore them or move to ad hominem. If I hear John Bloody Timpson on the Today Programme once more saying about some scientific research topic “very clever, but what is it FOR?” I will kick my radio up the street. On that basis, what is Hamlet for? What is the Madonna of the Rocks for?
How about this – how would a music graduate react if I said Dido & Aeneas was faulty on all levels because Dido’s death wasn’t medically credible? How sanguine would s/he be?
So maybe we do bang on about “Humanities graduates” too much – but nobody knows the trouble they ‘bin.
paul8032 said,
July 4, 2009 at 7:30 am
Actually I meant John Humphreys didn’t I? Oops
CarlottaVance said,
July 4, 2009 at 7:46 am
Surely Mr Connor is missing the entire point of the scientific method – peer criticism of your work to produce a better understanding – but while this may apply to science, it is not to be applied to science journalism? No scientist he!
Jessicathejourno said,
July 4, 2009 at 7:48 am
Paul8032, tell me seriously if you think humanities graduates haven’t been asked about as many times as you what their studies will be/have been good for. I understand your pain when it comes to cultural relativism but if a reaction from it is leading you to think science grads have the lead on being annoyingly and stupidly quizzed on what their work is good for, you need to blink until the mist clears.
The music grad in your example probably wouldn’t even shrug because they’d have been getting comments like that since announcing to the world they’d be studying music, particularly opera. You can’t even say you like opera in a moderately crowded room without hearing a series of explanations from apparently brilliantly observational people of all sorts of educational backgrounds who have never sat through an opera about how impossibly unrealistic operas are.
And using a sensationalistic media whore rich girl like Julia Stephenson as a representative example of a class is damn bad form, by the way. You’d think I was a twat if I started going on about how the Pioneer Fund was representative of how science students approached and judged the world, and you’d be right.
TooMuchCoffeeMan said,
July 4, 2009 at 9:46 am
Occasional & vaguely sympathetic lurker here. Just to second #62 against the rather intemperate #58 — although I appreciate that sometimes the combination of smugness and stupidity that one often finds in the British meejah is quite wearing, I think it’s fallacious to regard this as down to “humanities graduates” and “cultural relativism”. Of course, there is no reason why the former should all subscribe to the latter, and I’m not convinced that all that many of them do (though, as befits this blog, I’ll be happy to acquiesce if some stats can be produced on this).
Also, to say:
So when, say, Julia Stephenson (who may or may not be a graduate in something but go with me here) writes…
rather undermines the relevance of this apparent hack – who I’ve not heard of, so I’ll bow to others’ assessments – to any point about Dr G’s occasional elision of “humanities graduates” with “vague and smug-with-it meejah-types”.
Oh, and though I shouldn’t need to insert this qualifier, my own training isn’t in the humanities, though it’s debatable whether or not it’s a science. Just in case I come across as defending home turf etc.
paul8032 said,
July 4, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Jessicathejourno – bloody hell mate, good job I didn’t tell you about the dirty fork. OK, obviously this is a two-way street and I apologise if I implied otherwise – all of us have our own frustrations about what we know well being distorted in the media. But that isn’t really my point.
As an opera-lover myself I know well the secret joy it often has to remain. It was my clumsy attempt to produce the most fatuous counter-argument I could think of.
My point is the media (I suppose I speak mainly of the broadcast media because I know it better) is to an extent dominated by humanities graduates, and if an argument arises especially in literature it’s on their turf – they know the context, the ground rules and the jargon. They don’t feel compelled to explain to the listener the difference between a novel and a biography. What I’m trying to get at is that in scientific controversies there is no commonality of language to talk through the different sides of an argument, so as a scientifically literate person finds he can’t engage at all.
You don’t like my example? Fair enough. I’ll try a more erudite person such as Jeremy Paxman (English, St Catherine’s, Cambridge). He cannot help himself on University Challenge. If someone manages to answer a physics question he congratulates them with the baffled amusement of an parent complimenting their 5-year-old’s latest picture. Whereas if someone trips up over their chronology of the C17 metaphysical poets you feel he would like to shoot them there and then for their own good.
Or Jeanette Winterson (English, St Catherine’s, Oxford). She is rational, skeptical and an avid New Scientist reader. By the lights of this blog she is one of the Good Guys(TM). She wrote a piece in defence of homeopathy which was calm, non-sensational, reasonable (www.badscience.net/2007/11/a-kind-of-magic/); but the physics was lamentable. My point is that with someone like Winterson who has a heightened sympathy towards a scientific outlook there are hardly any grounds for engagement in debate – the basic givens of say thermodynamics or molecular interactions which I feel are rooted in me from waaaay back are new territory here.
This feels like C P Snow’s two cultures. And one of these cultures is more represented in the media, and science reporting so often carries that air of detached, baffled amusement I described earlier.
To you and toomuchcoffeeman I’m sorry that it was intemperate. It wasn’t meant to be that way. It was intended as a metaphor for the spluttering rage that often propels my breakfast cereal to the radio some mornings. Last night on Any Questions, Will Self and others discussed the legacy of the Apollo moon landings, wearing the clothes of negativism which commentators wear for everything these days. They repeated the fallacy that it gave us PTFE, to reinforce the theme it had no other legacy. No-one in the media questions the inspirational power of great art; but however corrupt the motives for the Apollo mission were, how inspirational has it been to young scientifically-oriented youngsters like me?
TriathNanEilean said,
July 4, 2009 at 6:39 pm
As a humanities graduate myself, Ben’s regular complaints don’t bother me in the least. There’s a lot of truth in his characterization of us. It may, however, be a bit of a tactical mistake: antagonising many members of a large group instead of helping them recognise the problems that their view of science can cause.
paul8032 said,
July 5, 2009 at 9:03 am
Jessicathejourno – bloody hell mate, good job I didn’t tell you about the dirty fork. OK, obviously this is a two-way street and I apologise if I implied otherwise – all of us have our own frustrations about what we know well being distorted in the media. But that isn’t really my point.
As an opera-lover myself I know well the secret joy it often has to remain. It was my clumsy attempt to produce the most fatuous counter-argument I could think of.
My point is the media (I suppose I speak mainly of the broadcast media because I know it better) is to an extent dominated by humanities graduates, and if an argument arises especially in literature it’s on their turf – they know the context, the ground rules and the jargon. They don’t feel compelled to explain to the listener the difference between a novel and a biography. What I’m trying to get at is that in scientific controversies there is no commonality of language to talk through the different sides of an argument, so as a scientifically literate person finds he can’t engage at all.
You don’t like my example? Fair enough. I’ll try a more erudite person such as Jeremy Paxman (English, St Catherine’s, Cambridge). He cannot help himself on University Challenge. If someone manages to answer a physics question he congratulates them with the baffled amusement of an parent complimenting their 5-year-old’s latest picture. Whereas if someone trips up over their chronology of the C17 metaphysical poets you feel he would like to shoot them there and then for their own good.
Or Jeanette Winterson (English, St Catherine’s, Oxford). She is rational, skeptical and an avid New Scientist reader. By the lights of this blog she is one of the Good Guys(TM). She wrote a piece in defence of homeopathy which was calm, non-sensational, reasonable (www.badscience.net/2007/11/a-kind-of-magic/); but the physics was lamentable. My point is that with someone like Winterson who has a heightened sympathy towards a scientific outlook there are hardly any grounds for engagement in debate – the basic givens of say thermodynamics or molecular interactions which I feel are rooted in me from waaaay back are new territory here.
This feels like C P Snow’s two cultures. And one of these cultures is more represented in the media, and science reporting so often carries that air of detached, baffled amusement I described earlier.
To you and toomuchcoffeeman I’m sorry that it was intemperate. It wasn’t meant to be that way. It was intended as a metaphor for the spluttering rage that often propels my breakfast cereal to the radio some mornings. Last night on Any Questions, Will Self and others discussed the legacy of the Apollo moon landings, wearing the clothes of negativism which commentators wear for everything these days. They repeated the fallacy that it gave us PTFE, to reinforce the theme it had no other legacy. No-one doubts the inspirational power of great art; but however corrupt the motives for the Apollo mission were, how inspirational has it been to young scientifically-oriented youngsters like me?
I posted this yesterday & it hasn’t appeared. So sorry if it appears twice
paul8032 said,
July 5, 2009 at 9:17 am
Jessicathejourno – I posted a response but it’s not appearing. I think it must be too long. Have you seen it?
Jessicathejourno said,
July 5, 2009 at 2:00 pm
No. Feel free to post it here, on whichever post is most offensively humanities-graduated.
paul8032 said,
July 6, 2009 at 9:50 am
Actually after a weekend’s sober reflection I think my initial post is really shit. I apologise. If anything in post 61 you probably let me off lightly.
I’ll get me coat.
Jessicathejourno said,
July 6, 2009 at 10:09 am
Paul 8032, I do see your point. I’ve found Steve Connor’s science writing bad because of his intensely personal, inappropriate and obvious re-interpretations of (sometimes dodgy) statistics, and his snotty little carp about Ben’s pub night was atrocious. I admire Ben’s writing for pointing out the holes in pop science media writing, which I have no problem admitting are more dangerous than troglodytes explaining why an entire genre of music they know nothing about isn’t worthwhile.
And despite Connor’s Oxford certification in zoology, I also have no problem admitting that his writing, and a great deal of what is pointed out here as Bad Science, seems like a consequence of our society finding it easier to tolerate scientific illiteracy than other kinds.
Except it isn’t. The British media is dripping with music journalists who base their reviews of albums on what the band members wear, political reporters who are professionally addicted to party press releases, columnists that will mock anything that uses words with three syllables or more, and commentators who DO doubt the inspirational power of great art . . . and all in 11-year-old language with punctuation, grammar and malapropisms that make humanities graduates weep.
When you talk about the lack of a common language that would let scientific controversies get discussed in a properly argumentative way in the British media, I see your point, and it’s an extremely serious point, because being misled about such controversies can be hazardous to one’s health. But I have a hard time tolerating that being blamed on humanities graduates when the humanities themselves are seldom discussed in a properly argumentative way in non-specialist British media. Particularly when problematic science journalists (like the subject of this post) actually have a science background, not a humanities background.
Among other things, I blame:
1. The acceptance of vocational degrees in journalism, which let people enter the profession with no personalized understanding that specialist knowledge even exists
2. Overstretched editorial departments, which are accountable to shareholder representatives with received ideas about the lowest common denominator
3. Shareholder representatives with received ideas about the lowest common denominator
4. The BBC, which has decided it needs to compete with media groups run by shareholder representatives with received ideas about the lowest common denominator
The first one refers to an eensy-weensy and discrete class of humanities grad, and the last three (trust me – specialist knowledge) are far more down to accountants/MBAs than humanities grads. Of course, maths arguably being part of the humanities, maybe accountants ARE humanities grads. But surely you wouldn’t accuse the British media of being math-literate, so I guess it’s a moot point.
Again, I love Bad Science because scientific illiteracy in pop media poses a real physical threat to people’s well-being. But seriously – blame a humanities grad, and you’re blaming the victim of the over-arching problem. Paxman not understanding science and Jeannette Winterson believing in fairies notwithstanding. It’s really provoking, it’s clumsy, it’s alienating to natural allies in the war against the stupid, and it makes the people who do it look like their head is wedged up their bum.
Jessicathejourno said,
July 6, 2009 at 10:12 am
Re. 68, er, sorry, I’ll stop bitching then.
paul8032 said,
July 6, 2009 at 1:15 pm
(Stopping at door with coat half-on) As a counter-balance to much of what I said before , Carol Vorderman read Engineering at Cambridge but talks bigger healthbollocks (on cannabis, detox, MMR) than anyone
Lemonbella said,
July 6, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Re: Humanities/Science
Surely the point is that the hallmark of quality academic study, (and of an intelligent and inquiring mind full stop) is adherence to, among others, the following tenents:
1) The value of critical appraisal and discourse
2) The importance of seeking out sources of bias/error
3) The avoidance of simplistic over-generalisations
Science graduates do not have a monopoly on these characteristics, and nor do graduates over all. For every humanities graduate that takes the headline “Caffeine Cures Cancer says Scientists” as truth, there’s a science graduate (and a humanities graduate, and a non-graduate etc.) who takes “EU Bans Cucumbers”, “House Prices will continue to rise, says report” and “Iraq has WMD says Government source” as fact. These are all as damaging and dangerous as medical and scientific ignorance.
I don’t object to the stereotyping of humanities graduates on a personal level – this is a science blog after all -I do object on a broader level as it breaks the rules of rigorous, intelligent thinking and alienates valuable partners in the fight against ignorance.
Bob Ward said,
July 8, 2009 at 9:21 am
Sorry Ben, but your letter was way over the top, so I felt compelled to respond with a letter published in today’s edition of The Indy (www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-school-admissions-1736172.html)
Drs Bell, Boynton and Goldacre (letter, 6 July) claim that “science journalists are often lazy and inaccurate”, citing MMR among the issues about which “the public have been misled by journalists”.
While there are occasional examples of poor reporting, I think the authors are guilty of extrapolating a few data about a small number of individuals to make an inaccurate inference about an entire profession. The MMR debacle was initiated by a researcher rather than by a journalist.
They might be surprised to discover just how many misleading media reports, for which they apparently hold journalists solely responsible, actually arise from exaggerated claims by researchers and their colleagues: a recent study found that just 42 per cent of press releases issued by US academic medical centres provided relevant caveats about the research they described, and 29 per cent exaggerated the importance of their findings.
Bob Ward
Policy and Communications Director, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics
Jessicathejourno said,
July 8, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Bob Ward, it’s bizarre to see you accuse Ben and his colleagues of over-reacting when they send in a remarkably mild letter to the Independent in response to an error-ridden, misrepresentative snark by one of the paper’s columnists. Particularly one that ‘makes an inaccurate inference about a whole profession’ (“medical doctors in particular have always had a lofty attitude to the media . . . God-like stance they take towards their patients”) that’s far more objectionable and generalized than the doctors’ contention that journalists have misled the public on serious health issues.
Ben’s column and this blog have been doing an excellent job for years of showing that this phenomenon is hardly a case of “occasional examples of poor reporting”. (So does the Daily Mail, on a daily basis.)
And by saying “They Started It!!!!” about the MMR scare, in reference to Andrew Wakefield, you’re admitting with remarkable frankness that the journalists concerned lacked the basic literacy and background to perceive that Wakefield (whose Lancet paper mentioned 12 WHOLE CHILDREN, and who, incidentally, stressed from the first he had NOT established a causal connection between the jabs and autism) had not published something of particular importance, and had instead published something that could prove to be dangerously alarmist.
I don’t think many people on this thread would disagree with you. I imagine the main difference is that most of them would think that was a problem journalists, or their employers, should do something about.
csrster said,
July 9, 2009 at 8:14 am
“a recent study found that just 42 per cent of press releases issued by US academic medical centres provided relevant caveats about the research they described, and 29 per cent exaggerated the importance of their findings.”
Surely that’s all the more reason why science journalists should do their job properly and investigate the validity of a press release before either a) regurgitating it as fact, or b) altering it to mean something their readers will find titillating. But since they never will, I’ll just carry on getting my science news from the people at scienceblogs.com who do.
klarusu said,
July 10, 2009 at 3:34 pm
“They might be surprised to discover just how many misleading media reports, for which they apparently hold journalists solely responsible, actually arise from exaggerated claims by researchers and their colleagues”
Which is why it’s the responsibility of decent science journalists to actually read the primary papers referred to in the releases with a modicum of comprehension rather than taking the press releases as gospel. Wakefield’s Lancet paper was truly dreadful science with more holes in it than there’s space to point out here. This should have been evident to any journalist who knows the subject field … that is wasn’t implies that they either (a) didn’t care (in which case they should toddle off back to the celebrity gossip pages), (b) didn’t understand the scientific implications of the primary data (ditto above bracketed comment) or (c) intentionally sensationalised an issue that was obviously going to be high visibility to gain exposure (erm … yep … ditto the bracketed comment again).
stephen said,
July 16, 2009 at 8:41 pm
You know what’s really irritating about this nitwit? He’s using MY NAME!
stephen (not that one) connor
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