Nice to see this piece on Sir Robert May’s inaugural Howard Dalton lecture, hosted by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
May advocates scientific advisers to policy makers limiting themselves to presenting the available facts and acknowledging that when it comes to deciding how those facts should inform policy, they’re no more qualified than anyone else. Logical really. If a scientist presents ‘the facts’ and then still has reservations about how the ‘lay’ public use them to make decisions, that implies the scientist is still uniquely in possession of further information relevant to interpretation. In other words, the scientist is really admitting that s/he hasn’t presented all the relevant facts and hasn’t done what was asked in the first place.

Press Release Received Today:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE WEDNESDAY 13 JANUARY 2010

Scientific community must act now to secure future of science reporting

The scientific community and Government should act now to safeguard improvements made in recent years to the way science is reported in the mass media according to a new report on Science and the Media published today(1). ‘Science and the Media – Securing the Future’, commissioned by BIS as part of the UK Science and Society strategy, draws on new research from Cardiff University which finds that in some respects specialist science news reporting in the UK is in relatively good health (2). But the report warns about the serious threat to the quality and independence of science reporting posed by the wider crisis in journalism. The economic and institutional constraints under which journalists now operate have in many cases caused increasing workloads, less time to seek out stories and check facts, increasing reliance on a very limited pool of news sources, and an growing homogeneity in science coverage.

Fiona Fox, Chair of the working group and Director of the Science Media Centre, said:

“While there is much to celebrate about science in the media today, it was our conclusion that the scientific community and government need to engage more with the wider crisis in journalism and the impact on the reporting of science in the future.

“The stark message from the US where the media is haemorrhaging their best science reporters is that we must act now to protect the gains we have made in science reporting in recent years. We as a society have come to rely on the media to report complex science to a mass audience on some of the most important issues of our times. This report is a call to arms to all those who care about the reporting of science to start thinking creatively about ways to shore up science journalism without undermining its independence. ”

On the positive side, the group discovered that the crisis in journalism has spawned a rich array of new and interesting innovations in journalism – many emerging outside of traditional settings and some coming directly from the scientific community. These include scientific institutions employing journalists to set up their own news sites and initiatives like the brand new Centre for Investigative Journalism based at City University and funded by the Potter Foundation. While everyone on the group recognised that this is an exciting time for journalism there was a sense that the scientific community should now take a more pro-active approach to assessing the many new initiatives in science journalism and the group recommends a new Working Group to do a more rigorous assessment of emerging innovation in this area and identify which ones should be supported as most likely to deliver the kind of journalism we all want to see.

The group came out strongly in favour of more openness in science with the Simon Singh case and the David Nutt case leading us to make strong recommendations about the need for radical reform of the libel laws and free speech for independent scientific advisers to government.

As well as the future of science journalism the working group focussed on three other themes including; training for non-science journalists; science programmes on TV and openness and transparency. A number of firm recommendations emerged including the appointment of a full time National Journalism Training Officer for Science who will design and deliver training in the ‘Basics of Science Reporting’ to editors and non science reporters throughout the media and to trainee journalists in universities across the UK. The Group has also recommended the establishment of a Science Programming Centre modelled on the Science Media Centre which the Wellcome Trust is exploring. The Centre will facilitate more collaboration between the scientific community and programme makers.

Other key recommendations include boosting investigative journalism by identifying funding for a specific science strand at the new Bureau at City; a new Fellowships Scheme to increase the number of people with science backgrounds working in journalism; and a new high profile ‘Science Lobby’ to operate along similar lines as the influential arts lobby. The Group also called on Government to set up a National Commission on the Future of Journalism and argues that safeguarding the ‘Fourth Estate’ should be as critical to the health of our democracy as health and education.

Fiona Fox said:

“Taken together we believe that the recommendations we have made can make a real difference to the quality of science reporting today and start a much need debate about ways to secure the kind of science reporting we all want to see in the future.”

For more information please contact Fiona Fox at the Science Media Centre on 0207 670 2981 or email ffox@ri.ac.uk

Note to editors

Report title: Science and the Media: Securing the Future:

http://interactive.bis.gov.uk/scienceandsociety/site/science-and-the-media/

Research: Mapping the Field: Specialist science news journalism in the UK national media –

http://cf.ac.uk/jomec/research/researchgroups/riskscienceandhealth/fundedprojects/mappingscience.html

Actions & Recommendations:

http://interactive.bis.gov.uk/scienceandsociety/site/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Science-and-the-Media-Summary-of-Actions-and-Recommendations.pdf

Sense About Science reports on a survey of scientists’ views on peer review. The great majority seem to support the convenitonal use of peer review and for the best of reasons:

91% say that their last paper was improved through peer review; the discussion was the biggest area of improvement.

Odd, really, when you consider that the discussion is perhaps the one part of the paper that the readers could supply for themselves…