Category Archives: Journalism

The Neverending Story

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The eternal tug of war between science journalists and scientists. A graphical story.

Timely, as ScienceOnline is coming up this week, and this topic is sure to come up.

One of the interesting points Bee addresses is that science journalism isn’t treated like sports — nobody writes sports stories for people who know nothing about the sport being reported on. Some knowledge is assumed. I share the frustration of reading a science story and not being able to figure out what science they’re actually talking about, since it’s been simplified so much. I don’t think the multi-level story she describes will come to be anytime soon, but it’s an interesting idea.

That Which is Not Forbidden is Mandated

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That line, (or something like it), borrowed from literature by Murray Gell-Mann, refers to particle physics. Unless a reaction is not allowed (i.e. it violates some conservation law), it will have some probability of occurring, even if the amplitude is small. And you would have to include it in your “sum over all paths” calculations of interactions.

Well, it appears to apply to science journalism as well. Wrenching a statement out of context and misinterpreting it is apparently not forbidden, so a story will appear that just gets it wrong, as so often happens and happened again. Via ZapperZ, I see that there’s a story about the upper mass limit of photons article I mentioned recently, that takes a disappointing tack:

Photons May Emit Faster-Than-Light Particles, Physicists Suggest

Oh, good grief no. That was not “suggested” at all, and certainly wasn’t the point of the paper.

I'm Sorry, Did I Break Your Concentration?

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Oh, you were finished? Well, allow me to retort.

OK, not really a confrontation at that level. Or even close.

On the heels of last week’s “Approximately No Science Journalists are Ed Yong” I will point you to two blog posts by Chad Orzel: On Journalists and Scientists Talking at Uncertain Principles and “How Journalists Can Help The Scientists They Interview” at physicsfocus. The two are closely related but not identical observations/suggestions on the subject of scientist-journalist cooperation. It’s not really a rebuttal of anything, just some advice on the subject, presented from the point of view of the scientist.

Approximately No Science Journalists are Ed Yong

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Journosplaining 101 (a commentary on Ed Yong’s A Guide for Scientists on Giving Comments to Journalists)

Read this as part Q in the never-ending series of scientists v journalists. I’m a scientist, so I see where Chad’s coming from.

But a comment on Ed’s article first.

There’s a reason you should take some of the advice in Ed Yong’s post with a grain of salt (as I’ve come to realize over several years of hearing or reading advice from Ed): because it comes from Ed Yong. Now, let me explain — this isn’t a dig at Ed. Quite the opposite. He’s an excellent science journalist, and the tips he gives other science journalists about journalism is quite good. But this is a different subject, and given that there are a lot of journalists out there, you probably aren’t going to be asked for commentary from Ed Yong. (To use some physics-y math, if there are N journalists and N >>1, approximately no journalists are Ed Yong)

So when I see advice like

I have read the paper that I sent you and understand it
…
I am not just trying to fill my story with a random cutaway quote to make it look like I did my job and asked around.
…
[W]hat you say will almost certainly end up getting cut and distilled. BUT, I won’t do that in a way that misquotes or misrepresents you.

that only applies to Ed, or some other similarly-talented journalist. You could find yourself in a situation where you follow the advice but with a lesser talent, and be disappointed in the result.

 

Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave with a box of scraps!
Well, I’m sorry. I’m not Tony Stark.

 

Which means that Chad’s advice to close the information loop by giving a summary is good. It confirms that everyone is on the same page. You may say you understand the paper, but anyone who has taught knows students who swear they understand, and then bomb the test.

Ultimately, though, what rubs me the wrong way about this is a sense that the ways scientists talk to journalists are wasting the journalists’ time, which they would otherwise be using to do Important Journalism. Which bugs me because, ultimately, each party in one of these conversations is doing the other a favor by having the conversation at all. Yes, journalists are helping to boost the profile of scientists and science in general, but they’re also taking up time that the scientists could be using to do Important Science.

The thing of which I always remind myself in these situations is that Ed is presenting a perspective of a science journalist, and that’s a bias or perspective that needs to be accounted for when absorbing the information. I think that’s what is surfacing here.

Also there’s a bit about “This research is interesting but more work needs to be done” being the most banal quote one can give. That may be true, but we also suffer from way too many stories drawing conclusions from a single experiment that end up being contradicted by further investigation, or end up being anomalies. Again, a good chance that a top science journalist won’t make that error, but it’s worth pointing out that some study isn’t a final result, just to be on the safe side.

… But it Probably Is

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Speed of Light May Not Be Constant

Two papers, published in the European Physics Journal D in March, attempt to derive the speed of light from the quantum properties of space itself. Both propose somewhat different mechanisms, but the idea is that the speed of light might change as one alters assumptions about how elementary particles interact with radiation. Both treat space as something that isn’t empty, but a great big soup of virtual particles that wink in and out of existence in tiny fractions of a second.

The problem I find with articles like this is that they don’t place enough emphasis on the speculative nature of the work — something is being assumed about nature that hasn’t yet been observed, and the authors are investigating the consequences. From the perspective of science this is fine — that’s one way of going about it: think of some novel way nature might be structured, come up with a model, and test it. That’s valid science. But at this point that last part is missing, and as long as it is, one has to worry about over-selling the idea.

Improving Your Science Reporting

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The 10 biggest science-reporting mistakes (and how to avoid them)

The ones that bug me the most are getting it wrong (3) and false balance (9), but this is probably not meant to be in order of importance. Aside from overselling research results, I think most of the others are applicable to any kind of writing. Also, tied in with a few mentions of how to properly use experts, along with “getting it right,” avoid the generalized “scientists say” (or its cousin, “researchers have shown”)

Watch Out or Someone Will Drop a Textbook on Your Sister

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I wasn’t at the Science Online session that, in the Nth retelling, sounded like it might have turned into “the Sharks vs the Jets at the dance” square-off. But Matthew Francis was, and gives his perspective: In defense of jargon and expertise

Carl Zimmer—a writer I greatly respect, even if he does write about parasites, a subject that makes me squirm—began the pile-on by saying that when a Ph.D. scientist wants to explain something, they often start with a question, then drop a textbook on you. (Ironically, Carl is one of the few people I know who actually wrote a textbook.) Some other people evidently took that as permission to speak ill of all professional scientists and experts. One person stated strongly that experts are all bad at science communication, because they use too much jargon.

I do have some strong opinions on this. I’ve posted on this before and I think there’s a danger in asserting some of the extreme positions on the topic. There’s also the problem of properly defining the problem so that the scientists and journalists don’t just talk past each other. Plus the issue of the job of scientists as compared to the job of journalists.

What constitutes jargon? Some is obvious — when acronyms and abbreviations appear, you might just be a redneck using jargon. In my field of atomic physics I will throw around terms like MOT and AOM, or occasionally speak of a BEC. That’s the terminology of the job, and I don’t expect people outside my field to necessarily know what I mean. (in case you are curious, MOT = magneto-optical trap, AOM = Acousto-Optical Modulator and BEC = Bose-Einstein Condensate). I think it’s pretty obvious that not explaining what these terms mean is a barrier to be avoided. I don’t think that’s the problem. If you’re throwing those terms around while attempting to communicate with a lay audience, you’re not winning.

I believe the issue is at a lower level. I think there’s an element of “I know it when I see it” to other terminology, but where to draw the line is a grey area. To use some examples from physics, are momentum or energy jargon? If I speak of the conservation of either, is there a barrier to understanding which is the terminology, or is it a lack of scientific literacy? This is an ongoing debate and I think that the testy exchanges between scientists and journalists will continue of we don’t resolve what we mean. When do basic concepts and their names or descriptions become jargon?

There is also the issue, as I mentioned, of defining what the job is, and I come at this from the perspective of being a scientist. Most scientists are not hired to communicate their work to the public. That’s an acquired skill. If you want to speak to a scientist, you need to learn the language, just as if you want to go to an area that doesn’t communicate in your language, it behooves you to learn that language. That is would be a good idea to train scientists to do a better job of communicating to the public (and I think it is) is a separate issue. But I suspect most scientists would think it a waste of time: We have a Public Information/Affairs Officer for that! coupled with I want to do research. There has to be a general feeling that such effort has value. Scientists have to prioritize their time, so if this is a desired goal, make sure that such communication is valued by the institutions where the scientists work.

If this communication is in the form of a discussion, we get back to the issue of meeting the scientists halfway. When someone with little to no background in a certain subject wants to pop in and be a part of the conversation, it’s a huge waste of time to expect a scientist to fill all of that background in — imagine someone chiming in on a discussion of an atomic physics experiment but has no idea what conservation of angular momentum is, or someone claiming that evolution is wrong because humans don’t have wings. Or this. In situations like that, I feel no hesitation to “drop a textbook” on someone.

To be fair, I don’t know exactly what Carl meant by the phrase, but I also haven’t seen anything that clarifies the issue on his blog. I would love there to be a reasoned discussion on the subject rather than having people reach for their blamethrowers every time this comes up.

Science Gone Bad

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A letter to the TEDx community on TEDx and bad science

Lots of good stuff here, on some warning signs of dubious science, stemming from some suspect talks at TEDx. It’s directed toward medical/life sciences material, but there are many points that apply to science in general. This is related to an ongoing issue in journalism — whether your task is to just offer material, or whether you have a responsibility to vet the material. I’m of the latter opinion — I think that a “let the audience decide” or “I need to present both sides” approach is a cop-out.

There’s also a list of behavior that one might see if one declines to give a platform to someone peddling the dubious science, and to me, this is old hat. The claims of endangering freedom of speech/bias/suppression and the assertion that they hold a special insight (often despite no formal training) are pretty standard crackpot positions.

Science Article Cures Cancer!

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5 Changes Consumers Want To See In Science News

1. Stop with sensationalist headlines. It was the top complaint, something one commenter described as “the worst offense” (although apparently, something else below requires the death penalty). Quit with the sensationalism already, they say. I know. That’s not gonna happen because headlines pull clicks and clicks drive revenue. So I’ll stick with my standing advice to readers: Skip the headline. You’ll note that my own undoubtedly attractive headline does not communicate that the “consumers” in this article were a self-selecting group nonscientifically polled from within my social media circle.

It should not be difficult to find several of my critiques of articles with headlines that overreach or are simply not supported by the article, so it’s a given that I agree with this sentiment, but also the reality that it won’t change because money.