Can Science Journalism Be Entertaining and Responsible? 207
GRW writes "This past week, I attended a panel discussion sponsored by the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, entitled "Can science journalism be entertaining and responsible?". This was a discussion regarding the role the media could and should play in the dissemination of scientific issues to the general public. Panelists included newspaper, TV and radio journalists. I thought that this might be a good subject for a Slashdot discussion. What do you think about science journalism? How can it better communicate to the general public about science and the scientific method? Can science journalism do a better job of helping people distinguish science from pseudoscience?"
No (Score:2, Interesting)
A) Making fun of another person, ethnic group, or sexual group, or
B) Humiliating one's self thru reality television shows
The music industry is slowly dying, so I suspect we'll only have TV and movies 5 yrs from now. Radio/records will be long gone.
Re:No (Score:2, Interesting)
I certainly don't know what would happen if I tried to drive into work without Radio Two - I think it's a toss up between crashing and arriving completely insane.
be interesting or be dead (Score:4, Informative)
Also fun and popular ... Sleek Geeks (Score:5, Informative)
Most people outside Australia wouldn't have heard Adam and Dr Karl doing their Sleek Geek show. Really entertaining, and accurate stuff. Adam Spencer [abc.net.au] is a DJ at JJJ [abc.net.au], and also holds a PhD in mathematics. Dr Karl is a regular visitor on Thursday mornings since it seems time began. See some of his stuff here [abc.net.au]. Recently, they got together for a tour called "Sleek Geeks" .. and here's [newscientist.com] a report on it by New Scientist.
It can be done !
Re:be interesting or be dead (Score:2)
Re:be interesting or be dead (Score:4, Interesting)
That brings to mind the underlying question: what is science journalism supposed to be about, anyway? Is it reporting just the fact of new results (e.g., from scientific / technical journals)? Then, maybe, ordinary good journalism is sufficient. On the other hand, if the objective is to explain technical results, and their implications, for lay people, I would think it likely that the journalist would need to be a seriously-trained scientist, as well as a very good writer. (Unfortunately, this is not a combination that is thick upon the ground.)
Good science writing is possible. There is a guy (whose name, alas, I forget at the moment) who writes a food science column for the Washington Post, who I think does a good job. (Most of what he writes about is chemistry, and that is a subject I know well.)
There are books, too -- perhaps this is an easier format, due to more time for reflection. I think, for example, Stephen Pinker's books The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works are very well done, as are Richard Dawkins's book on evolution, such as The Blind Watchmaker.
I hate it when they write about me. (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone who has from time to time been the victim scientist in the company press release its awful. people assume you were bragging or dont know dick about your own work, because some reporter shaped your words. If you make a simple analogy to say base ball, you can bet your whole research program will become a giant metafor beginining with you hitting one out of the park.
its embarassing and gives people the wrong impression of you. plus every dorkl in the world then writes you an e-mail to say how you got something wrong.
The part I dread the most is that they often send you an advance copy to correct. And its always unsalvagable. you correct as much as you can but by construction you cant real change the gross distortions.
Re:I hate it when they write about me. (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is in the definition of "responsible". To a scientist, responsibility is about reporting the results as the experiment precisely and accurately. But a journalist interprets responsibility as being about putting a slant on things "is this good for society? should I let this scientist get away with doing this?". That's a fundamental and intractable difference between two world views.
Another problem is that many journalists - not all but many - were already broadly anti-science before going into the profession. Maybe they just hated science lessons at school, maybe they'd already decided that they were anti-nuclear and could never be persuaded otherwise, maybe they've already decided that corporate science is bad and only university science is good. Not only that, but only other scientists are really interested in good news about science, whereas scandal can sell papers.
Take 3 Mile Island, for example. The local population were exposed to no more radiation than a medical X ray. But to hear the press talk about it, it's as if it was as bad as Chernobyl. And they blame Chernobyl on failings in all nuclear technology, rather than untrained operators running unauthorized experiments. Fortunately, nowadays, you can get your science news direct from the lab rather than a mass-market paper.
Re:I hate it when they write about me. (Score:2)
Anyway, I've noticed the exact same thing. Any time journalists report on something I know about, I realize that the report is usually either a gross oversimplification or just plain incorrect. It's like the journalists don't even bother to learn what they're reporting on. Frankly, I'm beginning to wonder if all stories are like that. After all, if they can't figure out the basic facts in a technology story, why should they get the facts straight in a medical story? Or an advanced physics story? Or an economics story? Or a political story? Or a crime story? Or yesterday's high and low temperatures?
It almost takes a site like slashdot, with the user comments (which I consider to be
I guess they could... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I guess they could... (Score:5, Interesting)
Its not an accident that the cast of Friends are made to look good, while scientists are protrayed like "Beaker" in Sesame Street. Its because if intelligence is good, then the journallists/actors/TV anchor men etc are bad. They are not going to stand for that, are they?
Re:I guess they could... (Score:2)
Re:I guess they could... (Score:2)
He's portrayed as a weenie. But, smartalecks tend to be weenies.
Re:I guess they could... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I guess they could... (Score:2)
It's about target audience! (Score:5, Interesting)
However I feel that there is a genuine need for some simplification when it comes to science journalism. For example I once interviewed a researcher at the aforementioned university about his project on video codecs. You and I probably both know what motion compensation is. So I asked this man "Wat makes your new implementations so special?" And he went off for over 15 minutes and a whiteboard full of complicated formulae. All well and good, and I could probably reproduce the gist of it in my article, but that's not the point. The point I wanted to make was that this professor was in fact doing something revolutionary and explain to my readership the practical implications of his work. The man just couldn't explain those to me in plain language, so he gave me a paper version of the formulae on the whiteboard.
It's then the "stupid" journalist's job to turn those into a digestible article. Here's a quick knock-up of what I wrote in the university magazine:
At the end of the article I included a URL for the reader to find the techy details.
Joe Sixpack would have probably abandoned my article straight away. Instead:
The above paragraph is a translation, the original was in Dutch and written in 1998 so I'm not inserting the man's name. Don't want to accidentally misquote him.
I hope my example illustrates somewhat the dillemma faced by journalists every day. They always have to write for the weakest link to understand things, otherwise sales go down and the media company's bottom line is obviously connected to the individual reporter's bottom line: his job.
Carl Sagan? (Score:5, Insightful)
Um
The world really needs a few more Carl Sagans. Ever since his passing, there's really no one willing to responsibly "popularize" science.
Re:Carl Sagan? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Carl Sagan? (Score:4, Interesting)
I cant think of his name for the life of me. I know he was an academic big shot, and he had a handful of grad students falling him around like he was Jesus. But he basically came in and gave the best 90 minute lecture I've ever heard about what a crock and phony David Suzuki is.
He opened with a slide showing a quiet stream, with a great big "No Fishing" sign. And he said "2 months ago, David Suzuki was fishing 20 feet downstream from here"
He cut through the man like a hot knife through butter. He picked apart all of Suzuki's papers, his show (Nature of Things).
When I went in, I thought Suzuki was a brilliant scientist. When it was over, Suzuki was an obvious environmental zealot who spouts pseudoscience and conjecture as fact.
I figure this is on topic. Suzuki makes science 'entertaining', but most of what he says isnt correct, or proven through research.
It fits in perfect with this topic - because one of the things I remember the lecturer saying was "Real science doesnt get you a show on prime time - not even on the CBC"
Re:Carl Sagan? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Carl Sagan? (Score:3, Insightful)
"He opened with a slide showing a quiet stream, with a great big "No Fishing" sign. And he said "2 months ago, David Suzuki was fishing 20 feet downstream from here" "
makes the lecturer seem very, very unproffessional. Ad-hominem arguments are a logical fallacy, and he should've know better. Given that (as you mentioned), he had people following him around like Jesus, and that apparently the entire lecture audience was willing to overlook his gross unproffessionalism, I'd say Suzuki wasn't the only one lacking critical thinking ability. This guy sounds like a snake-oil salesman.
This remind of of Igor & (grichka) bogdanoff s (Score:2)
Re:Carl Sagan? (Score:2)
Re:Carl Sagan? (Score:2)
With those two antecedents, I could hope that some journalist could do a comparable job reporting on this kind of topics, I can't say if there one now.
Re:Carl Sagan? (Score:3, Interesting)
The world needs a damn sight more than "a few more" Carl Sagans. I'm an archaeologist, and though archaeology isn't exactly a science, it suffers from the same kind of problems that most sciences do - namely, that most of its practicioners become so deeply invested in whatever esoteric topic that their research is directly concerned with, that they forget how to connect the little piece they are working on back to the big picture. Moreover, they then also fail to communicate the importance of the big picture back to general audiences.
Archaeology is a particularly interesting example of this phenomenon. After all, archaeology is all about exploration and the understanding of the ancient past, right? What could be more interesting? Nevertheless, only about
Internet works great (Score:5, Insightful)
yes, here's an example: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't expect any geek tabloids to get into my supermarket within the next two decades.
Yes it can be entertaining... (Score:5, Informative)
It just takes the right person, and the right subject. Not all science is for everyone. Space people might not care for the science of bugs for instance.
Re:Yes it can be entertaining... (Score:2)
When I was young, I used to watch a lot of Nature of Things, and 3-2-1 Contact (a great children's science show on PBS). If I'm not mistaken, Bob McDonald also had a kids science show on the CBC on weekends. Watched that too!
Re:Yes it can be entertaining... (Score:2)
Re:Yes it can be entertaining... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yes it can be entertaining... (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is that he was a recluse, or rumored to be one. It was also rumored that he only taught one single 700 level grad course a year since no one ever found his course in the thick course catalog. For that matter, no one saw him on campus, in the library, in the labs, etc, either. Ever.
As a result, when I was at Cornell (7-8 years ago), at the beginning of the fall semester there was always an annual game - "Who spots Sagan on campus first".
So interesting and informative weblog from Sagan? Maybe. Interesting and informative in a class/on campus/in person? Who knows?!?
May he rest in peace with the stars, however.
hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Skeptical Inquirer [csicop.org] and Skeptic Magazine [skeptic.com] do a good job.
Unfortunately there are magazines based on pseudoscience that make it to the bookshelves; not only the crystal-waving, aura-reading kind, but even a few that seem on the surface to be legitimate scientific publications, until you see the bizarre anti-environmentalism or cold fusion stuff.
The internet is a blessing and a curse (Score:4, Interesting)
The blessing is smart people will keep looking for answers even after they've found an "answer" they were looking for.
http://www.badastronomy.com/ [badastronomy.com]
Re:The internet is a blessing and a curse (Score:3, Interesting)
pseudoscience (Score:5, Insightful)
These publications are great, but they're preaching to the converted.
I think the biggest problem is that education tends to emphasize rote memorization, which stunts students' critical thinking skills. If you make it all an exercise in regurgitation, then everything becomes an appeal to authority. Well, who's to say that your high school chemistry teacher is more of an authority that the person who writes the feng shui column in the LA Times? Hey, the feng shui columnist makes more money, so isn't he probably smarter than your chem teacher, who drives an '89 Celebrity?
Another problem is that science educators don't always know as much about this kind of stuff as they should. Physics teachers should know that Newton did alchemy, but they should also know that he did not, as the urban folktale would have you believe, practice astrology. They should know that acupuncture works, but they should also know that it works just as well if you ignore the complicated charts and just insert a needle in a random place. They should know the difference between "intelligent design" creationism and the "young-earth" version, so they can be prepared to refute creationist arguments.
Re:hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
His weekly column is put out by the American Physical Society, and is quite readable.
Aside from printing crazy formulas and such (Score:3, Interesting)
Any one else like the dire impact of pure scince placed in to science's words. It hurts my head to read it, but I must be learning some thing right?
Use good examples (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides, it's a great magazine to have lying up on your desk, half read ;-)
The Media is Worthless (Score:4, Interesting)
AOL Time Warner vs. Microsoft
News:
AOL - CNN
MS - MSNBC
ISPs:
AOL - AOL
MS - MSN
Travel:
AOL - Travelocity
MSNBC - Expedia
The list goes on and on...
Oh.. I'm sorry.. did I say theory....
Re:The Media is Worthless (Score:2)
But you don't have to get your news there, you can go right to the source. Read the Reuters Trust Principles [reuters.com]. The majority of "retail" news outlets (TV, paper, web, etc) actually buy their news in a raw and objective form from a "wholesale" news service like Reuters (or Dow Jones or AP) then put their own editorial slant on it.
(Disclaimer: I am a Reuters employee, but not on the news side).
Seed Magazine (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Seed Magazine (Score:2)
Science News (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Science News (Score:2, Interesting)
i prefer the glossy wow-factor of scientific american, but yeah, science news [sciencenews.org] is really good too. i've never met anyone else who's even heard of it! my dad's been reading that magazine for as long as i can remember, and is constantly sending me copies of their articles.
he works for the fish and wildlife department of a big power supplier. SN's level of reporting is very appropriate for someone like him: not a professional scientist, but with a lot of scientific background.
Re:Science News (Score:2)
Another good science magazine is Natural History [amnh.org], which combines excellent columns (Stephen Jay Gould wrote a regular column until 2000) with very good natural science reporting and most importantly, bloody gorgeous photos. Their articles are frequently written by the researchers and I find them quite approachable.
(I have to admit though, when I look at the pictures of monkeys in the current issue's article on Vietnam, all I can think of is the stewed monkey brains from the Temple of Doom.)
can it do a better job? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:can it do a better job? (Score:3, Informative)
Simple answer (Score:3, Interesting)
Ramp it up (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's have more of this. In printed media, it is very difficult to write about science in a way that really presents the data properly while being open to the lay-person, but some attempt should be made to explain the details so that the article can be widely understood while at the same time being truly informative. In online media, on the other hand, there's no reason the basic article shouldn't have hypertext on every other word, linking to other articles on the same subject, so that a person can actually educate themselves enough to understand the article properly.
I'm a geek, and so I may be a little off track, but almost everyone liked Sesame Street, and almost everyone liked Mr. Rogers. We're learning creatures, and I think if you give a person the ability to use scientific literature to do a little creative learning, that all by itself will be entertaining.
~SL
Re:Ramp it up (Score:2)
for more information, consult this book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai
More significantly than a Science Show... (Score:5, Interesting)
I give a big thumbs up to Pen & Teller's new show 'Bullshit' on Showtime. They apply their... well... style to any issue, from the realitites of bottled water to creationism. It is all underlined by critical thinking skills without beating you on the head with it. And, it is very, very, entertaining.
No they can't. (Score:5, Interesting)
New Scientist is the closest I've found to interesting reading coupled with good science, but even that gets pretty fluffy at times. The BBC generally cover science stories with a 'look what the madcap boffins are up to now, what a waste of their time' angle, and most science journals are aimed at scientists so are dull to the non-scientist.
Re: has it's moments, but generally... (Score:2, Interesting)
After having bought NS every issue for a year or two, I stopped at the point when it only gave me enough reading matter for about 10 minutes, and that was cover to cover browsing for something worthwhile.
I find it far more interesting to spend time doing research into any issues that come p that I am interested in, chiefly online, which does of course necessitate the use of a damn good bullshit detector.
As for science journals, they are good for that research, you only read the bit you're interested in, and you're going to get a hell of a lot more, useful, information than from any media story on the issue.
The media either dumbs things down, takes things that aren't true/possible, or as you said of the BBC, talks about utter bullshit research some 'scientist' carried out in his 'lab'.
for scientist see: idiot
for lab see: garden shed/garage
Re: has it's moments, but generally... (Score:2)
I make sure that I send an email of complaint to the producer of any programme which wheels out the self-publicising Captain Cyborg [theregister.co.uk]. I think the 'PM' programme has twigged, as we haven't heard from him since his ludicrous child chipping, or 'we're-going-to-mutilate-a-child-but-meanwhile-le
Re:New Scientist (Score:2)
A better question would be... (Score:2)
It doesn't seem so if there is the possibility of profit by withholding or distorting information.
Slashdot is part of the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Your link on "Crackpot" isn't so crazy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot is part of the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Press releases are easy, cheap content (Score:5, Interesting)
No, not by design (Score:2)
Reading or watching responsible, well done journalism is a duty we all have. Without the performance of this duty, we hand over power to those that would do great harm to us.
Myth of the lone scientist... (Score:5, Informative)
I noticed this in several books I read about complexity some years back --- they all featured the same cast of characters, with the same spin on how they labored alone in obscurity to develop their ideas. After a while, I felt like I was reading the work of a Hollywood PR consultant who specializes in branding the "scientific persona". In contrast, economist W. Brian Arthur's own account of his research focused on how he got inspiration for his ideas from working with Russian mathematicians.
I do think it's possible to weave a compelling narrative out of scientific ideas, it's just harder.
My first inductee into the science journalism "Hall of Shame" would have to be The Double Helix by James Watson, which I enjoyed immensely the first time I read it (shortly after high school) and horrified me the second time I read it (shortly after grad school). Not only is The Double Helix an abominable exercise is self-aggrandizement, Watson proudly recounts their underhanded attempts to gain access to another researcher's work without her knowledge or consent, and of course, without giving her credit later, even though it involved an outright lie in a letter to Nature.
Here's a review of a biography Rosalind Franklin, THe Dark Lady of DNA [sciam.com] by Brenda Maddox in Scientific American.
Not with copyrights (Score:2)
In a copyright market the information that gets the most attention is the most valuable no matter how worthless it is intellectually, in a non copyright market we would put ourselves in a position that doesn't reward industries that push hype over substance in the same way. Not that there wouldn't be stupid TV or movies out there, but they wouldn't be worth hundreds of millions and they wouldn't be shoved down out throat from every part of our culture.
Just because they say copyrights are an incentive to create, does not mean that they are an incentive to create things that are intellectually and socially valuable. I think as society moves into the information age we really need to rethink the need for copyright monopolies.
One big difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but can it be entertaining and ACCURATE? (Score:3, Insightful)
A journalists job is to digest complex facts and regurgitate them so that their lay audience can comprehend them. Pure science is full of complex symbols and formulas that only specialists with years of training can understand. Journalese, which is just plain spoken word, is not equipped to handle the fine symbolic details of science. Therefore, it can only provide loose approximations of theory.
So a journalist can write: the planets revolve around the sun in elliptical orbits with slight deviations due to...blah blah blah. Sure that's responsible journalism. And it's very useful to those of us who don't want to research calculus to get a lay person's understanding of the path planets take around the sun. However, it doesn't come close to the accuracy of the mathematical formulas that describe the path of the planets. But who the hell is going to want to read and study a bunch of formulas while reading the New York Times Science section? Not me. The journalist must sacrifice accuracy for readability/entertainment reasons.
But there is nothing irresponsible at all about making rough approximations to help keep an article light and entertaining. I mean, can you really consider it irresonsible to not be as accurate as you can possibly be? Consider that all of our knowledge comes from rough approximations delivered to us by our senses and equipment. Since they are only approximations, does it mean we must throw out all that we know? Is all of science, then, irresponsible because its measuring devices have tolerances?
Re:Sure, but can it be entertaining and ACCURATE? (Score:2)
A very interesting point here, reminds me of an interview of a BBC science reporter I read sometime back. The reporter apparently was an Eng Lit major, so the interviewer asked her if she found it difficult to switch disciplines. Her answer was curious; she said yes, while in Eng Lit, you can get away by saying that, to paraphrase her example, John Keats had scrambled eggs for breakfast, in science, you'll need hard facts to prove that.
Will certainly help if more journalists (and indeed, readers) are aware of this distinction. (Of course, having said that, I must say that I've crossed the boundary myself a couple of times; one of my project reports was half in verse. :-D )
The media isn't the problem...the readers are (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The media isn't the problem...the readers are (Score:3, Insightful)
Duke, you lost me at the first sentence. You're modded 5 and I still couldn't/didn't read you. Whitespace. It's free. It's not fattening. It's not against anyones religion that I'm aware of. Either hit return or toss in a few <p> tags. Seriously, until I hit the paste button and went to work with the dots, I DIDN'T READ YOUR POST.
Now, chances are you just misposted plain text as 'html formatted' and got burned, but your post shows a bit of what is wrong with scientists versus the media:
Having a good message isn't enough to DEMAND attention. You still have to sort of 'market' your message. Don't blame the readers if the message is unappetizing. That's like criticizing people for preferring filet mignon over gruel.
I'm a physicist. I'm told regularly that I'm a great teacher and writer. In other words, I communicate ideas well. You just didn't. Ignoring (for a moment) the substance of your post, you failed to communicate effectively. Tech journals largely fail, too. And it isn't a matter of dumbing down the language. Einstein said it best when he said that anyone that couldn't teach their ideas to a twelve-year-old was a charlatan. While I suspect he was 10% wrong (some brilliant people can't write well), most people don't try hard enough, but blame the world for not seeing their brilliance despite it being mired in goopy writing.
From what I've seen, a good researcher is rare. A good teacher is equally rare. A good researcher that can communicate cleverly and remain technically precise is rarer than a thunderbolt on a blue-sky day. Feynman's Freshman Physics lectures to CalTech [alibris.com] are a damn good example. That said, even for the 1 in a million that can do these things well, crisp writing takes lots of extra effort. It isn't worth the effort when writing for an audience of knowing peers, which means PhysRev shouldn't waste it's time trying to be Discovery For Kids.
(Yeah, I ignored the whole tarpit of overpriced peer-review-journals [google.com] on purpose. Many go there, none return).
Next, you say we should fix other stuff before fixing the issue at hand. I say work on them all at once:
- Demand more of the media. Complain and ridicule writers of goop or out-and-out wrongness.
- I do think we're gaining ground in terms of the quality of science writing and writers' ability to balance readability and technical correctness. This belief comes from asking my non-techie, non-scientist friends and family.
- I'd like a primetime engineering company show instead of another one about lawyers. I'd say this was more boring than watching paint dry based on my day, but I know how lame most lawyers' days are and look how little that matters to TV writers. I'm willing to risk the (well-known) back edge of this two-edged sword just to improve respect of science and engineering and gain a venue for day-in, day-out presentation of smart science, good engineering, etc. As much as ER creates armchair doctors, it also repeatedly reinforces the wisdom of consulting experts when needed and gives the profession added public respect for it's hard work.
- We need more science-for-poets/politicians courses taught well to nonscientists to gain their trust and respect. Otherwise, people that flunked algebra are going to be making tech policy without our advice. Anyone wanna bet on Senator Disney^H^H^H^H^H Hollings' science grades?
- We seem to finally be exploring populist mechanisms for making science/engineering cooler and more relevant for students.
While I understand that BattleBots isn't good science and I cringe at the idea of building robots that hack at each other, I respect their ability to give engineering and and electronics and other unpopular topics an air of popularity and coolness. If I were a nerdy teen again, I'd at least gain respect because my designs for killer robots actually worked. Better than battlebots is is the national robotics competition that my nephew is in. It's spearheaded by Dean Kamen (what's it's name, anyone? First?!).As for the lack of whitespace in your post, it could have been worse. ItCouldHaveBeenTheEvenMoreFrighten ingLandOfNoWhitespaceAtAll. Hungarian Notation meets flamewar.
And we all know there's only one thing worse than that... no, not all lowercase and no whitespace... Worst of all are those really big german adjectives. Like the one for this tank [geckosoup.com]
Yeah, I know...this started out screaming to be modded offtopic, troll and etc. I've edited the hell out of it since then, so now I'm on point. Still, I'm not grabbin the karma bonus, but I'll at least sign my name 'cuz this stuff matters and I did try to be funny. Whadda I know, it's 4 am... well, it was when I started. Now, it's daylight outside.
No way (Score:4, Interesting)
One major problem is that the state of science education, at least in the southeast United States, is pretty horrible. There are kids in college who don't know what DNA is, believe hoverboards are real, think creationism is as valid a theory as evolution, and think science is just a "religion". So the local newspaper tends to water down all the science stories (they're writing to, generally, a fifth grade reading level). In magazines, following human nature in distrusting what they cannot understand, they write articles that scoff or raise fear of science and scientists.
Another problem is that science often tends to be dull to the average person. It's not usually the ground-breaking theory that advance science so finding out that some particle doesn't decay as theory suggests would probably not make any headlines.
Can Jounalism Be Responsible? (Score:2)
Perhaps that should be "Can journalism be responsible?"
Science and pseudoscience... (Score:3, Interesting)
In particular, journalism should enable people to separate science from pseudoscience. I get very irritated when I see TV programs that show unexplained phenomena for sensationalistic reasons and simply leave them unexplained, leaving the audience to construct their own scientific explanations.
It is absolutely ridiculous to believe that in this day and age, there are still people who believe that the earth was created in seven days. (Contrast a similar culture, Europe, where such an idea would be laughed out of existence!) What's even more disturbing is the dangerous hubris of 'scientific' explanations using the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. There should be TV programs that carefully decontstruct these pseudo-scientific explanations and shoot them down.
In the larger scheme of things though, why do people even subscribe to notions of parapsychological phenomena, the occult and the like? I have heard various explanations ranging from disillusionment with the scientific community to the search for Something Deeper (tm). I think it is because the scientific community might not be doing enough to dispel such crap out of common social discourse. Why should one only look to the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet for science? Why don't mainstream generic-content channels devote time away from ultimately pointless pop culture crap to debunking popular myths and misconceptions?
Re:Creationism in Europe (Score:2, Interesting)
One of my housemates (who is Northern Irish) is a fervent believer in a literal seven days creation. I didn't discover this until I'd shared a house with him for a while - it came up in conversation with another housemate.
Now, I'm a Christian. I believe in a more metaphorical interpretation of Genesis. But no one laughed at him. I respect his strength of belief, even though I personally don't believe that's how it happened.
I realise your comment was rather off-the-cuff, but thought it was worth pointing out that it isn't just the US where people have these 'preposterous' beliefs.
Re:Science and pseudoscience... (Score:2)
Any system may not decrease its entropy without an input of work.
In fact, the laws of thermodynamics and physics should be emblazoned on the walls of the US Patent Office. I bet they'd reduce the workload of faulty patents by tenfold.
Hmmmmmm.. YES (Score:2, Funny)
In a nutshell... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's invaluable when it's good, it's depressing when it's bad. It's often put in the wrong hands (propagandized) and this causes entanglememts.
How can it better communicate to the general public about science and the scientific method?
it can start by stopping using the phrase "the scientific method" as if scientists don white coats, head into the lab at 9 and by using test tubes and computers, discover gravity by 5 and head home to smoke their pipes. The scientific method can be boiled down to simple steps: observe, measure, predict. Repeat as needed, and each consecutive time 'observe' serces as 'verify' and the ball starts rolling again.
Can science journalism do a better job of helping people distinguish science from pseudoscience?"
It had better, and damn soon, or else the dowsers and the channelers will be running things in short time. Overly technical sci/tech journalism turns things off - then folks glue themseves to overly-simplified, dumbed-down, corner-cutting explanations of crop circles, aliens, and (insert your favorite FOX show here).
Ask Randi, Mike Shermer, call John McPhee and the likes of Steve Pinker, Steve Hawking and a bunch of others.
More soon, but there's a roast duck coming out of the oven and the keyboard doesn't do drool all that well.
Hmm.. (Score:2)
Well, you could have the female reporters display more of their anatomy...
Should journalism be entertainig at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
Entertaining journalism may appeal to a wide audience, but obviously at the cost of some journalistic integrity. It's obvious that networks such as Fox News are far more concerned with ratings than with reporting what's truely significant. I don't mean to be cold hearted but one mexican girl gets a botched transplant and it makes headlines. What about the other million people that died that day? The editors decided those stories weren't as popular.
Real journalism is about reporting information in an efficient manner. We can evaluate journalism by the signal to noise ratio. In my hometown newspaper, which is roughly 75% ads, there is really only 25% left for real news. And most of that is filled up with crap.
I guess I really try to draw a line between work and play. Reading the paper, watching the news, that's work. That isn't supposed to be entertaining. I might enjoy it, but that doesn't make it play. I enjoy it BECAUSE I'm aquireing information. If the information is diluted to male it more "entertaining", my enjoyment is lessened. Play is playing CS or watching Cowboy Bebop. That's what entertainment should be.
Perhaps there is space for entertaining journalism. I do enjoy the political comics, sometimes, and Doonsbury. And like I said I do get a kick out of O'Reilly. But that stuff is the desert, not the healthy meal. Don't forget that.
Re:Should journalism be entertainig at all? (Score:2)
This raises Michael Crichton's epiphanic point about us living in an age of boredom. Can't find the link now, they've reorganised his home page, but we are living in an age where the topmost question on everyone's minds is not "where will I get the next meal" or "how can I help mankind" but "how can I pass the next hour without being bored". Attention spans are shortening, class presentations have to be entertaining, policy discussions need to be finished in 3 minutes or couch potatoes switch channels.
Yes, I agree; the only way, methinks, to save science from this dumbing down is by separating serious science from entertainment.
Slippery Slope (Score:2)
However, just like regular journalism, it's going to fall under certain temptations: to give the audience what they want. The flash and fireworks that don't actually mean anything, but people can't get enough of. The scientific equivelent of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman breaking up.
And sometimes psudo-science can have more flash than the real thing... after all it often promices the world but gives nothing.
I think the way to keep people's interest isn't through the information, but the presentation. Good writing can make almost anything interesting. I had a biology class and a chemestry class in the same year back in high school. My biology teacher was incredibly interesting, and the chemestry teacher was boring as hell. Guess which class I did better in?
A while back the BBC put out a series of "edutainment" shows about space staring Sam Neill called Space. That was both interesting and educational.
Science reporting for Idiots (Score:2, Informative)
One word..."Connections" (Score:2)
A more accurate question (Score:2)
This bias may or may not revolve around questions like "How to make a buck off this *now*", or even "This just doesn't fit into our current schene, and we invested the last 100 yrs/$xxx dollars into our current scheme!!!"
It sucks to say this but IMHO the practice of science in the USA is being seriously fubar'd by the ROI and the political types. Meanwhile, the Japanese and the Euros continue to blow our doors off within pure research, simply because:
They didn't tie their research funding into their political processes, or much else, for that matter. Rather, private citizens in the form of corporations (if necessary) fund such research and development out-of-pocket. More power to them if they can make a buck that way.
Zaurus and Treo come to mind.
CERN comes to mind, even.
So anyway, my opinion as a native US citizen is that the method of funding pure research in this country is seriously fubar'd
No they can't (Score:3, Insightful)
They print crap that they haven't bothered to research and verify the facts of and yet it is something so trivial to verify. I would much rather that the general media didn't touch the scientific stories as they can't even get "human interest" or book reviews correct. Ever read any of the books the New York lists in their Notable Books list? Didn't think so as nobody else did either.
Write for your target audience (Score:2)
It's still a vast wasteland (Score:2)
It's hard to do good science reporting because the reports have to understand what science IS. The fast majority of journalists seem to have taken the bare minimum of courses related to science and still mistake science for engineering. They see science as memorizing facts instead of a process of discovery. Until that changes we won't have science reporting worth diddly squat.
I Sure Hope Science Journalism Can Be Both (Score:2)
They cover the wrong subject in the wrong way (Score:2, Insightful)
I see a lot of science articles from The New York Times [nytimes.com], especially linked to on slashdot, but when I read the articles I generally think they are awful. The reason is that reading them gives you no substantive understanding of the science that is going on. They often seem to choose subjects like string theory or loop quantum gravity, which are extremely complex, and then try to explain them at an elementary school science level. This is simply a futile endevor and they end up saying basically nothing. I am working on my Ph.D. in theoretical physics and even I can't often tell from the article what the theory claims, and often I know of several theories they might be talking about and am not even sure which one it is because the coverage is so vague. I can't see how anyone could read these and getting anything of use from them. Frankly I don't know how you could explain string theory to someone at such a basic level, even in an entire book, much less a news paper article. Especially when even many physicists (myself included) don't know that much about it.
I think they should really focus on science they can explain, and make sure to explain how these things are based in fact and come from experimental evidence. This is the basis of the difference between science and pseudoscience. Bob Park [bobpark.com], a frequent crusader against pseudoscience, hypothesises that these insubstantial, vague accounts of outlandish modern physics that are often given to laymen make science sound basically indistinguishable from pseudoscience, and thus help bolster beleif in pseudoscience. I'm not sure I beleive this, but I do think it's a possibility. A good example is an author I heard interviewed who wrote a book about how ESP could be based on quantum entanglement. This is an absurd claim if you know anything about entanglement and quantum decoherence, but does sound sort of reasonable if you just take some very vague notions about quantum mechanics (namely, it's hell-a-weird).
Does good science make interesting journalism? Well, I think a lot of it can if it's well told, because science is fundementally a mystery story, and most people like mysteries. Just look at the success of CSI [cbs.com]. I think we must stick to work that has widely acknoledged validity, though, and to work which is experimentally grounded. We must also get through that when you read "A Breif History of Time" you are not getting the whole picture. Gernally, being ignorant of something is far less hazzardous when you're aware of your ignorance.
Gives me some ideas.... (Score:2)
I don't know...Perhaps an anti-X-Files show where the Dana Scully type character is the one that is always right, whilst the other agent who believes in every weird is always wrong...Yet the explanations can be still be fascinating.
Unfortuantely it seems that the media cannot think outside their own self imposed box with regards to this as they seem to believe real science to be bad on the screen...I'm not so sure about this in every case.
StarTux
I miss "The Sciences" magazine (Score:2)
Media and readers not the problem, advertisers are (Score:3, Insightful)
Truth/fact = buzzkill! (Score:2)
Standard deviation (Score:2)
But I wish in mainstream, and even in the slightly more scientific areas (new scientist etc), they would back up percentages with standard deviation, or variance.
I cannot stand seeing some statistic without even a very rough idea of its distribution.
Other than hiring me to write... (Score:2)
Seriously, people need to know what they are talking about, and almost no science journalists do. Since about half of scientists speak through their ass anyway, you must have writers that can cut through the crap and differentiate between what is real science, and what is some theorist's pipe/wet dream they are using to get funding this week.
Oh yeah, they have to be able to write too. Unfortunately most journalists can't do that either.
SetupWeasel
75 Monkeys down.... infinity to go.
Yes it can.... and in a huge way (Score:2, Interesting)
Science journalism is a wonderful thing for forwarding discussions, publishing findings and debating top minds in the field about your scientific ideas. Unfortunately, it is slow, expensive to buy if you're in the private sector, and (necessarily) written to a target audience, which is generally the other top brains in your sub-sub-sub-discipline.
How can it better communicate to the general public about science and the scientific method?
How can't it? I worked as a geological assistant for 4 years in a government funded marine geology and geophysics institution. Not only did I get to play with cool toys, but I had to proofread dozens of papers (not to mention all the ones for my courses) for all the bigwig scientists there. Just for fun, I would instant-message various paragraphs from these papers to my buddies (all university grads) and try to see if they could figure them out. They couldn't. It's impossible. Every discipline invents its own language of jargon. This makes it impossible for media to read it. Therefore, when being interviewed, scientists always "boil it down" for the public, and try to add some hook, often based in science fiction, to bring popularity to their research. And you wonder why the media can't report it properly? Because they can't read it! There should be more journals devoted to explaining new findings in everyday language that people can understand if they want to communicate it better!
Can science journalism do a better job of helping people distinguish science from pseudoscience?
Of course... you can always do things better. In this case, stop trying to add the "hooks". It only fuels rumor. Don't say "we teleported something!" when what really happened was they destroyed a photon, measured it and reconstructed it. The media can't even get Einstein's famous lines right...how can they distinguish the difference between that and teleporting matter?
Obvious pseudoscience needs to be publicly questioned in an entertaining way, so that frauds and mistakes are exposed and popularized. Whenever pseudoscience is ridiculed in the literature, it's done in jargon and subtlety. We need some scientist reality show, where they test each other's theories and the winners get to go on a date or something. Hilarity ensues!
I write TV science shows... (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality is, it simply doesn't matter how "good" a show is if no one watches it. In fact, an otherwise high-quality show that fails to be interesting to millions of people can poison the well for other shows down the line. Discovery, PBS, National Geographic, take your pick; they're all in a perpetual scramble for eyeballs. No one at any of these places has yet figured out a fail-safe algorithm for finding and producing shows that people will watch without clicking through to the next channel. All they know is that the most-watched shows hook viewers emotionally. If they don't see the potential for that in your proposal, it ends up in the circular file.
I don't lament this. We live in an economically free, market-driven society. Ideas and stories, like other products, compete among each other for our money and (especially in television) our time. A lot of the comments I read above implied that if we as a society could only impose, from the top down, a grand realignment of the values we place on science and knowledge, our science journalism would become both smarter and more mainstream. Fine, as long as we're at it, let's also impose from the top down a hunger for good government, spiritual advancement, and healthy living. All admirable goals, but unfortunately, utopias are far easier to applaud than they are to implement. Kind of like software development schedule utopias. (*cough, cough*)
So back here on planet Earth, pragmatists chip away at problems from the bottom up. Successful science shows and journalism seek to tap the emotions of viewers, knowing that if you win their hearts, their minds follow. To that end, these are the goals of a good science journalist: to not only inform, but reveal; to not only show how things work, but to incite strong feelings that this knowledge is important and sometimes even miraculous; to make clear that this world of disconnected parts is actually connected beneath the surface by beautiful and unifying principles; to show that if you understand why a whip cracks you also understand why an F15 booms and a nuclear reactor glows in blue Cherenkov light under water. And just as importantly, to also make science seem as much a natural and exciting part of life as getting laid, carving on a snowboard, fighting with your brother, and watching Shawshank Redemption for the third time. Connection.
I did a show and a website [pbs.org] on El Nino for NOVA a few years back. (Yes, it told a human story as well as a scientific story.) It was re-broadcast in Germany last year, and four million people watched it. I sit here at my desk sometimes and think about that kind of thing, and I have never gotten used to it. I read, I think, I drink coffee, and then I type while I play mp3s. In other words, I'm pretty much like the rest of the crowd here on Slashdot. Yet sometimes, the ideas embodied in those keystrokes end up being injected into four million skulls. Trust me, the responsibility you feel to use that privilege wisely and effectively is enormous. Maybe that's what evangelical Christians feel when they hear the "good news" and want to spread it.
It's knee-jerk easy to say we need less Joe Millionaire and Britney, and more NOVA and JYW. However, this ignores the reality that we are complex social primates driven far more by emotion than Western science has traditionally admitted. Even a solitary, consuming interest in science is ultimately an emotional urge. Are you hankering to prove Fermat's Last Theorem, uncover the faint traces of Pluto somewhere among fifty thousand starfield photographs, or invent a way of copying fragments of DNA? Andrew Wiles, Clyde Tombaugh, and Kary Mullis each threw themselves into science not because they were excited by university labs, jargon, and academic papers, but because they fell in love with their ideas, pined and trembled for them, stayed up late and got up early in hopes of seeing if they could use them to recast the way we see the world. The rest of it is just window dressing.
Unfortunately, many people were inoculated against science in school the way they were inoculated against Shakespeare. After something's been forced down your throat like cod liver oil, you lose your taste for it. (I still remember my old physics teacher's dandruff, droning voice, and drudgerous lab assignments.)
There is an antidote. I said it earlier, but it bears repeating. If you win their hearts, their minds will follow. The best science shows are the ones that make viewers feel caught up, and emotionally invested in, the underlying science story. If you're a good writer, you find a way to do this naturally, from the bottom up. It turns out that Aristotle's dramatic principles apply to science stories like any other flavor of story. The shitty shows I've seen (and they are legion) try to fake it. You can tell when the people who made them did it for money, not love. Ultimately, in this business, you either love what you're writing about...or you're a hack.
So the question was, "Can science journalism be entertaining and responsible?" In other words, can science journalism thrill your heart as well as your head? Kinda like asking if your girlfriend can be both entertaining and responsible, can give your, ummm, heart a shiver as well as your mind. If she can't...better change the channel.
Speaking to Princess Di from beyond the grave... (Score:2)
stats (Score:2)
Not that I want to make any kind of a political statement for or against anything here, nor to beat up any religion or creed. Well not most. It is just that relatively few people seem to be able to analyze documents or to understand basic scientific realities.
It might be interesting if there was a free resource which parents could use to teach their kids and they could stay a story or lesson ahead. They could read some interesting things about astronomy or SETI and then pass on the spark of interest to their children.
Of course this would be good for computer science too, it is just that most people replace concentrated analysis with a street smartsy "I don't trust [insert your personality/company/government official here]". And computers for example are generally seen (for good reason) as big silly blobs of sometimes idiotic, and often near-obsolete, rules and responses.
So instead of understanding the basics of information technology the user is often reduced to ("it always does this.." or "I can never get it to..") and most scientific artifacts accessible in daily life have computer systems embedded in them at one layer or another.
Pseudo-science journalism (Score:2)
The solution is not to improve science reporting, its to stop pseudo-science reporting from masquerading as hard evidence. How? Perhaps there should be a legal presumption in factual reporting that readers are likely to trust what they are reading and act on it. Therefore journalists owe their readers a duty of care, and if they misreport the facts to the readers detriment (e.g. by praising some quack treatment) then they should be liable.
Paul.
Re:it depends on how you define entertainment? (Score:2)