Reporters often struggle with how to handle dissenting views on subjects where the science is settled, such as climate change or vaccinations. Should the opposing viewpoints be included with an explanation that they aren't considered valid? Maybe not, a blog post by Matt Shipman suggests. Summarizing recent research, Shipman writes that "introducing a second viewpoint makes the first scientist seem less credible – even if the second viewpoint is clearly discredited."
Issues in science writing
He's back, trying one more time to put his plagiarist/fabulist past behind him, but Daniel Engber isn't buying the latest version of Jonah Lehrer: "His career has not been destroyed, nor has he apologized for the full extent of his mistakes. This master storyteller did not wander in the wilderness and find some inner peace. He disappeared into the bushes, licked his wounds, and re-emerged with another, even more bewitching tale — the story of his own redemption."
As a new presidential campaign begins, Jay Rosen writes about the hard choices facing reporters who cover the candidates' views on climate change: "As more and more journalists come to the conclusion that they should no longer take seriously the arguments of 'someone who believes the entire field of study is built on a pillar of sand,' the Republican presidential field has more and more of these someones, and candidates who often flirt with that position. What to do?"
Fluoridated water is a "a public health quagmire" where the important questions might seem long-settled. But now HealthNewsReview.org has posted a guest review of a Newsweek article on a study suggesting a link between fluoridation and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Canadian pharmaceutical policy researcher Alan Cassels writes: "One thing is for sure: this study reminds us that what we know, or think we know, about public health measures might be wrong."
Public radio has relied on philanthropy for years. but for mainstream journalism, foundation money is a recent development, one that can raise questions about the source's motives and the recipient's neutrality, Lene Bech Sillesen writes: "When a funder and his or her funded reporting come down on the same side of an issue, even if completely arbitrarily, it’s no surprise that people start questioning the difference between sponsored reporting and sponsored content."
An anti-GMO non-profit files public records requests with four universities asking for correspondence between researchers and several chemical companies. Scientists object that the requests amount to harassment. Anna Clark writes that there is no easy answer here: "Call it the shadow side of sunlight laws. While open records requests are designed to protect press freedom, they also make it possible for people who oppose certain scientific viewpoints to exploit them."
The Pew Research Center has released more results from its survey of 3,748 American-based scientists, this time showing that a strong majority (87%) think they should engage in public policy debates. However, almost as many (79%) "believe it is a major problem for science that news reports don’t distinguish between well-founded and not well-founded scientific findings." More from Kris Hickman at the Association of Health Care Journalists.
Joel Achenbach writes about why some educated people reject science on everything from fluoridation to climate change: "The 'science communication problem,' as it’s blandly called by the scientists who study it, has yielded abundant new research into how people decide what to believe — and why they so often don’t accept the scientific consensus." One factor: "People tend to use scientific knowledge to reinforce beliefs that have already been shaped by their worldview."
The Des Moines Register writes about a researcher’s plea deal for faking the results of his AIDS vaccine research. The Boston Globe reports on a Harvard researcher who published false data in Nature. Anna Clark compliments both but laments that no one connects the dots in these stories: "In classic newspaper tradition, they are covering them as local stories rather than as data points in a national narrative, even though they cumulatively point to a larger issue."
Did you see that story blaming two-thirds of cancer risk on bad luck rather than bad genes? Well, Bob O’Hara and GrrlScientist have some criticisms: "These headlines, and the stories, are just bollocks," they write. "The work, which is very interesting, showed no such thing." Their post explains that the study's authors were only trying to explain variation in cancer risk, not absolute risk: "[The data] says nothing about the proportion of cancers due to cell division."