{"id":695,"date":"2006-10-10T10:54:48","date_gmt":"2006-10-10T10:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/10\/the-hard-life-of-science-journ\/"},"modified":"2006-10-10T10:54:48","modified_gmt":"2006-10-10T10:54:48","slug":"the-hard-life-of-science-journ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/10\/the-hard-life-of-science-journ\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hard Life of Science Journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a weird example of synchronicity, Dr. Free-Ride posted about science journalism<\/a> yesterday, and Inside Higher Ed<\/cite> offers a viewpoint piece by Michael Bugeja<\/a> on the same topic this morning. You might almost think it was one of those “meme” things.<\/p>\n

They both agree that there’s a problem with science reporting, but come at the problem from different ends. Bugeja is mostly concerned with the supply side of the problem, talking about the difficulties scientists have with communicating to the public:<\/p>\n

\n

These professors rank among the most ingenious, passionate people I have ever met.<\/p>\n

Put some of them in front of a reporter, however, and all bets are off.<\/p>\n

Being misquoted in the media is commonplace, especially when the topic concerns science. Depending on the error, a quotation out of context can catapult a scientist into the national spotlight where the person gets to clarify the remarks and do it again, only this time for a mass audience.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Janet, on the other hand, has a crazy idea for attacking the problem from the demand side:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

If there were an actual clamor for science reporting that was detailed, informative, and grounded in fact — a clamor not just from scientists but from the people, speaking in large numbers — then news organizations would have no choice but to provide it, lest they lose their audience (and ad revenue) to someone who would. Right?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I think they’re both right, in the appropriate limits. It’s definitely hard to present science in a way that is comprehensible to the general public without being misleading. Scientists could do a much better job of feeding information to journalists, and putting it in a form that is better adapted to the constraints of modern mass media.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the constraints of modern mass media are themselves part of the problem. If it really were possible to create a wider market for detailed and informative reporting, that would make everybody’s life easier.<\/p>\n

What about the poor writers caught in the middle? This is as good a place as any to drop a link to Jennifer Ouellette’s recent post on the life of a science writer<\/a>. It’s a few weeks old, but it’s really good stuff. I’m tempted to print it out and give it to the senior seminar students when I talk about non-academic careers in physics (which will be, um, tomorrow…).<\/p>\n

(Really, I’d just put a link to it on the course web page, but it starts off with a link to my blog, which I try not to publicize at work. Which is silly, because I know the students know about it, but it still feels weird…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a weird example of synchronicity, Dr. Free-Ride posted about science journalism yesterday, and Inside Higher Ed offers a viewpoint piece by Michael Bugeja on the same topic this morning. You might almost think it was one of those “meme” things. They both agree that there’s a problem with science reporting, but come at the… Continue reading The Hard Life of Science Journalists<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in_the_news","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}