Science And The Media - Why We Should Be Careful What We Read

There has been a lot of recent attention focused on the problematic relationship between science and the media. Brian Cox presented a program on the ways in which media can be used to educate and communicate scientific theories more effectively, and a recent Horizon episode looked at Sir Paul Nurse exploring the feeling that science is under threat from the public and mainstream media. The chief concerns of both programs were that journalists who write about science do not seem to understand the scientific process that is so central to new discoveries - that of sceptical peer review. Journalists tend to write about different scientific standpoints with equal emphasis, ignoring the importance of scientific consensus and the process that all new material must pass through in order to be approved. Climate change and GM crop scepticism is reported in the same light as material that has been reviewed and approved by a much wider group of global researchers. The purpose of peer review is to test new theories under rigorous investigation, and if they cannot be refuted, to accept them as the current consensus in a particular area. The progress of science depends on the next researcher challenging this and then having their theories reviewed and accepted in a similar way. In order for scientific material to be reported accurately, journalists must be able to distinguish between the peer reviewed consensus, and information put forward by scientists on the fringes that has not been approved by the whole community. As the school education system continues to provide most of the public with very limited scientific understanding, the public receives the majority of supposed fact from the arena of entertainment and media. This reporting therefore has a vital responsibility to accurately portray the science as it is developed by the scientific community, to give the public a fair and scientific view of its progress. Science fiction has been a popular form of entertainment for many decades, particularly since the dawn of the space age when science became glamorous and exciting. The problem these days is that people have too little understanding of the scientific method and find it difficult to draw the line between fact and fiction. Nasa have been forced to officially declare the absurdity of certain science fiction films to mitigate the fears of viewers, for example the film 2012 which depicts a series of horrific natural disasters that are supposedly caused by the action of the sun. Journalists have a responsibility to understand the scientific process to provide the public with an accurate view of scientific development. Failing to do so can cause very real and serious problems. An example of this is the misinformed reporting on certain vaccinations. If non-consensus material is published claiming the danger of a very important vaccination, for example MMR, then the public rightly will become very concerned.