UK Science Adviser Beddington goes to war against bad science

Hmm, if only.

Obviously, there are... different levels of science journalism. Writing for blogs, regular newspapers, general audience but centered on science (ie, Discover Magazine), more specialized publications which aren't publishing actual studies but which often employ actual scientists to do the writing... and if the people hiring the writers and the editors aren't versed in much scientific knowledge or thinking themselves, and the topics are broad, it may well be hard for them to know when the writer is being sloppy. Now, I love combining science and writing myself, and I think it would indeed benefit people if something like science journalism or science writing was a mainstream college major. Arts and sciences are far too segregated IMO.

Actually, if they could do it properly, an education and science degree would work better than a writing and science. Writing classes, particularly for science classes, tends to focus too much on Purple Prose to meet writing length requirements.

Not if your style example is, say, Hemingway . Although I do get your point.

There are well qualified science journalists, who have degrees in the fields they write about. But since news sources are in the business of selling news, they tend to go over their heads whenever they hear about an exciting sounding story that the qualified science journalists don't want to write about, and get someone else to do it.

Well yes, journalism is synonymous with professional attention whoring, so accuracy is generally relegated to being in the back seat.

Can we not just add in a 75% of company earnings PER lie their print?
It would kill of a lot of papers, until people started printing properly again.

Actually, if people stopped accepting "journalist" as a qualification, and hired people with relevant qualifications as writers, that would help.

Problem is, it might not then be very well-written. Now, if they were qualified journalists and qualified in the relevant field, that would be an improvement.

I don't agree at all. If you have a new idea (or an old one masquerading as a new one), and you can't demonstrate peer-reviewable science to back it up, you have no business pretending that it's scientific.

Well, I do see your point, but all the same, peer review is not infallible or immune from bias. Mistakes can be made.

Arts and sciences are far too segregated IMO.

Agreed.

Point taken.

Still, though, there's a difference between criticising papers that publish bad science and pre-emptively declaring every non-peer-reviewed piece of information to be bullshit and not letting it see the light of day.

Edit: I'm referring, of course, to information published in newspapers and magazines; obviously if we pre-emptively declared everything to be bullshit we'd never get anywhere.

edited 16th Feb '11 10:13:26 AM by BobbyG

Why let through papers that don't go through good scientific process when you could filter them? There are some decent papers there in the mess, but if you run them through proper screening processes, those ones will still be left.

What about when the science is made up?

Then you need even more rigorous review processes to catch it.

@Bobby: This is a cultural phenomenon. In the United States, we're culturally primed to treat pseudoscience and magical thinking with the same logical filters we apply to actual science, and the result is people treating homeopathy as serious medicine and refusing vaccines because they "might cause autism". Oh, and only 30% of high school biology teachers willing to each evolution as an established scientific fact.

The only way to deal with this is pervasive cultural change, which has to start in the way media treats scientific topics.

Survey on attitudes and knowledge regarding science and technology in the US: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind06/c7/c7h.htm

Results are mixed- Americans support science, and are better informed than the citizens of other countries, but are still not very well informed.

I think we had a thread on that study. The conclusion was "we want to see the test" I believe.

Peer reviewing journalism sounds like a wonderful idea, any complaints about restrictiveness (in the face of immediacy, for instance) could be addressed by having gigantic disclaimers on each unreviewed story, like they do should with consumer tech gadget stories based completely on unfounded rumor.

journalism is synonymous with professional attention whoring

I'd make that my signature if I didn't like my current one so much.

Can we not just add in a 75% of company earnings PER lie their print?

I always thought newspapers and other media outlests should be forced to devote the same amount of space to corrections as they did on the previous story; if you spent a month with huge above-the-fold banner headlines about how the MMR vaccine causes autism, then you should be forced to run a front page for the same number of days saying "WE'RE USELESS TOOLS AND WE GOT IT WRONG! see pages 2,3,4,6-9,13"

The only media company I ever see be up front about mistakes is CBC, which has a giant red box for mistakes they had in a news story. While I appreciate this, most right-wing groups claim this as evidence the CBC is an evil left-wing conspiracy and thus should be shut down in favour of something fox news like... for freedom!

When it comes to science, the biggest problem with journalists is that they're told to find a "hook". So if a particular piece of science research doesn't have a well defined "hook", they don't run it, or they give it one. Like, "SCIENTIST CREATES BLACK HOLE!" except he didn't but that sounded cooler (I'm looking at you BBC!).

De Marquis: That may be true, but can be scary when you realize that these kinds of people have their finger over the red trigger.

Desertopa: Actually just the opposite has been proven with acupuncture. Placebo placements was shown to be nearly fourth percent less effective than proper placement and as of today most major insurance plans will cover acupuncture as an effective and cheap alternative to narcotic pain killers. There is little to no current proof that acupuncture has a lot of the benefits that it's most vocal proponents ascribe to it, but it's analgesic properties are well documented and proven.

Furthermore almost all of the medicines that are currently on the market are derived from plants. Only a small minority are exclusively chemically synthesized. In fact several profitable big name medicines are slipping off the market because the plants that are used in their manufacture are falling off. The caveat with herbal medicine is that if it doesn't have negative side effects then chances are it doesn't have an effect. For example, while no one is quite sure what the benefits of St Johns Wort are (scientifically speaking) we do know that mixing it with certain cardiac glycosides can kill you deader than disco. So it is obviously bioactive.

Likewise ephedra and a lot of the 'herbal supplements' that body builders use are heinously potent. There is a difference between homeopathic hogwash, inactive biocompounds and active non regulated herbs. Lest we forget, Morphine, Atropine and Digitalis are distillates of garden plants, poppy, belladonna and foxglove respectively. Aspirin is tree bark and vecuronium is made from the curare plant of the amazon rainforest.

"Aspirin is tree bark"

Well, it's a specific compound isolated from tree bark, concentrated and put into a tablet. Not nearly the same thing at all. The difference is it's dispensed in a measurable, repeatable dosage, with all the useless (and possibly harmful) crap taken out. That's the difference between "herbal" and "mainstream" medicines.

Yes.... and no. The major advantages of 'modern' medications is regularized dosages. It used to be that a doctor who saw your ankles were swelling would tell you to chew on three sprigs of fox glove. Now given the standard deviation of digitalis concentration that could do nothing, be just right or suddenly you are in dig toxicity and on your way to the mortuary.

In terms of active effect. Zilch. Zippo. Zero. Nadda. None. Same chemical compound. Same effects. Same everything. Just more concentrated and pure than it's natural form. He'll, we still don't even know why digitalis really works. Hell, quick clot is just ground up sea shells.

This is the actual point I think that bedding ton was trying to make. A lot of the time people who aren't qualifiers to talk about these things come onto the public stage, or are invited onto the public stage and their opinions are treated as valid. It doesn't happen as much with medicine but it is still there. I wouldn't want an amateur surgeon getting onto some talk show to speak opposite a board certified brain surgeon just because the network thought we needed "balance".

Desertopa: Actually just the opposite has been proven with acupuncture. Placebo placements was shown to be nearly fourth percent less effective than proper placement and as of today most major insurance plans will cover acupuncture as an effective and cheap alternative to narcotic pain killers. There is little to no current proof that acupuncture has a lot of the benefits that it's most vocal proponents ascribe to it, but it's analgesic properties are well documented and proven.

Can you link to any studies to that effect?

I'm afraid I don't have the book on me which cited the studies indicating the opposite, but next time I stop by home, I should be able to find it and check up on them.

If any study has indicated only a four percent difference between the placebo and the real thing though, then whatever the treatment, I'd be inclined to investigate further whether the difference was simply a result of chance and poor statistics, since researchers have a tendency to use statistical analyses which exaggerate the significance of small effect sizes.

edited 18th Feb '11 6:17:14 PM by Desertopa