Collide-a-scape

Yesterday, Nature’s online editor set off a mini squall with this Guardian column, titled “Nine ways scientists demonstrate they don’t understand journalism.” The response from the science blogosphere was pretty negative. For some reason, this surprised me–well the darts thrown at the piece by many writers did, anyway.

I kinda got into it a bit on twitter, which was like nibbling at an Oreo cookie. I then thought some deep thoughts and presto, this short riff at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media emerged.

Thanks for being a reader, and thanks to many of you for making this site a lively exchange of interesting perspectives, particularly on climate change related issues. Early next week, I’ll have a post up elaborating on a few new wrinkles to the blog.

Meanwhile, I’d like to hear from you on something. What particular story and/or topic would you like to see given more attention in 2012? (Bear in mind there are editors and reporters who read this blog.) But be as specific as possible. No doubt, a number of you will throw climate change in the mix, which is fine. Just spell out what you would like to see covered differently or in more detail. But I’m especially keen to hear of any science/environmental stories that you believe are underreported in the media.

Lastly, Ed Yong has compiled his top 12 list of “longreads” for 2011. I recommend you check it out. He has great taste and judgment.

Best wishes to you and your families for the New Year.

If you recall, last week I expressed some dismay that a three part series on global warming in Scientific American magazine was financed by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

To my surprise, no journalistic watchdogs (or science journalists) rose up to publicly question this unusual arrangement. But Bud Ward at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media comes close in this post. Quite frankly, I’m gobsmacked by what he’s learned in interviews with an editor at SciAm and the writer of the series (John Carey). Let’s start with this passage from Ward’s piece (my emphasis):

Carey says he insisted to Pew that he alone retain editorial control over the story — “just like any other story” — and that Pew could not tell him what to write. At the same time, however, he acknowledged showing Pew staffers a first draft and a final draft prior to its publication. “I kept them apprised of drafts,” he said, says Pew had “no editorial control” and offered “no substantive comments” on the final draft, which he said had been shared across the Pew Center staff and not solely with its climate science personnel.

That is a huge no-no in journalism. Quite frankly, I’m astonished that Carey, a seasoned pro, would do this. I’m sorry, but you can’t wrap your magazine story in the mantle of editorial independence while allowing it (in several draft forms) to be passed around the organization that’s funding it. That’s not how it happens, “just like any other story.”

Ward also elicited from SciAm executive editor Fred Guterl this odd rationalization of the Pew/SciAm partnership:

In a phone interview, Guterl also acknowledged uncertainties about “where to draw the line,” and he said “journalism is in a place where it’s never been before. There are a lot of new models out there.” He defended the financial backing of the Carey series in part because he sees the Pew Center as “nonpartisan and nonprofit” and because of its tax status as not being a lobbying interest. While saying he stands by the journalistic merits of the series, he said the funding arrangement inevitably raises some legitimate concerns about journalistic independence.

Let’s leave aside the little matter of Pew’s mission and just ask this: Are Guterl and SciAm okay with Pew being allowed to review pre-publication drafts of one of their stories?

Am I the only one who has a problem with this whole arrangement?

UPDATE: In the comments, John Rennie, a former editor-in-chief of Scientific American, seeks to clarify the financial arrangement between Pew and Scientific American. It is worth noting, as Rennie does, that Pew directly paid the writer, John Carey, for his work—not the magazine. This arrangement between Pew and Carey is also discussed at Bud Ward’s post.

The Washington Post has a regular column called “The Fact Checker,” by Glenn Kessler, a longtime Post reporter. It’s a relatively new feature. Earlier this year, Kessler described the column’s origins and purpose:

My colleague Michael Dobbs started the column during the 2008 [Presidential] campaign and now, in 2011, The Washington Post is reviving it as a permanent feature.

We will not be bound by the antics of the presidential campaign season, but will focus on any statements by political figures and government officials–in the United States and abroad–that cry out for fact-checking. It’s a big world out there, and so we will rely on readers to ask questions and point out statements that need to be checked. Over time, we hope to build this page into a more interactive feature than the blog it has been.

The purpose of this website, and an accompanying column in the Post, is to “truth squad” the statements of political figures regarding issues of great importance, be they national, international or local. As the 2012 presidential election approaches, we will increasingly focus on statements made in the heat of the presidential contest. But we will not be limited to political charges or countercharges. We will seek to explain difficult issues, provide missing context and provide analysis and explanation of various “code words” used by politicians, diplomats and others to obscure or shade the truth.

All this makes total sense, of course. And it’s a great public service. But why only for politics? Science is also a battlefield, with claims, counterclaims and all manner of misstatements that cry out for fact checking. Climate science, a subject that is often hotly debated in the public arena, would obviously be a recurring topic in any such Truth Squad column. So would nuclear power, biotechnology, evolution, and many medical and health-related issues that are often in the news.

If it’s important to gauge the accuracy of what politicians say about the budget deficit, foreign policy, Medicare, etc., it’s equally important to gauge the accuracy of what newsmakers say about climate change, stem cell research, vaccines, evolution, and so on.

The big newspapers, such as The New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today, have eminently qualified science reporters that could be charged with a column that fact checks questionable scientific statements made by government officials, politicians, and even widely read pundits.

Science is just as important to society as politics. And just as is the case with political and policy related issues, the public often has trouble separating out fact from fiction on many scientific claims and statements.

Science, like politics, needs a Truth Squad.

It’s fascinating when someone gets so smitten with a theory that explains EVERYTHING.

Lately, Chris Mooney can’t stop purring about “motivated reasoning,” which he discusses at length in this article. It’s even given him insight into his own behavior:

Blogs–and blog commenting–allow us to respond even more rapidly (without calm reflection) and emotionally (without editorial filter) than before. They are therefore a very ripe environment for motivated reasoning to occur.

And indeed, I must confess that I have done this, albeit unwittingly until now–and I challenge any blogger who writes about contentious matters to claim that he or she has not.

So that explains his shabby treatment of Matthew Nisbet when the latter tried engaging in the comment threads here and here last month. Mooney simply wasn’t aware of his own churlish, passive aggressive tone. Well, armed with this new awareness, I’m sure next time around Mooney will do a better job at concealing his hostility to ideas that are contrary to his own.

If you read Andy Revkin’s dispatch from this one-day conference in London on the Anthropocene concept, you’ll discover:

I’m attending because of a quirky role I played almost 20 years ago in laying the groundwork for this concept of humans as a geological force.

I’m starting to think Andy is the Zelig of the environmental and climate science world. Except Andy is real, and so are his accomplishments!

Still, how does he show up everywhere?

Charlie Petit at Science Tracker has a confession. He doesn’t think he’s the only one, either:

A lot of science journalists who cover energy issues have probably gone through an infatuation stage, and then break-up, with a seductive actor: Peak Oil. It appeals to any reporter trying to cover a beat where numbers and natural (that is, based on reality and science) processes are important. Plus it’s geology.

Charlie, in his own uniquely engaging manner, seems to have fun while he’s drawing our attention to notable science stories (and occasional blog posts) of the day. His short, conversational anecdotes (sometimes cleverly disguised as gentle critiques) are like the warm-up act to the main show.

He and the Tracker have become essential reading for science & environmental journalists. Yet his style seems geared to a non-journalist audience as well, which is a good thing.

Bryan Walsh at Time beat me to the punch. I’ll get back to that in a sec.

Originally my post was going to lead off with a comment from Orville Schell in the early 2000s, when he was dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California,  in Berkley and the downsizing of newsrooms was starting to make news. Schell had said:

Journalism schools have the challenge to be almost newsrooms in a way, to make their courses—particularly graduate schools—places that do journalism…

I remember reading that at the time and nodding my head in assent. Since then, many J-schools have gone this route to some degree. And science journalism, in particular, is benefiting. Which brings me to this climate change story in the Kansas City Star, which Walsh mentions here, as part of a larger multi-media project

from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism that explores: climate change and national security. Called “Global Warning“  the website is the product of three months of investigations by student reporters at one of the best journalism schools in the U.S., with stories exploring the climate risks to energy infrastructure, the spread of disease in a warmer world, military clashes in a melting Arctic. Some of the pieces will also appear in the Washington Post and in McClatchy newspaper, but all of them will be found online on a website that includes sophisticated graphics, climate change timelines and even a global warming strategy game.

So J-schools have heeded Schell’s clarion call. Another good example related to science journalism is NYU’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP), run by Dan Fagin, a former science reporter for Newsday. I mention SHERP because it houses the excellent  Scienceline site. One of its grad student articles was recently picked up by Scientific American.

I’m not suggesting that J-schools should or can replace a diminished corp of professional science writers. But there’s a valuable place for student work in the rapidly changing journalism ecosystem.

Goes to this cautionary flashback:

I love the New Yorker and over the years they have published many fine articles on science by bright and knowledgeable writers including Lehrer (e.g., John McPhee, Jonathon Schell, John Hersey, Rachel Carson, Jeremy Bernstein, Atul Gawande, Malcom Gladwell). Despite this excellent record of science translation, it is useful to remember that the New Yorker published another fine scientific writer (Paul Brodeur) about 20 years ago who claimed that power lines were leading to brain cancer. It was compelling writing and it had a big effect on public opinion and science, but ultimately none of the breathless claims panned out despite the fears struck in the community. Decline effects, though rarely referred to that way, are widely recognized in science (often meta-analyses will divide up the sample of studies depending on when they were conducted–early vs. late).

This historical perspective is worth keeping in mind (here’s the article by Brodeur) though I still think people are overly wrought over Lehrer’s piece.

Earlier this week, Jonah Lehrer responded yet again to some of the criticism leveled at his recent New Yorker article. Orac, who wasn’t pleased with the article, is still not pleased with Lehrer’s defense of it.

This is a case of an expert (Orac) thinking that he is the prime audience for a general interest article. Orac, in his latest post on Lehrer, sums up his problem with the New Yorker article:

The short version is that not only is the “decline effect” not nearly as mysterious as Lehrer made it sound but it’s not some sort of serious, near fatal problem with how science is done. Indeed, it’s not particularly mysterious at all to many of us who actually–oh, you know–do science, particularly those of us who do medical science and clinical trials.

First of all, to the majority of The New Yorker’s readers (who are smart and sophisticated), this story probably came as big news, as I’m sure only a small percentage of them “do medical science and clinical trials.”

Secondly, Lehrer wasn’t the one claiming the “decline effect” was perplexing and problematic for science; it was the scientists themselves featured in his article who were saying this.

Orac also has a major problem with this passage from Lehrer in his recent followup:

One of the sad ironies of scientific denialism is that we tend to be skeptical of precisely the wrong kind of scientific claims. Natural selection and climate change have been verified in thousands of different ways by thousands of different scientists working in many different fields. (This doesn’t mean, of course, that such theories won’t change or get modified–the strength of science is that nothing is settled.) Instead of wasting public debate on solid theories, I wish we’d spend more time considering the value of second-generation antipsychotics or the verity of the latest gene-association study.

Orac contends that this

demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of how science denialism works. Here’s a hint: The reason why such topics become the targets of scientific denialism is because the conclusions of science run up against very strong religious, political, or primal views. Evolution runs up against fundamentalist religion that, or so its adherents believe, cannot abide the concept that humans evolved from “lower” creatures. Those with political views that oppose government mandated action to lower the emissions of greenhouse gases attack AGW science because of its implications. Although the treatment of mental illness can certainly bring out the crazy (see: Scientology), for most people there just isn’t the same level of intense ideological investment in the efficacy of second generation antipsychotics as there is in whether or not our understanding of AGW is accurate or whether humans evolved from “lower” creatures.

This is a fine explanation of some of the root causes of “scientific denialism,” but it’s unfair to say that Lehrer doesn’t understand this when he was merely lamenting that public debate focuses unduly on scientific claims that are, in fact, well established.

I’m a fan of Orac, but in his latest swipe at Lehrer he comes off as overly peevish.