Science onthe News - Is There a Better Way?
Sarah Hatch
This article looks at the perennial question of how best to educate the general public about science, and how science is reported on television. There is widespread support for the need to educate and inform the public about science (for numerous reasons which I won’t go into here). However, unless they have an active interest in science and seek out the information for themselves, most people’s exposure to real-life science is restricted to the TV news, and maybe current affairs programs. Careful attention therefore needs to be paid to how science is reported on these programs.
So, what is the best way to portray science on the TV news so as to improve the public’s knowledge and understanding of scientific research? I’ve noticed that a large majority of science reports on the news are about “world first discoveries” or an “amazing breakthrough” or the like. And of these, most appear to be about medical breakthroughs - it seems like I see a discovery of a new disease-causing gene on the news at least every week!
However, it seems to me there are several dangers in emphasising breakthroughs and world first discoveries. Some breakthroughs are hard to explain to the general public because you need to know a lot about the subject to understand its true importance. It also obviously excludes reporting on science that isn’t in this category and, let’s face it, a lot of research isn’t an amazing breakthrough that drastically changes how we see the world.
There is also the danger that to attract the attention of journalists and news editors, you need to keep coming up with bigger and ever more exciting world first discoveries (obviously a lot easier said than done). It appears to me that this leads some journalists (or publicity officers perhaps) to exaggerate when it comes to scientific breakthroughs. Speculation about future possibilities seems especially prone to exaggeration - who can forget the “Star Trek” teleportation angle on the recent breakthrough about teleporting light. When this sort of exaggeration occurs, quite often the actual science behind the breakthrough can get overshadowed, and it seems unlikely many people would learn much from the report.
The emphasis on the “amazing breakthrough” on the TV news doesn’t really reflect the day-to-day realities of scientific research, and probably does little to educate the public about how research really happens. I think that reporting the “world first discoveries” is important and should continue, but we need something more.
So what are some good alternatives to this way of
reporting scientific research on the news? Well, one way is to report on the
start or early stages of a new project (for example, a new PhD student’s or
postdoc’s project, a new grant or industry funding for particular projects).
Obviously, it needs to have a story” behind it to make it a news worthy item,
such as why the project is being done, what methods will be used and what will
be measured. As well as giving the specific reasons for doing the research, it
is also important to put it into a wider context. The conclusions of a project
could also be reported in a similar way, even if they aren’t earth shattering.
Some great examples of this type of reporting science are shown on “Totally
Wild”, a children’s program on Channel 10 which has been running for 10 years.
I think this is a better way to educate and inform the public about science for several reasons. Firstly, this means that a much wider variety of research projects could be reported on, which would give the public a better feel for the scope of scientific research. Secondly, this could show the public how big the gaps in our knowledge really are, and how much effort (money, time, manpower, etc.) is involved in filling in even small details.
This would potentially give a better understanding of how science is actually done, and perhaps give an insight into the processes that have led to some of the “amazing breakthroughs”. There is a benefit in reinforcing the need for the pure or basic research that so often precedes unexpected discoveries - it’s important for the general public (and politicians!) to understand that breakthroughs don’t come out of thin air. Even people who have an active interest in science (but are non-scientists) often don’t have a good grasp of these issues. So in my opinion, it can only be a good thing to improve how science is reported on the news. To make the changes that I have discussed, perhaps some scientists need to focus more on getting their everyday research into the mainstream media. Who knows, maybe one day politicians could even decide that campaigning for extra funding for science is a vote-winner.
Sarah Hatch has a BSc (Hons) in Chemistry and has an active interest in science communication.