Take the case of the late John Kanzius, who discovered a method of separating the hydrogen out of water, allowing the water to appear to “burn”. The prospects of hydrogen-based fuel were tantalizing to the wider public, and the story was snapped up by a whirlwind of media attention. Meanwhile, the academic reception (by Philip Ball in Nature) was remarkable in its deadpan dismissal of fuel applications (rightly so), while entirely ignoring the actual feat of the experiment and of confirmed reports. Well, whatever the media’s excesses, it at least opened Kanzius’s shocking discovery to wide attention and acclaim, while the scholarly reception (left to Ball) did nobody any favors.

Perhaps Ball was prudent in principle to be so caged in his remarks so as to avoid fraud. But this is one of those surprising cases where sensationalism arguably helped the science.
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I concur completely with both of your points. But even with the proper precautions, the media can – and still does – get wrong the implications of an important discovery like that recently of the early primate Darwinius, which was thought erroneously to be the earliest representative of the primate lineage leading directly to monkeys and the great apes, including of course, us.

IMHO the best means of ensuring safe guards is to publicize discoveries only after they have been “vetted” by the process of rigorous scientific peer review. I’m not sure we need to have more examples of the kind Benjamin S. Nelson has described with regards to Kanzius’s work, and of course, sadly too, the media and public relations hoopla which greated the announcement of the “discovery” of Darwinius and how it fits within primate phylogeny.

Regards,

John

Take the case of the late John Kanzius, who discovered a method of separating the hydrogen out of water, allowing the water to appear to “burn”. The prospects of hydrogen-based fuel were tantalizing to the wider public, and the story was snapped up by a whirlwind of media attention. Meanwhile, the academic reception (by Philip Ball in Nature) was remarkable in its deadpan dismissal of fuel applications (rightly so), while entirely ignoring the actual feat of the experiment and of confirmed reports. Well, whatever the media’s excesses, it at least opened Kanzius’s shocking discovery to wide attention and acclaim, while the scholarly reception (left to Ball) did nobody any favors.

Perhaps Ball was prudent in principle to be so caged in his remarks so as to avoid fraud. But this is one of those surprising cases where sensationalism arguably helped the science.

The publishing process is just a small bit tacked on at the end of the peer-review process. The peer-review process is, of course, integral to the entire process.

Maybe science should change its ways and allow unpublished findings to be broadcast with the caveat that these are unpublished findings.

Unpublished findings have yet to undergo the rigors of scrutiny by the scientific community. Therefore they may very well be plagued by over-analysis, wrong conclusions, etc. Why put out such misinformation when it only takes a bit longer to make it official and peer-reviewed?

I think a bit of reflection and research is a good thing when it comes to putting any science stories out on the public mass news media. Some delay is usually a good thing when it comes to science reporting.

However, I can be made to be interested if the information is put into an argument that has social or cultural interest attached.

Reputable science journalists and newspapers such as The New York Times have to adhere to “black out” issues with regards to the publication of such news. Even though Dr. Rouse told your class about this discovery, it may not have been published yet in a scientific journal. This is often the case whenever a scientist gives a public talk and mentions a scientific finding or outright discovery that hasn’t been published yet in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Have personally seen this happen on numerous occasions.

Sincerely yours,

John

Stories on the economy and budget funding and budget cuts also involve value judgments, as well as how does it affect me and mine (“What about my retirement accounts? Why are they shutting down interstate rest stops in the state budget — don’t they know I’ll have to take my kids to McDonald’s for potty breaks and we’ll have to buy food there? What is Obama going to do to my healthcare?”).

Stories on policy and politics involve value judgments, as do stories on celebrities, people who do things we consider to be bad, and people who do things we consider to be good. People have a stake — or at least an opinion — on values-related stories. And then they have something to talk about with others.

I think part of the problem with getting science news out there is not just the time and care involved in the methodology (ask a really good investigative journalist how long it takes to get out a well-sourced, nuanced series out about corporate fraud, or, say, to what degree the previous administration was involved in developing policies permitting torture — such stories can and do take years and the work of multiple reporters and researchers and sources).

I think part of the problem is that without an obvious values angle 0r how-does-it-affect-me angle, you have the ‘so what?’ factor, which in that sense means it’s not newsworthy.

‘So what’ stories elicit the reaction of: “Huh. That’s neat.” But if you are not in a group of annelid enthusiasts, you can’t really have a good lunch-time discussion about the green bomb like you can with, say, Ted Kennedy’s life and legacy, where there is more shared general knowledge, or at least opinionated judgments.

The green bomb is neat, but it doesn’t immediately elicit value judgments or foster kitchen table discussions among nonscientists. So if it’s true that people follow the news to see how things will affect them, or to get a sense of whether we’re headed in the right direction or not, or to have something to contribute to lunchroom jaw sessions, then the ‘green bomb’ is, in that sense, not ‘newsworthy:’ It’s neat.

It’s similar to the art stories that get bumped because the art is uncontroversial (controversial art, of course, gets lots of press — since value judgments can be made), and, well, neat — like the Lightning Field story that appeared in the Washington Post . . . thirty years after that particular art piece was installed.

I guess it was a slow news day.