Comments on: Scientists heart journalists? Plus a quick guide to dealing with the media

By: Ford

Ford — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:35:04 +0000

I got interviewed for TV about transgenic crops once. It was obvious that they’d written the script in advance and just wanted a scientist to say the stuff in the script.
“Can consumers tell if food they’re buying is transgenic?”
So I stuck to MY script:
“DDT is less toxic to humans than many other pesticides, but we banned it because it was killing birds. Similarly, the main risks of transgenic crops aren’t direct health problems for consumers, but indirect environmental risks, such as pests evolving resistance to less-toxic pesticides, so then we have to use more-toxic ones.”
So they didn’t use anything I said, just visuals of my research with their own script as voice-over.
I guess they save money that way. If the interviewers they send out are basically technicians (recording a scripted “interview”) rather than reporters (open to learning something new), maybe they can pay them less.

By: Philip Connolly

Philip Connolly — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 08:09:44 +0000

Main problem I’ve had with media training industrial scientists is that their main goal is impressing their peers. So you regularly get “but everyone knows that” about the interesting insight that would make an inteview come alive. And, they just hate repeating themselves, lose face in the intellectual battle of wills with the interviewer.
Cheers, Philip

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:22:46 +0000

Martin, I definitely get what you’re saying. But I stress that the point of the survey was not to make a comment on the quality fo science journalism as a whole, but to look at the experiences that scientists have with journalists. Scientists can dread dealing with journalists directly and they can be frustrated with the media’s coverage of science. Those two issues are not entirely the same and this survey focused on the first bit. So for their purposes, the journalists who don’t engage with scientists directly aren’t part of the sample they wanted to question.
Now, I get it if some parts of what I wrote didn’t necessarily reflect that. I think my main message is this: there are big problems with science journalism but as this survey shows, there are also a lot of science journalists who scientists are all too happy to have dealings with and have had positive experiences with. Which means that there’s still tremendous potential for improving public understanding of science through engaging with the mass media, provided you understand how the game is played.

By: Martin

Martin — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:56:28 +0000

Ed, fascinating post as always, and the advice is first class, but I have one criticism of the study.
Isn’t the survey fundamentally flawed due to a massive selection bias, at least with respect to the conclusion you seem to be implying from it? The survey covers journalists who deal with scientists. Surely the problem is the vast majority of science editors and journalists that *don’t* deal with scientists, and end up filling the mainstreadm media with an endless stream of nonsense?
You used phrases like “the alleged clash between boffins and journos”. Well the clash is real, it’s on the pages of every national newspaper on a daily basis, every time some journalist implies that vaccines are dangerous or climate change is controversial among scientists. What you’re really saying is that those journalists who are willing to deal with scientists aren’t so bad. Well, that’s kind of self-evident…

By: Kat

Kat — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:03:51 +0000

Nice work Ed – great post!
K

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:32:48 +0000

Great stuff people – keep the tips coming.
And Blake – that’s an interesting post, but Schwitzer’s review was looking at a fundamentally different question, which was: What is the quality of medical journalism as a whole? Peters makes it clear in his paper that his survey was not about this, but about assessing *individual* attitudes and experiences with journalists. You would probably expect those two metrics to produce very different results for the 4 reasons I outlined above.

By: pipsqueak

pipsqueak — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:32:55 +0000

As an ex-journo, now baby scientist (PhD student) I’ve spent a bit of time mediating between the two sides. For any scientist trying to explain things to a journalist, please understand that they quite possibly don’t have ANY expertise nor the time to catch up on first year bio/chem/physics. And they’re writing for tight deadlines.
My two-cents worth: If you write a very short fact sheet that boils your complex research down to a few plain-English bullet points, then the simplification is done by the expert, not the Arts graduate who is trying to understand astrophysics/stem cell research/systematics in an hour.
BTW – this is directed at scientists other than Ed, who (I’ve been lurking here for a while) evidently needs no help in explaining science clearly.

By: David Lee

David Lee — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:44:48 +0000

Hey, I are the media. I was just interviewing a scientist last week. We both seemed pleased at the end of it. I think the common goal smooths out most of these problems. I’d rather have a reusable source than a gotcha quote victim.
I learned this when I asked Richard Dawkins which part of the U.S. he thought was the most backward during a press conference. He kept on message but I don’t think I earned any brownie points for trying to get a memorable gotcha. Live and learn.

By: dreaded msm guy

dreaded msm guy — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:48:32 +0000

and you can also always ask to review your quotes. most journos don’t offer that (i try to). we can’t let you read the story before it prints, but we’re (usually, if we’re responsible) more than happy to go back over what you said with you to make sure it’s all clear. if they don’t offer, just ask.

By: Blake Stacey

Blake Stacey — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:06:20 +0000

I'd wager a half-dozen cannoli that the satisfaction among evolutionary biologists, neuroscientists, physicists and linguists would be significantly lower. And for medicine as a whole (not restricting ourselves to epidemiology) there's data to back that dissatisfaction up.