“I think I’ll look at science in the paper in a different way in future,” said one of the participants in Sunday afternoon’s meeting on Science in the news. “The location, authorship and the emotional content of the words – they’ll help me decide on the credibility of reported science.”
The meeting was one of the Festival in the City events in the BA’s annual Festival of Science.
“Most people get their science news from the media. Whether it’s health scares, diseases or GM food, they’re overwhelmed with information and don’t know who to trust,” explained the session’s co-organiser, Angela Cohen. “They’re aware they should be skeptical but they don’t know how to evaluate what they read.” She and fellow science communicator Sarah Barnsley gave their participants a series of exercises to give them an insight into how to judge science reporting.
One was to write a journalistic introduction to various stories, given as a series of statements and facts. Two psychologists at Wilkes University in the USA, for example, have found that people who listened to 30 minutes of muzak (elevator music) had raised levels of immunoglobulin A, a component of the immune system which helps boost the body’s natural defences.
Writing in the style of the Sun, the participants cut straight to the headline - “Muzak kills the common cold”.
One of the discoveries of the session was that journalists don’t write the headlines! That’s the sub-editor’s job.
The participants - a packed room of people in their twenties to their seventies - revealed themselves to be generally skeptical and well-informed. “The way the media publicises science doesn’t worry me too much because I don’t pay much attention to it,” said one; “I’m highly skeptical of anything sensational.”
Angela and Sarah also talked about a hierarchy of credibility. “Stories about something that just happened are fairly reliable; stories about something that somebody said just happened are less reliable; stories about someone saying what will happen are even less so,” said Angela.
Participants’ comments were generally positive.
“I didn’t learn as much as I expected, but I’ll be better at judging reports in future,” said one.
“I’ve learned more about how to read between the lines of a report,” concluded another.
“I probably tend to accept too readily the information! I’ll now treat it with more caution,” said a third.