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Education The Media Science

Is Good Scientific Journalism Possible? 237

Posted by kdawson from the know-the-stuff-and-write-it-good dept.
scida sends in a link to his blog post exploring the question of whether, roughly speaking, science journalism is an impossible task. From the post: "I have spent the better half of the past six months trying to understand one thing: how can you effectively present primary scientific literature to the general public? Is this even possible? ... During the past few months, I have spent entire days locked up in my office, writing my first manuscript to be submitted to a peer reviewed scientific journal. While doing so, I have come to realize the following: details can change everything. There are a number of assumptions I have been forced to make while analyzing my data, many of which are critical for both my methodology and the development of few of my arguments. Why? Often, the information I require simply isn't available (the studies haven't been done, or the studies that exist are based on assumptions of their own). Now, can someone unfamiliar with a particular field, nay, a sub-discipline of that field, recognize these assumptions for what they are?"
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Is Good Scientific Journalism Possible? More

Is Good Scientific Journalism Possible?

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  • There are a number of assumptions I have been forced to make while analyzing my data, many of which are critical for both my methodology and the development of few of my arguments. Why? Often, the information I require simply isn't available (the studies haven't been done, or the studies that exist are based on assumptions of their own).

    Or worse yet for your readers, even the studies that do exist are locked behind a pay-to-read model of electronic publishing- so they can't tell assumption from fact. My suggestion: Make everything explicit. If you're forced to make an assumption, admit that it is an assumption up front and explain why you're making that assumption. If you are referencing a study, don't just link to the study or reference it in a bibliography, also copy the relevant portion of the data and explain the assumptions of that study AND it's relevance to your study.

    Until the peer review system stops being broken by pay-to-read studies, I see no other option. And remember- to anybody outside of your special field of study, any assumptions at all will look like sloppy science based more on emotion than data.

    • Re:Assumptions are bad, uncheckable assumptions wo (Score:5, Insightful)

      by irtza ( 893217 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @05:00PM (#20749301) Homepage
      well, there are a few issues with your suggestion - well at least things I think would be issues

      1) copyright - how do you copy relevant portions of a publication without getting caught up in this nightmare? could you imagine the price of journals if this were required? There are now plenty of journals that allow you to read content for free.

      2) not everything can be made explicit. There are many aspects of any scientific field that are "fundamental" and would be tedious to have to re-explain everytime

      3) putting that much data into an article may make it too large and unwieldy to read. If people have issues with something, they can pay or do whatever else it takes.

      4) to state that any assumption will look sloppy may be true; however, unless you are willing to conduct many more experiments prior to leading up to whatever your studying, wouldn't you be forced to make some assumptions. sometimes - esp for a small study - you are willing to leave certain things unanswered so you can publish and get the money that you may need to prove your assumptions were true to begin with. As long as disclaimers are made in your original paper stating further study needs to be done, this may not be an issue
      • "copyright - how do you copy relevant portions of a publication without getting caught up in this nightmare?"

        By means of the "right for citation" every civilized country protects. I explicitly said "any civilized country" because I don't really know what's the state of affairs about this in non-civilized countries like the USA.

        "not everything can be made explicit"

        That's absolutly true. I already wrote about it in a different post.

        "putting that much data into an article may make it too large and unwieldy t

      • 1) copyright - how do you copy relevant portions of a publication without getting caught up in this nightmare?

        Keep it brief and light. The whole fair use exception was written into law EXPRESSLY for this kind of purpose. "Orwell's 1984 Novel proved that Totalinarism can be as bad as Romance novels" or something similiarly simple. (This is basic writing, that you should have learned in High School.)

        2) not everything can be made explicit. There are many aspects of any scientific field that are "fundamental" and would be tedious to have to re-explain everytime

        So skip those, or reference a handy explanation of them. ("This article assumes you're familiar with basic warp theroy, outlined nicey at X")

        3) putting that much data into an article may make it too large and unwieldy to read.

        Guess what? Writing's hard. You need to learn how to strike a balance b

    • Re:Assumptions are bad, uncheckable assumptions wo (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @05:21PM (#20749493) Homepage Journal

      My suggestion: Make everything explicit.
      Unfortunately this just isn't feasible in a lot of cases. A while ago it occurred to me that it might be interesting to try and actually explain my Ph.D. thesis to a general audience -- I decided to make a project out of it, in which I would lay out the necessary background and build up enough information and terminology that I could actually explain the rather rarefied topics of my thesis without resorting to glib descriptions and vague analogies that gloss over pretty much all the details. I got started a while ago, and things are progressing well. You can read my efforts so far at The Narrow Road [stuff.gen.nz]. However, while I'm managing to cover the required background topics in a way that I think a general audience can understand, two problems remain:
      1. I am still glossing over fine technicalities -- at this stage it would confuse rather than inform, and much of it is pendantry that won't be necessary till later... maybe I'll come back and fill the technical holes, but...
      2. I am nowhere close to being finished. I'm barely even started. I've been writing pieces as a hobby project for a year, and have only covered a little ground. I expect that I'll be able to explain the basic ideas of my thesis in another 2 or 3 years, by which time the total material will comfortably fill a large book.

      In other words, there's just too much ground to cover. It isn't possible to be fully explicit, not without writing a book instead of an article. The reality is that science (and my field, mathematics) is extremely specialised these days, and this has resulted in a disconnect between those doing research work and the general public (personally I feel this disconnect it worst in mathematics). Now I do certainly feel that trying to heal that disconnect, at least a little, is important (it is another of the motivations for my project to explain advanced mathematics to a general audience), but that is a life's work in and of itself, not something you can do on the side while writing an article.
      • Well, I'd point out that mathematics isn't a science to begin with. It's a method of modeling that is sometimes used by science and is found to be useful, but is in and of itself it's own philosophy starting with it's own basic axioms. Science is theories that predict the outcome of experiments, and compare those predictions to those experiments- modeling can be useful in this but isn't strictly necessary. So these are related sets, but not necessarily intersecting, to put it in the language of your spec

    • Or worse yet for your readers, even the studies that do exist are locked behind a pay-to-read model of electronic publishing- so they can't tell assumption from fact. My suggestion: Make everything explicit.

      Peer reviewed is one thing, journalism is another. In peer review literature you have to make everything explicit and checkable. Journalism comes from judgment and is based on opinion. If you discover something and it has far reaching implications, you need to present your findings to the general p

    • Re:Assumptions are bad, uncheckable assumptions wo (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Manchot ( 847225 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @05:47PM (#20749785)
      What you're proposing about assumptions is unproductive and impossible. In my field (semiconductor lasers and photonics), if every assumption was expounded upon, each paper would be thousands of pages long. I suspect this is true for all but the newest of fields. Journal articles need to assume that the reader already has a general familiarity with the material, because the target audience has this knowledge. For example, if I am writing a paper, I am not going to explain undergraduate quantum mechanics, solid state physics, or electromagnetics. Not only would that reflect poorly on me (as it would seem patronizing to the typical reader), but it would also be a poor use of my time.

      Fortunately, there are ways that you can get the background required to understand journal papers. The most obvious way is to attend a university and study the material. Yes, it costs money and time, but that's the price you pay. If that doesn't work for you, there is plenty of reading material available. You can start by looking at undergraduate textbooks at your local college library. If those don't help you, move on to graduate textbooks. If you need more, then you can look at course graduate course lecture notes (many of which you can find for free online). If you want the most direct background, review articles are the way to go. If even those don't help, look up the author's past papers. If a person outside a field wants to understand a paper, then it is that person's responsibility to read the background material.

      Regarding "pay-to-read studies," the system is not as broken as you make it out to be. Practically everyone who wants to have access to a journal can get it. Universities and research-oriented companies subscribe, so all you have to do is walk into a library and peruse them yourself.
    • "My suggestion: Make everything explicit."

      What do you mean by "everything". Do you mean I should add an apendix where I copy the entry for "explicit" from Webster's?

      "Until the peer review system stops being broken by pay-to-read studies"

      What the heck is the "peer review system" you talk about? What in hell are "pay-to-read studies"? What's an study, after all? Is it the same one of those on Nature than the review the "Apocalypsers of the Seven Day of the Return of the Beast" give me for free in the midd
      • What do you mean by "everything". Do you mean I should add an apendix where I copy the entry for "explicit" from Webster's?

        Nah, just link to it.

        What the heck is the "peer review system" you talk about? What in hell are "pay-to-read studies"? What's an study, after all? Is it the same one of those on Nature than the review the "Apocalypsers of the Seven Day of the Return of the Beast" give me for free in the middle of the street?

        True enough- I should have linked to my definitions.

        Just to express this
    • to critically analyze a research paper probably DOES already have access to it.

      The layman cannot do this anymore. Not even a scientist in a tangentially-related field can.

  • Of course it's possible. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HEbGb ( 6544 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:31PM (#20748947)
    It's just rarely done. Most journalists would prefer to write fluffy hype-pieces, exaggerate claims (or allow exaggerated claims to be published), and otherwise print a lot of BS. Regular, honest science pieces just don't sell as well.

    • Re:Of course it's possible. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:34PM (#20748983) Journal
      Don't you mean that honest (science) journalism just doesn't sell well? The parts in parenthesis is optional for our purposes here.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 2short ( 466733 )
      I think many journalists genuinely try, but good science reporting and being interesting to laypeople are often at odds with each other.

      Journalists generally want to report news; the new, exciting breakthrough is obviously the interesting thing. But the more new, exciting, and breakthrough-ish a science item is, the more likely it will turn out to be wrong next week, or at least that there are subtle details that must be appreciated to properly understand its impact. Even for the breakthroughs that are th
  • implications rather than the actual research. And those implications may only be available after an interview with the scientist and his peers rather than primary source documents.

    I think this has been the case for a long time- the problem of course is that the primary research scientist has a bias towards magnifying the importance of the findings, making it very important not to try to report anything of depth until doing some real digging. Which of course goes against the whole trend of "instant news"...

    • Re:This is why reporting may need to focus on... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:45PM (#20749149) Journal
      Focusing on implications is even worse! How many stories do you see here claiming that a cure for cancer, zettabyte hard drives or time travel is right around the corner?

      The scientists themselves know what the results are. But they have wildly exaggerated ideas about the practical implications (the principle of "anything I don't know how to do must be easy") and the stories are filtered through university PR offices who love to exaggerate even more.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kohath ( 38547 )
      Implications aren't news, nor are they necessarily true.

      If it's true, then directly state it as a conclusion. There's no need to imply. If it "might be" true, then reporting it as news is journalistic malpractice.
    • That's what is already being done. And it's pretty awful.

      The problem isn't necessarily with primary research. Reporters -- at least gee-whiz reporters who don't normally cover a science beat -- most often hear about these things through press releases from special interest groups. Those groups do the interpreting for the reporter. Such a reporter will never actually read the report but rather skim the headline and maybe read the introduction, but more likely will simply take the special interest group entir

  • No, a "keen interest" is not sufficient. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Medievalist ( 16032 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:34PM (#20748973)
    From the ark-tickle: I recently attended an interesting seminar, titlted, "The Informed Science Journalist: How Much Science Do You Need to Know?" led by UBC journalism Professor and Director of the School of Journalism, Stephen Ward. During the discussion, one theme in particular caught my attention: you don't have to have any background in science to write about science. Anyone with a keen interest for a field and sharp mind can write about anything, from philosophy to advanced string theory to climate modeling.

    Is this true? Is a keen interest sufficient?

    Well, it's a good starting place, but I think that "sharp mind" bit is more important... and judging by the quality of most science journalism I read, there's not a lot of 'em in the trade. I imagine deadline pressures aren't helping the quality of science reporting, either.
    • A "keen interest" is nice, so is a "sharp mind", but nothing short of a serious degree in the field is useful.

      I am a research mathematician; I've also done research in physics (where I have a B.Sc. and have taken some graduate courses).

      Almost every science article I read trying to discuss results in these fields is bad beyond words. The words "utter crap" hardly begin to describe how bad they are. The writers so completely fail to grasp what the scientists are talking about that their writing it at best d
  • dear elitist:

    within the mind of your average joe blow, you will find two shocking things:

    1. amazing depths of stupidity
    2. amazing heights of intellect

    therefore, you sell sophisticated information to joe blow in the only way possible: straightforward. no watering down, no soft pedaling. then watch as what you deem ungraspable (that's the elitism in you) getting grasped notheless

    dear insular academic:

    not everything has to be explained. communication is not about impressing upon someone else's mind every little delicate detail. nor is it necessary to do that for joe blow to grasp important pieces of information

    in fact, there is no value in science that cannot be communicated and explained. in the mind of the most advanced intellect can be the understanding and insight of the most amazing things. but if said great intellect can't open his or her mouth and explain it to someone else, in his head this great insight stays, and it dies with him, and becomes dust. in other words, dear insulated academic, i am saying your ability to communicate your research is actually more important than your ability to grasp every nuance of your own research

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chirs ( 87576 )
      There's a difference between communicating your research to "joe blow", and communicating your research to peers in the same field.

      For instance, how would you explain some concept in number theory (as an example) in a "straightforward" way when it requires postgraduate math to even describe it?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Coryoth ( 254751 )

        For instance, how would you explain some concept in number theory (as an example) in a "straightforward" way when it requires postgraduate math to even describe it?

        Very slowly with a lot of lead up work explaining all the basic mathematics you'll need. [stuff.gen.nz] So far I've been going for about a year, and expect to take another 2 years before I get to where I can actually explain anything interesting int he way of research mathematics. Still, it can be done, it just takes an awful lot of effort. It is, however, effort that I firmly believe should be spent by someone: there's a disconnect between the general public and the world of research, and that needs to be healed -- par

    • within the mind of your average joe blow, you will find two shocking things: 1. amazing depths of stupidity 2. amazing heights of intellect

      No, you don't. Sorry, I'm not trying to be elitist, I recognize that not everyone has to be an Alpha-Plus, but half the population is below average and all that jazz. The fact of the matter is, if you probe the mind of the average person in an industrialized nation today, you'll find an ASTOUNDING lack of caring about anything intellectual. Ignorance is bliss, and thin

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Lemmy Caution ( 8378 )
        "Intellectual" isn't the same as intelligent. The real differences in cognitive ability between the smartest and (non-disabled, "normal" range) dumbest of us is very, very small. The fact that we can grasp moving objects, use multiple tenses when speaking, drive vehicles, and learn how to shop represents an enormous cognitive achievement. The kind of intellectual activity you are talking about is highly specialized, of low value to most people, is often dependent on affective and social factors, is variable
        • Relative to simple response to stimulus, you're right, driving and shopping are marvelous achievements. But in relation to truly grasping the way things work, I tend to disagree with you. There is a large difference between people who can't figure out the surface area of a cube and, say, Murray Gell-Mann. In the case of scientific writing, though, it doesn't even matter, because it's the same problem - whether the reader is unintelligent or unintellectual, the result is they won't care about, read, or under

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Lemmy Caution ( 8378 )
            I don't think there's that large a difference between Murray Gell-Mann and my aunt, outside of a couple very restricted domains (my aunt happens to be a very successful poet and hell of a cook, by the way - and her cooking is a form of "grasping how things work.") Even scientific knowledge doesn't scale very well: an understanding of physics contributes little to an understanding of computational neuroscience (yes, I am aware of some crossover, but it isn't organic), epidemiology, linguistics, etc. Each of
            • You're probably right about your aunt; being a successful poet puts her, mentally, far above most people. That doesn't really apply to the accountants and the fratboys of the world. And I think we both know if you were to pick up a computational neuroscience book, your physics knowledge would contribute enormously to your understanding of the material, both because of the tie-ins and because your knowledge of physics means you can think scientifically in general. If you couldn't, you wouldn't have your curr

      • The fact of the matter is, if you probe the mind of the average person in an industrialized nation today, you'll find an ASTOUNDING lack of caring about anything intellectual.

        You'll find that even non-average people have an ASTOUNDING lack of caring about anything intellectual they don't participate in. Not many IT geeks jump at the chance to attend a conference on sociology.

        There's no need to consider carefully the workings of the world, so they don't.

        Perhaps they are considering different aspects of how

        • Not many IT geeks jump at the chance to attend a conference on sociology.

          Not many IT geeks are scientists, either. They're keyboard monkeys.

          Some view the world focusing on opportunities to make money, others look to opportunties to aid others.

          Most, however, just look to get through each day with as little effort as possible.

          Just as if he's trying to explain proper tackling technique or a double eagle flex defense you'd just go back to playing Halo 3.

          No, I wouldn't. I don't play Halo 3, and if someone wer

    • Dear Mr. Must-Put-Derogatory-Label-On-Everyone

      We are talking about science journalisim here. The assumption being that people are not going to go out and read the latest 500 page thesis on Deionizing Ameno based Triptides. Therefore a journalist (hence the whole "Journalisim" thing) is being asked to summarize this and reduce it down so it will fit on pages 53 and 54 between the adds for a new sport drink and a the latest Ford Hybrid.

      So while the Thesis may state that this process will allow people to liv

    • Re:smacks of elitism and insularity (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kebes ( 861706 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:56PM (#20749275) Journal
      (Disclosure: I'm a scientist.)

      I mostly agree with what you've said.

      you sell sophisticated information to joe blow in the only way possible: straightforward. no watering down, no soft pedaling. then watch as what you deem ungraspable (that's the elitism in you) getting grasped notheless
      Agreed. I think science journalism often overly simplifies things in the name of some ethereal "joe average" when in reality people can get quite a bit out of technical descriptions, even if they don't understand every detail. It's more important, in my opinion, for the presented information to be correct, so that the interested reader can really think about it (and maybe read it multiple times, and go check other sources)... rather than sacrificing correctness in the name of "making it easier to understand."

      not everything has to be explained. communication is not about impressing upon someone else's mind every little delicate detail. nor is it necessary to do that for joe blow to grasp important pieces of information
      There is no doubt that scientists need to spend more time crafting their delivery before speaking with journalists. A well-respected scientist that I've collaborated with had a rule: "If you can't explain what you did in three sentences, then you have not thought about it enough."

      I think that good science journalism is possible, but it requires some extra effort from both the journalist and the scientist. Ideally, the journalist should be checking with the scientists that his simplified explanations are correct, and changing them if they are not (rather than printing something that the scientist will read and then shake his head). The scientist, meanwhile, should think long and hard about what the essence of their work is.

      • Re:smacks of elitism and insularity (Score:4, Insightful)

        by dargaud ( 518470 ) <slashdot2@nOSpaM.gdargaud.net> on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @05:00AM (#20753355) Homepage
        I worked in Antarctica [gdargaud.net] where we drilled a 3.2km deep hole to recover old ice for various climatology and glaciology projects. The ice cores we pull out are named 'carrots'. There were plenty of phone interviews when the bedrock was reached after 10 years of work. Title from the italian newspaper Corriere della Serra:

        "Million year old frozen carrots discovered 3km deep under the Antarctic ice."
        And in the words of Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame):

        "Science is a good thing. News reporters are good things too. But it's never a good idea to put them in the same room."

    • Dear OP,

      Please ignore circletimessquare. S/he would make a terrible teacher: sink-or-swim is the second-worst approach to communicating information that there is. -- the worst being not to try to communicate it at all.

      There's also the fact that good communication requires occasional punctuation; so I would take the parent's remarks about high-quality communication with a grain of salt anyway.

    • I despise the term "elitist" since most people use it support their
      "Citizen Media" type arguments, where every dumbass's point of view holds equal weight, but, yes, if your academic paper can't be understood by your average professional journalist, high school science teacher, or reasonably coherent /.er then you're not doing it right.

      Or, in other words, how would you approach your subject for a Scientific American article? If only 10% of academic papers were as well written as those.

      I'm not sure what that

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pz ( 113803 )
      I wish people who are trying to communicate ideas that they feel are important would take the time to abide by standard rules of communication like normal punctuation and spelling. The reason we don't, by convention, write in all lower case letters is that it makes it more difficult to read sentences that way. Communication is all, but all, about making your message easy to understand by the reader. In every modern Western written system, that includes using both upper and lower case letters. Yes, it is

  • A better question is, (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Irvu ( 248207 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:34PM (#20748987)
    Can anyone not in the field explain what these are to the general public.

    So as the author notes details are everything. And, at the same time, details such as assumptions mean the difference between science and bunk. I think that a good, scientifically trained, journalist could point these out if they were looking for them but whether that is what their bosses will let them do is another thing.

    I have interacted with a number of journalists and have noted that, for many of them, there are two things that they need to do a good story: time to do research and an absence of biased assumptions. Ironically these are the same basic requirements to do good science. Even more ironically both are often denied them under pressure of tight deadlines and preexisting editorial biases. Not "liberal" or "conservative" biases but more the, if the elected officials say it it must be true or "there must be two equaly sides to every story" which trips up those comparing science to pseudoscience. Such gaps negatively affect reporting on all issues from science to war.

    In many ways I think the question is really, can journalists do good journalism, and that is something I used to believe was true. Now, I'm not so sure.

  • Good scientific journalism is possible... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by frank_adrian314159 ( 469671 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:34PM (#20748991) Homepage
    To write anything well, the writer must (a) understand the material, (b) write to the level of the user, and (c) tell a coherent, interesting story.

    If you can do that, you can also weave in the portions about assumptions, undone studies, and so on, while still being entertaining enough for a "normal person" to read. If you can't, it's better that you write for a specialized audience (if at all) that might be more forgiving of the writing's shortcomings.

  • Look at Stephen J. Gould, and at Science News (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ktistec Machine ( 159201 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:34PM (#20748993)
    A couple of good examples of science writing for non-experts:

    * Stephen J. Gould's books (e.g., "The Panda's Thumb") about natural history. He made a point of never "lying" to his students or readers. He believed that teachers only needed to fudge the truth if they didn't understand the material well enough themselves. His books are clear, informative and enjoyable, and they don't cut any corners on the science.

    * Science News ( http://www.sciencenews.org/ [sciencenews.org] ), which is one of the best examples of science journalism anywhere. I've subscribed to it, off and on, since the 1960s. (It's been published since the 1920s.) They're excellent journalists.
    • Look at the science fact articles by various authors in Analog magazine when it was under John Campbell. Also look at Isaac Asimov's science fact articles in various publications during the same period.

      Journalism has been dumbed down greatly since the post-Vietnam politicization of news and the television "vast wasteland" era concept of news as entertainment for people too dumb to read. This is why you have to go back to about WWII and its pre- and post-war periods to find most of the examples of good pre

    • Re:Look at Stephen J. Gould, and at Science News (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PylonHead ( 61401 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @05:08PM (#20749377) Homepage Journal
      Here's another vote for Science News. A little dry perhaps for the average person, but perfect for the enthusiastic amateur.

      From the original post:

      Now, can someone unfamiliar with a particular field, nay, a sub-discipline of that field, recognize these assumptions for what they are?"

      One of the things that a good scientific journalist does is get opinions from the other big players in the field that the new paper is being published in. It's often the most interesting part of the article. When they say, "It's an interesting paper, but I won't be convinced until I see more data on..." we as the general public can get a better idea of just how far along the research really is.
    • Couldn't agree more with you about Gould. One of the great things he does is weave his own fascination into the science. Some of my favorite articles by him are about non-startling science, such as discovering 'Stasis' in Greece. I was too young to have made the connection when I lived there.

      His article about 'the myth of a flat earth' is frankly brilliant and his conclusion of why the myth developed such a strong following is dead on (especially here on slashdot where accusing some one of believing i
    • Totally by coincidence, just the other day I wrote up my impressions of an article that appeared in a recent issue New Scientist, as compared to Stephen Jay Gould's philosophy on what constitutes good science writing. In short, the New Scientist article did not fare well. Check it out [neilmcallister.com] if you're so inclined.
    • Hmm, ok. If I want to know the Frankfurt School's politically motivated take on science, I'll read Gould. He did a stellar job of ignoring current research in favor of attacking century old experiments.

      For the facts, give me Herrnstein and Murray.
    • It's also worth looking at Scientific American from the 1950's and 1960's when it was being edited by Gerald Peale. It's particularly interesting to compare to issues from the 1980's just before it was sold.

      In the early issues, every concept is clearly explained in terms that should be accessible to a competent high school student - and many of them read it. In the 1980's it had degenerated: The first few paragraphs were carefully edited and then it lapsed into jargon.

      So, yes, it is possible but it's hard
      • In my opinion, Scientific American took a nose dive a few years ago when it decided to dumb itself down, maybe to compete with Popular Science and Discover magazines. It seems to be very easy to read now, but short on information. I used to read it all the time, and learned a lot, but it seems more of a waste of time now. Sure, some of the articles used to be hard to read, but that's the price you sometimes need to pay in order to convey novel (to the reader) information.
  • Forgive me here, but I couldn't tell what the point of the article was.

    Was it challenging the use of assumptions?

    Was it stating that people can't understand the research without advanced knowledge of the assumptions?

    Help, I didn't understand.

  • Possibly (Score:2, Funny)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 )

    Now, can someone unfamiliar with a particular field, nay, a sub-discipline of that field, recognize these assumptions for what they are?

    They might, if you're able to clearly phrase your assumptions in terms of things like widths of a human hair, the volume of an Olympic swimming pool, or the speed of a rifle bullet.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      They might, if you're able to clearly phrase your assumptions in terms of things like widths of a human hair, the volume of an Olympic swimming pool, or the speed of a rifle bullet.

      Even so, you'd still be talking about many Libraries of Congress' worth of information that the reader would need to understand.

      • "Even so, you'd still be talking about many Libraries of Congress' worth of information that the reader would need to understand."

        But then you could line-up all the books go-and-return three times to the Moon and who wouldn't understand?
  • He seems to do fairly well at it, from both sides of the equation.
  • Journalism is a well known practice, but communications is much tougher.

    The maximal information (says Jeremy Campbell in "Grammatical Man", a guide to entropy in information systems) is conferred when the speaker knows the most of the context of the listener.

    I agree with that whole heartedly. This means that you have to know your target audience to be most effective, not necessarily the subject matter-- although it certainly has to help.

  • Is it possible? Sure. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chas ( 5144 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:44PM (#20749137) Homepage Journal
    Does anyone actually DO it anymore?

    Not as far as I can tell.

    Most of the stuff I've seen in the last 15 years or so shuffles between two categories.

    1: Highly technical and scientifically accurate as far as information is available, but written in such a way that stereo instructions (in Japanese no less) are more intelligible to the common man.

    2: Written to the understanding level of the common man (or slightly above if they don't use crayon), but woefully inaccurate and filled with assumptions and self-fulfilled hypotheses. Stuff that a generation ago, would have been laughed out of most scientific journals. An "in depth" study that winds up within a 15 percent confidence? Sorry, but 5% used to be considered shaky, but publishable. Lax standards and sensationalism now rule the roost.

  • Publish more, think less. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CoffeeIsMyGod ( 1136809 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:47PM (#20749167)
    Publish more, think less. It's what everyone else does.

  • Paradox (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pete-classic ( 75983 ) <hutnick@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:47PM (#20749169) Homepage Journal
    I'm not a Scientist, but here's my take.

    The only things that can be responsibly reported are things that are well established. But they aren't news. And the irresponsible are then left to report on the news. So we need responsible journalists to report on Science. Which they can't do properly.

    The outcome is what we have. Science news that is at best inaccurate. More often it's sensationalized and misleading.

    If there's a solution to this I certainly don't see it.

    -Peter
  • Really I think that the greater problem is with mass media grabbing a few points and stating them as 'truths'. Alot of the bad press that scientific studies have nowadays is from some major new organization blowing something out of proportion, having everyone accept that as 'truth', and then discovering a few years later that it was wrong/inaccurate/whatever. On a side note I agree with the previous poster that as far as getting the information across most people are not concerned with the details so much
  • It's interesting reading the blog post. I'm a software developer, and software is also built upon other software, much like science is built upon science. In software development we call this dependencies. I.e. program A needs library C to run, library C needs library d,e,f,and g to run. I tested program A to run under version 1.2 of library C, which was tested under version 1.6 of library e, 1.5 of library f, etc. Will the program work if you use version 1.3 of library C? Who knows? So I'm not unfam

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      Oh, and the insane rambling by the journalist who think they can write about anything and not have a background in it is of course insane. That's typical journalism though.

      It's not insane. Just because you develop software for a living, do you think you could write better magazine articles about software development than somebody who does that for a living? Or better novels about software development? Or better plays etc.? If so, then you should probably get out there and do it, because it would be a re


      • Just because you develop software for a living, do you think you could write better magazine articles about software development than somebody who does that for a living?
        Some of them. What does that have to do with anything? The premise here is you don't have to have experience in something to write about it. A premise I have a large problem with in Science, and any other area dealing with facts. Hopefully someone writing an article about software development is going to have some experience in software

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PCM2 ( 4486 )

          The problem with nearly all your examples is they deal with fiction.

          That's odd, because exactly none of my examples were about fiction, except for the rhetorical comment about novels and plays. So far as I know, Sports Illustrated doesn't publish any fiction, so I don't know why you'd make this assumption -- but then I don't read it.

          Maybe I should reiterate, more clearly:

          Some of the best nonfiction books about the mafia ever written have been written by journalists, not mafia hitmen. In fact I'd wage

  • The Ars science journal, Nobel Intent [arstechnica.com] provides me with my daily science geek fix. Perhaps it isn't dumbed down enough for most folks?
  • scida writes:

    During the past few months, I have spent entire days locked up in my office, writing my first manuscript to be submitted to a peer reviewed scientific journal. While doing so, I have come to realize the following: details can change everything . . . Often, the information I require simply isn't available (the studies haven't been done, or the studies that exist are based on assumptions of their own).

    Follow the examples set by Michael Bellesiles [wikipedia.org] and Woo Suk Hwang [wikipedia.org]. Simply make up data to fit your

  • I think the real question is... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by susano_otter ( 123650 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @05:19PM (#20749477) Homepage
    I think the real question is... "is good journalism possible?"

    The answer, of course, is "no". Sure, it's possible in theory, but in practice it isn't. The fundamental problem is that journalism is produced by people who have spent their time mastering a subject other than the one they're reporting on. Even in the rare case of the "renaissance reporter" who understands both his own trade and the subject matter he's reporting, his report is still subject to the whims of an editor, the constraints of the medium, and the demands of the market.

    On the few occasions that I've been the subject of journalism, the article has gotten facts wrong. On the many occasions that I have read articles about subjects I know well, I have invariably discovered basic errors in the articles. I think it's highly unlikely that journalists are only ignorant of subjects which I know well; it's much more likely that journalists are ignorant of all subjects and that good journalism in any field is impossible.
  • Is it too much to ask that science journalists (by which I mean anyone who writes an article about a scientific topic for a mainstream magazine or newspaper) be conversant with at least the level of science taught in high school?

    Perhaps a general understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum?

    And the difference between a watt and a joule, or between 1 rem and 1 rem/hr?

    Or that hydrogen is not an energy source for denizens of the surface of the planet earth?

    A vague grasp of statistics is too much to ask, I

  • Is good scientific journalism possible? Of course.

    Is there a *market* for good scientific journalism? I don't think so, based on a few decades of observing the journalism market and the public's interest in the topic.

    I wish it weren't so.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      Is there a *market* for good scientific journalism? I don't think so, based on a few decades of observing the journalism market and the public's interest in the topic.

      I've been thinking about this a lot lately. To a certain extent, I think it's something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and then a vicious cycle. Media doesn't print good science coverage, so the public doesn't go to the media looking for it, so why should the media print it when nobody seems to want it? I suspect that half the reason so mu

  • Color code, or otherwise mark up the text. Personally, I like the color coding even though a percentage of the population might have trouble. Obviously you could do it with electronic documents using tags. or perhaps font changes in print.
  • I think it's quite possible. However, one must be a scientist who learns journalism. The other way doesn't work.

  • Einstein's take on the writer of popular science (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mincognito ( 839071 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @07:02PM (#20750431)
    "Either he succeeds in being intelligible by concealing the core of the problem and by offering to the reader only superficial aspects or vague allusions, thus deceiving the reader by arousing in him the deceptive illusion of comprehension; or else he gives an expert account of the problem, but in such a fashion that the untrained reader is unable to follow the exposition and becomes discouraged from reading any further. If these two categories are omitted from today's popular scientific literature, surprisingly little remains."

    This was written by Einstein in a forward for Linconln Barnett's popularization of the theory of relativity in 1948.

  • I work in the software field, but I'm nowhere near an academic scientist, mathematician or any such thing.

    Several years back, I had a moderate interest in audio componentry. As a result, I was just curious about acoustics and what the proper way to set speakers up, how to set ranges/cutoffs, et cetera.

    In the library, I found an author, Manfred Schroeder, who was a world-recognized expert on acoustics. But when I was browsing his books, the one I ended up taking home with me was "Fractals, Chaos, and Power
  • However, it's not possible if the reporter doesn't himself have a basic understanding of the field and scientific methodology in general. And those who do seem to be incredibly rare.

  • Now, can someone unfamiliar with a particular field, nay, a sub-discipline of that field, recognize these assumptions for what they are?"

    Why should they have too? The general public doesn't care about the truth probability of your research. You must hide from them the debate and uncertainties scientists are concerned with.

    Ultimately the public wants to: a) marvel at the discoveries of science; b) be shown how new science might be applied to their life or understanding of the world. They are a differe

  • Yes... And no (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blueZ3 ( 744446 ) on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @08:54PM (#20751165) Homepage
    Scientific journalism isn't a special case. In any writing endevour, but especially in journalism, you have to make assumptions about what your readers know, make choices about how much detail to provide, and generally be able to summarize complex stories. The choices writers make when determining how to address those issues affect what readers understand.

    But it's in no way restricted to science. Political journalist, auto writers, even the folks writing for the 10:00 news--they all gloss over details. Sometimesin ways that are (intentionally or not) misleading. Ask anyone about news reports that cover their area of expertise and they'll tell you how often the writers get it wrong.

    Guess I'm saying you're not alone
  • Before I forget, let me refer you to Ben Goldacre's column and web site at badscience.net. In a column that I believe I found via a link on Slashdot, Goldacre points out that at a typical newspaper, virtually no one involved in science journalism has any science background. It shouldn't be hard to find the link.

    That said, I think you're confusing things. Good science journalism is not the same thing as good science reporting. What you're doing, we hope, is good reporting of the science you've done. A j

  • If you try to give the lay person a complete picture of everything that goes into your experiments and conclusions, of course you will fail.

    But that does not mean that good scientific journalism is not possible. Good articles give a good flavor for the framework surrounding the experiment without becoming bogged down in the details. And a good article will point out the possible weaknesses in any experiment so that the reader has some idea of the likelihood for future falsification.

    Not many writers know

  • Two audiences (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Metasquares ( 555685 ) <<slashdot> <at> <metasquared.com>> on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @11:38PM (#20752099) Homepage
    Don't use inaccessible language if your target audience is the general public, for starters. The language used in scientific papers is needlessly complex. Fortunately, it's also very formulaic, so once you've read a few papers, you can immediately figure out what the author(s) are really doing.

    The common response when I present a paper to a member of my family is "well, I almost understand the title", even if nothing particularly tricky is going on in the paper. Maybe they'd get it if they read a few papers, but the language ensures that they won't even make the attempt. And my family tends to be more educated and more open to new ideas than the general public.

    So the first step is to eliminate the jargon unless it's actually necessary. I know that writing that way is more precise, but it is also harder to read.

    Some of the discussion of background is interesting to other scientists but not to a lay audience, as well. The way to write an accessible article is to start from an accessible overview, going into details as necessary after clearly presenting the main idea. That is what abstracts are supposed to do. Also, laypeople do not need to understand all of the methodologies underlying the analysis; they're not performing work in the field and it's unlikely that they will be capable of critiquing the research, so they simply need to know the impact of the results.

    Here's an example:

    "We analyzed the texture of mammograms and found that certain patterns correlate with an x% increased risk of breast cancer".

    is accessible. Your mammogram looks like this, you have a higher risk of cancer. Simple. People get it. If I had to summarize this research results in one sentence, I'd do it that way.

    In a scientific paper, it would sound like this:

    "We performed Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to extract statistically uncorrelated discriminative texture features from the biomedical images. PCA can be performed in the following manner: Let X be a collection of feature vectors... (etc.)

    We then performed k-nearest neighbor classification on the extracted feature vectors. Classification accuracy is given by the following ROC curve: (ROC curve that no layperson would have a hope of understanding). The area under the curve was .9, which supports our hypothesis at alpha=.05."

    Etc.

    Scientists can understand that. Laypeople cannot. I essentially just gave the reader the conclusion in that last sentence (plus associated figure of ROC curve), but it would fly over the head of anyone who didn't understand what an ROC curve is, why the area being .9 is so great, or what alpha=.05 is supposed to mean.

    If you're talking about publishing in, say, Scientific American, you're talking about a step or two above the general public ("scientifically aware" is how I'd describe this group), so this may not necessarily apply. But you probably can't discuss any highly specialized knowledge in such things and expect the majority of readers to get it.

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