Press perspective

A couple of months ago, there was a seminar I wanted to attend on the responsibility that scientists have to represent their science correctly to the public. Unfortunately I had another course I had to attend at the same time, and wasn't able to go.

A large proportion of the scientific research in the biological and biomedical sciences in the UK is funded by public money. Therefore it's natural that the public should be made aware of what their money is being used for. In recent years there has been an increasing amount of debate over whether research is being made transparent enough to the public, and increased pressure to make scientists more accountable for the way they use their funding money and when presenting the results that they find. Fair enough up to a point.

But why is there not more pressure on the press to stop them from wilfully misrepresenting the science? If scientists misled people in the same way about their work they would be heavily penalised by their peers and by the press themselves. But journalists are 'allowed' to write scaremongering stories with very little responsibility for any consequences. You might argue that it's up to the scientists to respond to such stories and educate the public, but once an idea has been planted in people's minds, it takes much much more to persuade them that it is incorrect. Journalists are also prone to paraphrasing and are capable of twisting quotes and scientific 'facts' to fit their whims. 'Chlorine in tap water doubles chances of having deformed children' sounds so much better than 'Study carried out in Taiwan suggests a tentative correlation between chlorine in treated water supplies and defects in newly born babies, but doesn't take into account other socio-economic factors in the areas sampled' (story from June 2008)

Dramatic headlines always sell more papers, and people carry on buying more newspapers to keep up with any updates. If the newspaper later has to qualify the original statement, the damage is still done, and the seeds of worry and doubt have been sown. They flourish so much better than the seeds of confidence and common sense. Sometimes though, these stories can have worrying longer-term effects. Stories on what are 'cancer-causing' and 'cancer-defying' agents are a case in point. Up to a few years, vitamin C was THE wonder vitamin, it helped cure colds, eczema, headaches, cancer, etc etc. You could never have too much of it, so people took tablets with far higher amounts of vitamin C than their bodies could ever absorb. Then, it transpired there was a link between overly high levels of vitamin C in the diet and development of cancer. Cue panic.

The best diet is a well-balanced diet. All the press about 'wonder vitamins' only serves to put lots of money into companies that cash into the demand for extract of ginkgo, extract of aloe vera. Not to say that these don't have health benefits - but they won't help if you take them after smoking half a pack of cigarettes and neglect having any fresh veg in your diet.

It's important that we keep up-to-date, and to be aware of any research on risks to our health. But our information should come with an awareness of perspective, and what it means in terms of how we live our everyday lives.

One of my friends pointed out that the science editors for magazines and newspapers are mostly only trained in one discipline and one area of that discipline at that. Although they may be trained as an ecologist or zoologist, they commission and edit articles on physics, genetics, nutritition, the lot. This may be a partial reason (or excuse) for some of the rubbish that newspapers churn out but it needs to be remedied. The press have a lot of power, but with little of the sense of responsibility that should go with it.