I see that Ben Goldacre has yet again aimed at the wrong target in his 'Bad Science' column in today's edition of 'The Guardian', blaming science and medical journalists for poor coverage of a journal paper published this week on the success or otherwise of screening tests for prostate cancer. He also called out the coverage by 'The Guardian' on his website, but the newspaper's subs clearly couldn't stomach the criticism of his paymasters and edited it out before publication (assuming that Ben didn't censor it himself).
But the point is that all the problems about which he complains seem to have arisen from the media release that was distributed by the European Association of Urology and posted on AlphaGalileo, rather than from sloppy reading of the source, a paper published in the 18 March issue of 'The New England Journal of Medicine'. He also complains that UK journalists "deliberately ignored" another paper by US authors in the same issue of the journal. I rather suspect that the paper was simply missed because it was not promoted through a media release to UK journalists.
The fact is that journalists working to daily newspaper deadlines have to rely on media releases rather than on wading through technical journals. They have just a few hours to write their articles, not a whole week like Ben has for his column. And by making journalists solely culpable for what he considers to be bad reporting, he ignores the role of bad media relations by universities and scientific organisations, and promotes further ignorance and misunderstanding of how the media works.
Bob Ward
Policy and Communications Director
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London
WC2A 2AE
http://www.lse.ac.uk/grantham/
Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm
**********************************************************************
1. To suspend yourself from the list, whilst on leave, for example,
send an email to mailto:[log in to unmask] with the following message:
set psci-com nomail -- [include hyphens]
2. To resume email from the list, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message:
set psci-com mail -- [include hyphens]
3. To leave psci-com, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message:
leave psci-com -- [include hyphens]
4. Further information about the psci-com discussion list, including list archive, can be found at the list web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/psci-com.html
5. The psci-com gateway to internet resources on science communication and science and society can be found at http://psci-com.ac.uk
6. To contact the Psci-com list owner, please send an email to mailto:[log in to unmask]
**********************************************************************
|