Yes. The Telegraph, like many papers, is quick to use its agenda to colour
coverage.
Was the Met Office even the right target?
As you said, and The Telegraph admits, I thought it was air traffic control,
perhaps feeding on data from the Met Office and others, that grounded the
airlines.
In this case, The Telegraph was simply reporting on what airlines were
saying. They, and some unnamed "senior European official", are the people
who gunned for the Met Office.
The Telegraph wrote of airlines that joined force "to publicly criticise
Nats, the air traffic control centre, over the way it interpreted the Met
Office's "very limited empirical data".
So, if you look at the piece carefully you will find that it has the usual
problem. Neither the headline (hed, if you are an American) nor the
"standfirst" really reflect the full story, which was more evenly balanced.
What was missing was a quote from the Met Office. That is where the bias
comes in.
As to not talking to the science correspondent, I was surprised that the
piece was "By By [sic] Caroline Gammell, David Millward and Bruno
Waterfield". They can't have much space to fill over there at Victoria
Station if they can put three people on to one short item.
MK
-----Original Message-----
From: psci-com: on public engagement with science
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bob Ward
Sent: 26 April 2010 11:21
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PSCI-COM] Reporting Science
The article in 'The Daily Telegraph' is part of an apparent ongoing
campaign to undermine the reputation of the Met Office (presumably the
newspaper would be much happier if it was privatised).
We have seen from previous controversies in the UK that when a newspaper
is campaigning against somebody or something, it very rarely lets
scientific accuracy get in the way (eg MMR, GM, climate change, etc).
Presumably that is why the news desk at the Telegraph didn't feel the
need for its science correspondent to contribute to the story.
The assumption in the article appears to be that the Met Office should
only have mapped the presence of ash where it could be detected, thus
increasing the chance that airplanes might fly into undetected ash. But
the decision about whether to fly was taken by the CAA on an assumption
that no level of ash would be safe - so it wasn't the computer model
that was responsible for the decision.
And if the airlines think that the cost of taking precautionary measures
was too much to bear, they might consider how much business they would
have lost if an airplane had run into problems after flying into
undetected ash and the industry's reputation for safety was called into
question.
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
Tel. +44 (0) 20 7106 1236
Mob. +44 (0) 7811 320346
-----Original Message-----
From: psci-com: on public engagement with science
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Kenward
Sent: 26 April 2010 09:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PSCI-COM] Reporting Science
"- why in the 25+ years since the BA jet had its problems have the
airlines/engine manufacturers not undertaken the basic safety testing
required to determine what is and what isn't safe?"
They could argue that they have undertaken the basic safety testing
required to determine what is and what isn't safe.
This has not much to do with science in the media, but one answer could
be that the engine makers test their kit only for things that are laid
down in the law. If the law says a blade has to survive the impact of a
20-lb goose, then they will throw geese into their engines to pass the
certification tests.
If the tests don't mention volcanic ash, why test? After all, you could
test for any number of unlikely things.
Then again they may have made tests with volcanic ash, although it is
probably harder to work out what to test than it is for bird strikes,
but no one has bothered to correlate the results because the regulators
don't require them.
These are the questions that a decent "science" journalist would pursue.
By the way, the original piece in the Telegraph may well have sidled
into the paper without going anywhere near a science exert. This is
often where errors sneak in.
_______________________________
Michael Kenward OBE
Have words will travel
-----Original Message-----
From: psci-com: on public engagement with science
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Etherington
Sent: 26 April 2010 08:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PSCI-COM] Reporting Science
I think the important thing about the whole tone of the Telegraph piece
come from the first sentence:
"[The Met Office] has been accused of using a scientific model based on
"probability" rather than fact to forecast the spread of the volcanic
ash cloud..."
Firstly, and on a purely grammatical/logical basis - the fact that it is
a forecast surely precludes fact anywhere other than as a starting point
Secondly, it raise interesting questions about the public acceptance of
occasions when the precautionary principle is applied to an area of
scientific doubt. To me this was clearly the right thing to do, there is
a general understanding that ash affects jet engines (see 1982 event)
but there is no tested limits at which safe flying becomnes unsafe.
I agree with Michael that much of the airlines responses are motivated
by commerical pressures (and possibly Political ones too) but a question
I am asking is - why in the 25+ years since the BA jet had its problems
have the airlines/engine manufacturers not undertaken the basic safety
testing required to determine what is and what isn't safe?
Bruce
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