ÐÏࡱá>þÿ &'þÿÿÿ%ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÜ¥hcà e€ö>PIf;F¸F¸¸G¸G¸G¸G¸GÌGÌGÌGÌGÌGÜG æGÌGH1öGúGHHHHHHHHHHHHHCHX›HµH¸GH !HHHHHH¸G¸GHöGHHHH¸GH¸GHHaö³HCÂÌGÌG¸G¸G¸G¸GHHHHTrust me, I’m a Science Communicator by Dr Rob Morrison Like a Hollywood scientist’s bubbling concoction, National Science Week has overflowed its confines. The week now lasts almost a month; there is too much science going on to spruik it in one week. I say ‘spruik’ intentionally. Science Week promotes science, especially research, but many science graduates are looking for something else. Like law graduates who never practise law, some science graduates don’t want to be researchers but are nonetheless fascinated by science, and hope to make a profession out of reading and writing about it. They are science communicators. The term has gained more recognition since the national association formed seven years ago, but it still puzzles people. Science communicators can be science teachers or journalists. Some write books, make broadcasts or work in organisations that need people who can make difficult science material accessible to the public. Science communicators share a conviction that science, its potential, methods - even its hazards - should be better understood by a wider audience. It couldn’t have happened at a better time. On one hand, we are bedevilled by pseudoscience and new age nonsense at times so outlandish that it would have embarrassed illiterate peasants in the middle ages. Healing crystals, numerology, creation science and more all clamour for respectability by donning the trappings and name of science while spurning its rigorous methods of delusion-testing. On the other hand, real scientific developments are occurring so fast that they outstrip the speed with which society can respond. Stem cell cultures, genetic engineering, internet communication, cloning and more all highlight science’s extraordinary progress and, at the same time, society’s ponderous inability to cope with the ethical and legal consequences of it all. Science communicators try to make sense of all of this, and they have emerged at the right time to play an important role in the transformation of our universities. Universities were once adequately funded to allow a reasonable level of research in all areas. Increasingly they must find their own money from fee-paying students, corporate links and patenting the products of academic research. This works well if you research something marketable. Some large fortunes will shortly be made in university biotechnology departments, but if your research involves classifying rare seaweeds, or the ecology of uncharismatic snails, you may have trouble winning scarce money for it, no matter how good your science. The race, you see, is going to the saleable, and as the science emphasis in universities shifts to entrepreneurial activity, it’s not scholarship alone that counts but corporate links and business savvy. Some science is now unfashionable; it has little place in the corporate world. Reallocating university resources to potentially lucrative science activities is understandable but regrettable, as it sends the message that the science that really matters is the science that pays, but it has created openings for science communicators. To attract corporate dollars, your university must be recognised as a research high-flier, and promoting what researchers do is just the job for science communicators. A growing number of universities and other bodies like CRCs, CSIRO and so on have them now. Their job is to put out the good science news to the media, and link it to their organisation’s name, so it might help here to talk a little about how science news is put out, for that, too, is changing. Traditionally, a publicist writes a media release and sends it by fax to newsrooms, radio shows, freelance journalists and so forth. The newsroom’s chief of staff examines the incoming faxes and distributes those of interest to the waiting reporters. The radio producer makes some quick judgements and follows up those stories that promise good interviews. The rest of the faxes go no further. One day’s faxes may contain hundreds of stories, but only a few will be used. The stories that succeed may do so because they describe a really significant advance in some scientific field, but those are uncommon. Often they succeed because they appear to be significant. More of that later. Many, perhaps most, newsrooms still work like this. It is effective when staff journalists are on hand to be given daily tasks, but some newsrooms also use freelancers, and some freelancers are not linked to any particular news outlet. There the picture changes. If you are a freelancer, the faxed stories may not be quite your thing. You don’t want the story that everybody else has, but something of your own. A scoop would be nice, but at least a strong story which no other bulletin is likely to run before you. So you research your own stories, and there the internet and worldwide web are invaluable. Some excellent websites simply receive and post science media releases. Science reporters access them easily and find unlimited stories packaged and ready to go under categories like science, technology, medicine or business. But these websites are equally valuable if you are a science communicator trying to get your story out. It is no longer at the mercy of a few newsroom chiefs of staff; it is posted for all the world to see and for any freelance reporter to use. You can increase its chances by accompanying it with electronic photos for journalists to download. In this way, you may find your story and photos printed in an American Journal with a circulation of 20,000 whose existence you never suspected, or translated for inclusion in Hebrew websites. If you are lucky, it will feature on the ABC’s respected science news site, The Lab. If you are unlucky, it will appear word for word under some other journalist’s name, but that is your job, to get your university news out there. But there are now more science communicators writing these stories, and while the number being used by the media is also growing, it is not in proportion to the number being produced. Which then survive? Those considered the strongest stories; but that often means those with the strongest angle. That angle could be seasonal, human interest, or attached to hard news, but five angles apply particularly to science stories. Let’s take them one by one. One angle involves the release of a report, a study’s findings, a publication in a prestigious journal or similar. If the subject matter is considered interesting enough, it is usually reported in an uncomplicated fashion. But the angle may be one of controversy, especially a disagreement between specialists. Such a story might pit genetic engineers against the ethicists who condemn what they do. Another involves the quirky or unusual. Scientists can be dismayed to find their work handled this way. Having described their research in wetland ecology, they may emerge as wild, muddy, driven people, hair whipping in the fierce wind as they chase esoteric aquatic prey. This angle helps keep alive the stereotype of the eccentric scientist. Then there is the Guinness Book of Records angle. The biggest, most expensive, longest… any superlative will do. A dinosaur bone is especially newsworthy if it comes from the biggest dinosaur ever to have lived. And while most research involves discovery, many science stories get an undeserved run through that angle alone. The word ‘breakthrough’ is the cliché of the science report. You can see where this is going. In a crowded news market, a controversial story about some quirky bloke discovering something that breaks all records has got to be a winner, but it may not be the most important science story around, and I fear that it is itself being overtaken by science that hasn’t even taken place. In the past, a science journalist wrote about work that had been done, a discovery that had been made. These days, stories often feature research that may lead to an important advance, and the hypothetical promise of this advance provides the angle, makes the story work, and can occupy a large proportion of it. But the great event hasn’t yet happened, and may never do so. Remember the Millennium Bug? Cloning the thylacine? Even more hyperbolic is the story announcing a large grant to begin research that may lead to a great advance of conjectural value. In other words, Darwinian processes of natural selection are now at play in the science media. To compound that metaphor, a story survives if it is printed or aired, it reproduces if it is picked up and reported elsewhere. With an overpopulation of stories, few survive, let alone reproduce. Only those considered the fittest are selected for and find their way into print and broadcast. They include quirky, controversial and extreme stories but, increasingly, speculative stories that subtly exploit where a discovery may lead one unspecified day, if things turn out as hoped. We are advancing hypotheses but calling them discoveries. Our university monitors how often our media releases are printed or aired. Some top performers among my own include the possibility that stem cell technology might cure Alzheimer’s (but which still awaits even trials), solar storms that could knock out Vlog’s communication systems (they didn’t), brain research that may one day alleviate stroke (at least 10 years away), and a superior detector of gravitational waves (although the nature and even existence of such waves are still matters of controversy). There is nothing technically wrong with this. The scientists and their research are good, the stories legitimate, but I fear the balance is astray. We are drifting from honest records of solid achievement towards exciting but speculative appraisals of where preliminary research, or even more, grants to undertake it, might one day lead. We vitalise our stories by means that are fast becoming their ends, and what readers take from them is not so much the science in them but conjectural inferences of what it may become. Science reporting is starting to resemble science fiction. SETI is a good example. SETI is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. This, to me, highly dubious exercise attracts much more funding than it deserves and runs in the media, year after year, on excited speculation about whether others like us share our Universe and what they may be trying to tell us. Star Trek with credentials! To test this perception of mine, I punched the words ‘stem cell’ into the search engine of Eurekalert, perhaps the most influential science release website in the world. It turned up 243 stories containing those words. The engine can rank them according to several factors. I chose date first, and read the ten most recent stories. Only three of them avoided the speculative angle, dealing respectively with anatomy, ethical issues and why cloned cells die. The other seven, while describing good research, were newsworthy because of their speculative angle of where that research might one day lead. They claimed that there ‘may now be the option of donor cell treatment,’ it ‘may open a new door’, that stem cells ‘might one day mend damaged hearts’, ‘cure urinary incontinence’, ‘treat a variety of diseases’ or ‘theoretically repair any organ’. It’s possibly all true, but it will be a while before it is shown to be so; in the meantime, these science stories ride to an uncomfortable extent upon their conjectural angles. That is not just a value judgement on my part. Search engines can tell you the degree of relevance of what they find, expressed as a percentage. The average relevance of the seven speculative stories was 80%. By contrast, the purely factual stories rated 63%. 80% against 63%? It’s a telling difference if you want a winning edge that gets your story to air. The clear lesson from it is to use a strong speculative angle of the promise of things to come, with the underlying science a lot further down in the text. The search engine can also rank stories according to this perceived relevance. I searched for the ten most relevant stem cell stories, which ranged from 88% to 85 %. Again, only three lacked the speculative angle, announcing a call for public comment, a Congressional briefing and a finding that stem cell injections helped Lupus sufferers. The other seven stories, in varying degrees, used the speculative angle of where stem cells might one day cure currently incurable conditions, predicting treatments for spinal cord injury, Alzheimer’s disease, strokes, Lou Gehrig’s disease, diabetes, immune disorders, Parkinson’s disease, cancers, heart failure, spinal paralysis, multiple sclerosis and other therapeutic applications. One story cautioned that this experimental procedure ‘may work in humans, but there is still a long way to go’. There certainly is. I’d be the last to claim that this small sample is statistically significant, but it does have the uncomfortable ring of truth to me. I know how the game is played. I play it that way myself, and by doing so I can get results. But what’s the problem? News is really entertainment, so surely anything goes… We’re just doing our jobs… There is still good science being reported… These are all reasonable excuses or, if you like, legitimate claims. But surely, in the developing field of science communication, we may not want to see it continue this way. If this is how the world’s most consulted and most respected science news website evaluates its top stories, what comes next? Just as universities are being edged towards research with a commercial payoff, science communicators are being eased into extrapolating from scientific findings into speculation, hyperbole and even fantasy. There is good science in these stories, but strip the hyperbole away, and much of the science is slighter than that behind the classification of seaweeds or ecology of snails. Add the hyperbole, and stem cells will beat algae and molluscs to news broadcasts every time. Perhaps, as specialist communicators, we need a certain code of practice. Maybe we should better separate the science in our reports from conjecture about its significance. Perhaps we should more often join that lone reporter in cautioning, when we predict the future benefits of today’s research, that “we still have a long way to go”. And, while we reassure the public that we are there to help them decipher the sometimes complex but always exciting world of science, we might remind them that science is supposed to encourage healthy scepticism about dogma, and that reports from science communicators, just as much as the claims of the scientists they feature, should be treated with a healthy dose of that. Rob Morrison wrote this article while he was working for the Vlog of Adelaide's Media Unit as the Vlog's Science Journalist. © Rob Morrison 2001 Broadcast on Ockham’s Razor, Radio National, September 23, 2001 Printed in Australasian Science, October 2001 Winner, 2002 Vlogn Skeptics Eureka Prize For Critical Thinking A shorter, edited version of this article also appeared in the October 2001 issue of the Adelaidean. 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