Science and the Media

Recently, the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences published Science and the Media, a series of essays edited by Donald Kennedy of Stanford University and Geneva Overholser of the University of Southern California. Founded in 1780, the Academy is an independent policy research center whose 4,000 Fellows and 600 Honorary Members are selected annually because of their achievements in the physical and biological sciences, the social sciences and the humanities, mathematics, business, public affairs, and the arts.

As co-chairs of the Academy's working group on Science, Technology, and the Media, Kennedy and Overholser share a space with Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirschenbaum, whose 2009 book, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, was reviewed here on CR4. Our four-part series on Unscientific America proved popular, but it's hardly the last word on the subject.

Today, with permission from the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences, CR4 is pleased to bring you the following excerpt from Science and the Media, an essay by that same name written by Donald Kennedy himself. The remainder of this publication is available on-line (and for free) by clicking here.

Chapter 1

"Science and the Media"

Rationale

Why is this issue worth so much attention? A broadly spread citizen understanding of science and technology is a public good, one the United States cannot have too much of. Several arguments support this proposition.

First, Americans are a curious people, equipped with a lively sense of wonder. Knowledge about the natural world is a mainstream of the culture—absolutely on a par with the arts and humanities, though unaccountably often given second place on the liberal arts menu.

Second, American democracy has to decide, in any given year, on a host of issues that have important scientific and technological content: what to do about climate change, how to organize human or robotic exploration of space, how to develop a sustainable national energy policy, how to treat the health potential offered by embryonic stem cells, and the like. To vote intelligently, citizens will increasingly require a level of scientific literacy.

Finally, the United States needs to develop a layer of committed scientists who will lead the march of discovery, providing the basic research findings that will be the seed corn for the next generation of new developments. In making that kind of commitment, young people are often inspired by dramatic research accomplishments—ones that are being made by scientists and interpreted by those who write about the work.

Concerns

Those are the three legs that support science in our culture, and they all depend on this singularly important relationship between scientists and science journalists. In a number of respects that relationship is in good health: the best reporters have learned a lot of science, and the best scientists have forged productive relationships with journalists.

Nevertheless, complaints are heard from both sides—enough to encourage a kind of caricature of misunderstanding. Scientist A complains that the reporter has not taken the trouble to get some background on climate change science and has to be educated from scratch. After a certain amount of that, the reporter writes a story in which A's view is paired with criticism from a person who denies global warming.

"The trouble with these guys," Scientist A says, "is that they each have a two-card Rolodex with an IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] name on one and Fred Singer's on the other." The journalist might point out that had scientists in this area been both more careful and more understandable in describing the underlying issues to journalists, Scientist A would not have had to deliver a cram course to a reporter with a short deadline.

As for the two contending views, to ask that journalists count the ayes and nays for every issue may be asking too much—although in the climate change case the scientists' complaint has some grounding.

A second concern revolves around a disturbing question: is science writing a disappearing culture? … The number of sections or departments dedicated to science in major American metropolitan dailies is estimated to have fallen by half over the past ten years as declining newspaper economics have tightened their grip. Even at The New York Times, with its splendid staff of science writers, fans have watched its excellent Tuesday Science section gradually morph from mostly science to mostly health.

Editor's Note: The above is excerpted from the article "Science and the Media," by Donald Kennedy of Stanford University; former commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration and former editor-in-chief of Science, in the volume of essays Science and the Media, published by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and available online at http://amacad.org/publications/scienceMedia.aspx.