How the Science Media Centre Helps Avoid Face-Palm Moments When Reading the News

Dr Tara Spires-Jones is a Reader and Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh working on Alzheimer disease research. She’s a member of the editorial board of several scientific journals including The Journal of Neuroscience and is a member of the FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence.

Recently, through no fault of my own, I have become an expert source for the media when a story in my field of Alzheimer research is being covered. How did this happen? You may well ask. About six months ago, I was asked if I would join the Science Media Centre (SMC) database to help advise journalists on emerging science stories. When first asked if I would do this, my initial reaction was an eye roll, accompanying the thought:

“one more thing to do that is not really my job.”

Like most scientists, I prefer to spend as much time as possible actually in the lab with the team instead of asking for money, organising meetings, or attending to the countless other admin and teaching tasks I have. Over time, I have come around to the view that facilitating public engagement with science is actually quite an important part of being a scientist. Even better, to my surprise it is not as difficult or time-consuming as I thought.

The danger with media coverage of science is how terribly wrong it can go and what a catastrophic impact it can have when it does, particularly in public health. One of the worst examples of this was the scare that MMR vaccines cause autism, which was based initially on a press conference followed by a deeply flawed and fraudulent paper in the Lancet in 1998, which was later retracted. I won’t go into too many details because the story has been widely covered elsewhere. Suffice to say that even if the data hadn’t been falsified, there were a series of serious methodological problems with the article, including too small a sample size and no negative controls. Even without the fraud, the study would not have been adequate evidence for the conclusions that were drawn. If journalists had better opportunities to check with scientists before going to press, the whole disaster, including the deaths and permanent injuries of several children could have been averted.

Now as part of the SMC, I get asked whether a study that the media is interested in covering is scientifically sound and whether it is important to the field. Without extensive training and experience as a scientist in the specific field, it is remarkably difficult to answer those questions, making it hard for even well-trained journalists to always get the balance right in their coverage. As well as guarding against science by press conference and pointing out when something is complete rubbish (like the dangerous Lancet MMR article, Brigitte Boisselier’s announcement that she’d cloned a human baby, and Pons and Fleischman’s cold fusion claims), this lets scientists help interpret scientific publications for the media and the public.

A model for responsible science coverage in the media

Recently I received an email from the SMC with a press release about a study in transgenic mice that a journalist was considering running with as a “new treatment for Alzheimer’s”. While this was an interesting study, one set of experiments in one mouse model does not merit worldwide news coverage heralding a treatment for dementia. Anything to come out of this will take many years to go from promising idea to approved treatment, that is, if it turns out to be a viable approach in human patients at all. By saying as much, as a scientist I can prevent the kind of headline that falsely raises expectations for new treatments creating a mistrust of scientists among the public.

Many people fear that the rise of “pay to publish” journals without proper peer review will exacerbate the problem of faulty science being published and picked up on by the media. Following John Bohannon’s notorious science sting, it seems to have become something of a popular sport to bait predatory/vanity publishers with fake papers. Here’s one example, and another that shows that the editors didn’t so much as open the manuscript file before posting it online. Earlier this year, Bohannon collaborated with some scientists in Germany to perform and then manipulate the results of a study through p-hacking to show that chocolate makes you loose weight. Bohannon then used his journalistic training to promote the fake science and get it covered in the media worldwide.

Bad science coverage in the media is not new and exists for a number of complex reasons. Sometimes it happens because people misunderstand the science or allow their wishful thinking to get the better of them. Sometimes it happens because people lie to forward an agenda. With the best will in the world, there’s a limit to the amount of policing that journal editors and peer-reviewers are capable of, and with the worrying trends of science by press conference and fake journals, it’s clear that some other way of protecting the public from misinformation is needed.

Since the inception of the SMC in the UK in 2000, it has become a routine part of many science journalist’s day and judging by some of the discussions I’ve had with journalists about potential stories, it’s doing a lot of good preventing misconceptions and sometimes dangerous nonsense from making it to the front pages. In my opinion, this kind of trusted conduit between scientists and the media is the best defense we have against bogus science adversely affecting the public debate. As well as in the UK, there are SMC in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Japan. Notably, there isn’t yet an SMC in the USA, where arguably, it is most sorely needed, although there are apparently plans for one.

The bonus of commenting to the media every once in awhile is how refreshing it is compared to the rest of my job. It’s a nice break from experiments that don’t work and grants that don’t get funded to answer a question from an honestly curious journalist. Anyway, everyone likes to tell their mom they’ve been quoted in a newspaper.