Accurate reporting of science in the media

Today, the Institute for Media and Public Trust at California State University, Fresno is convening a group of experts (journalists and a scientist) to discuss science and environmental reporting. The keynote, by Pulitzer Prize winner Deborah Blum, is entitled, "Science Journalism in the Age of Mistrust."

I am a Biology professor, with extensive training in reading and analyzing data (hence the title of this blog - Objective Compulsive Order). One of the most important things I can do to advance society is to help as many people as I can practice evidence-based decision making and critical thinking skills. Generally, in this context, these buzzwords can be translated to understanding how to:

• ignore hype 
• be a skeptic (if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is), and 
• identify (and use) quality information to make rational decisions

Because of the societal importance of this effort, I've asked my graduate course in Molecular Biology to join me this evening in the audience. I hope they'll not only learn some important things about science, but also how - as scientists themselves - they can help partner with reporters to ensure balanced and accurate dissemination of the truths these students will uncover as scientists.

Extent of the Problem of Misleading Science Reporting

To prepare my class for this event, I asked each student to send me information on a case study in which a scientific report has been potentially miscommunicated to the public through the news media. My goal was for them to explore the potential breadth of this issue, and also to be prepared to ask some questions of the panelists at tonight's event. We are not by any means the first people who have noted the sometimes unaligned interests of scientists and the media. For example, here is one analysis (itself probably more provocatively titled than it should be…): Why Most Biomedical Findings Echoed by Newspapers Turn Out to be False: The Case of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Below, I'm sharing a selection of my students' case study submissions, as examples of how media coverage can misrepresent research findings. The hyperlinks below lead first to the original scientific report and then to the media coverage. The link text is the title of each article.

Maybe Gru and the minions had it right…

• AP39, a mitochondrially targeted hydrogen sulfide donor, stimulates cellular bioenergetics, exerts cytoprotective effects and protects against the loss of mitochondrial DNA integrity in oxidatively stressed endothelial cells in vitro
• Sniffing your partners’ farts could help ward off disease

Fountain of youth and vampirism?

• Facing up to the global challenges of ageing
• Young blood could be the secret to long-lasting health: study

When less (words) is not necessarily more (accurate)

• Genomic Analysis of Hospital Plumbing Reveals Diverse Reservoir of Bacterial Plasmids Conferring Carbapenem Resistance
• Hospital plumbing a 'vast, resilient reservoir' of superbugs

Pro-tip: "cause" is not a word scientists use much, because it is difficult to obtain irrefutable proof of cause-and-effect (for example, read: Baseball and jet lag: Correlation does not imply causation)

• Breast size, handedness and breast cancer risk
• Bras Shown to Cause Cancer

Counterpoint: here, the media report does a great job at debunking why the science itself is probably flawed

• Women Are More Likely to Wear Red or Pink at Peak Fertility
• Too Good to Be True: Statistics may say that women wear red when they’re fertile … but you can’t always trust statistics

Hopefully at least one point becomes immediately obvious. The headlines themselves, which are meant to attract reader attention, tend to oversimplify (and sometimes exaggerate) the more nuanced scientific data. It is important to note that it is not just reporters but scientists themselves who are responsible for communicating their data. Although it is easy to conclude that journalists are trying to hype their stories so that their outlet earns money, scientists are also responsible for accurate communication as well. Both are faced with the same scenario: the goal of quickly grabbing the audience's attention. This necessitates summarizing, which always eliminates subtleties (that are often the most critical parts of scientific experiments to know about before making broad, sweeping claims). Ultimately, dear reader, the most simple and effective take-home strategy is: don't just read the headline (or media summary) and think that's all there is to the story.

Resources

There are lots of good resources on the web to help train yourself how to spot scientific data that might not be credible and to spot over-hyped or misleading news reports of scientific studies. Below are a few, curated by me. But, please, like LeVar Burton said on Reading Rainbow, "You don't have to take my word for it!"

Don't believe everything you read. Practice critical thinking and learn how to spot tell-tale signs that something's not quite right. Please, be a skeptic.

• 10 Questions To Distinguish Real From Fake Science
• Twenty tips for interpreting scientific claims
• Scientific Studies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (this is a really funny and fantastic video: John Oliver discusses how and why media outlets so often report untrue or incomplete information as science)
• and finally, a great web resource full of examples and tutorials on spotting fake or misleading data, run by scientists at University of Washington: Calling Bull: Data Reasoning in a Digital World