The Troubling Findings of a Survey of Science Journalists

The Kavli Foundation awards million dollar prizes for science research.  The foundation has done a survey of science journalists. One of the questions asked was "In your opinion, can science journalists be neutral about the subjects they cover?" We will never know what the response was, because the slick document presenting the research results gives us two conflicting answers. 

On page 23 the report says, "Asked whether science journalists can be neutral about the subjects they cover, 57% of survey participants answered no, and 35% answered yes (Figure 19). Nine percent said they don’t know." But the bar graph presenting the response (which is actually Figure 11 on page 24, not Figure 19) says that 57% answered "yes," and 35% answered "no." 

Regardless of which answer is correct, the result is a troubling one. Apparently at least one third of science journalists do not believe in the principle of journalistic neutrality. The result is very unsurprising. It has been all too apparent that very many science journalists act as uncritical cheerleaders for the researchers they are covering. 

A bit later in the report we have this example of stupidity and carelessness:

The carelessness comes in the misspelling of "certainties," similar to the misspelling of "publication" that occurs in the caption of Figure 13, and the misspelling of "sources" that occurs in the caption of Figure 18.  The stupidity comes from the 16% of the science journalists who answered that scientific findings should be reported as certainties. In today's world of science research, very many or most of the reported research findings will fail to be replicated or fail to stand up to further scrutiny. So it is inane to have a policy of "reporting scientific findings as certainties." 

Another rather troubling result comes when we see Figure 15 on page 27. Asked about coverage of retracted papers, only 65% of the science journalists said that you should mention that the paper was retracted. 21% thought that you only need to mention that the paper was retracted if there was some "major reason" such as fraud. 

Another rather troubling result comes when we see Figure 16 on page 29. Asked about correction of errors in coverage, 17% of the science journalists said that "you only correct the errors if you consider them major errors." So apparently a large number of science journalists are failing to correct errors they have heard about in science stories they have written, while using the excuse that they were not "major errors."

Another troubling result comes when we see Figure 18 on page 31. Asked about "selection of sources," 73% of the science journalists agreed that "you look for the most important scientists in the field." This is an indication of some kind of authority-kneeling that is contrary to the true spirit of science. A good answer to the question might be something like "you look for the scientific paper with the largest study group size" or "you look for the claims that are best supported by many strong observations." Who is or is not one of "the most important scientists in a field" is a subjective opinion subject to the whims of popularity trends. 

Another troubling result comes when we see Figure 23 on page 36. Asked about whether it is acceptable for science journalists and their scientist sources to become friends,  66% of the science journalists said that is okay. But why should we expect that a science journalist will report objectively when reporting on work done by one of his friends?

It helps if the science journalist is a scientist's pal

Another troubling result comes when we see Figure 24 on page 37. Asked about whether it is acceptable for science journalists to receive gifts and paid trips to cover conferences, 36% said that it was acceptable "if they can maintain independence in their coverage," with only 27% saying it is not acceptable for a science journalist to receive such gifts or paid trips.  We get here a clue as to the kind of backdoor bribery that must be frequently occurring. Science journalists are getting freebies to cover science conferences, things such as paid trips to exciting locations (with also possibly free meals and free lodging).  Such benefits make it more likely that the science journalists will report favorably on the research results reported at such conferences. 

We get a similar dismaying result when examining Figure 25, which reveals that a large fraction of science journalist think it is okay to cover institutions that have paid the science journalist. 

We get a troubling result displayed in Figure 28 on page 40. The science journalists are asked about ethical problems in their field. 52% of science journalists list political or corporate spin as a problem. It is an enormous problem. For example, corporations often fund scientific studies designed to promote pills or medical devices they manufacture, with such corporations pressuring science journalists to provide favorable press coverage of the resulting study (often a low-quality affair providing no robust evidence).  56% of science journalists list "Fake News" as an ethical problem. They are referring to fake news produced in articles and press releases written by science journalists themselves (or the PR departments of corporations or universities writing research-related press releases). 58% of science journalists list "pressure to provide news that attracts audience" as a problem. This is the problem of clickbait that I have discussed many times. Nowadays science news is all entangled with economically motivated clickbait which leads internet users to click on enticing but misleading headlines leading to news articles filled with ads that make money for the party running the website. 

Also troubling is this quotation from the report

"To those who answered yes to this question, we asked if their country’s journalism association has a code of ethics for science journalism (Figure 31). In this case, 45% of journalists said they did not know. Another 33% answered yes, and 23% said no."

This gives us the impression that a large fraction of science journalists have no great interest in ethics, and were too uninterested to check whether their country has a code of science journalism ethics they should be following. 

All in all, this survey provides us many reasons for distrusting the stories appearing on sites that are supposedly science news sites. Science journalists are part of the profit complex described below, where many may act wrongly for personal profit or personal benefit. 

There is actually a Society of Professional Journalists in the United States. It has a code of ethics you can read on the page here. One of its stated principles is "Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and avoid political and other outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility." But in the result quoted above, a large fraction of science journalists seemed to be oblivious to this principle. The same code of ethics states, "Seek sources whose voices we seldom hear." This principle is not well-followed by science journalists, who are always parroting  dubious boasts from the same old overconfident academia authorities, while rarely asking for quotes from reasonable and highly studious critics of such boasts. A large fraction of all science journalists write only the most one-sided articles telling us only the materialist account, while parroting old dubious speech customs, giving us coverage of science research and science issues about as "fair and balanced" as the press coverage of North Korean journalists. 

The same code of ethics states, "Take special care not to misrepresent or oversimplify in promoting, previewing or summarizing a story." Very many science journalists these days flagrantly violate this principle, by producing sensational-sounding articles that misrepresent low-quality scientific studies, making them sound like breakthroughs or important insights that they are not. 

The production of misleading "science news" stories has a very strong economic incentive. Web sites are regularly publishing misleading science-mentioning headlines. When people click on such headlines, they go to pages filled with ads, and such pages make money for whoever publishes the web site. This is the problem of clickbait, which these days is the gravest problem for the integrity of science articles. Nowadays clickbait is an out-of-control epidemic on the Internet. A recent example of misleading clickbait is discussed here, a case in which a study electrically zapping dead tissue extracted from rats was misleadingly described to create the impression it had provided insights into how memory works in living humans who do not get such electrical zaps. 

A Google Gemini infographic