Tuesday
Dec062011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Whitehouse on science journalism
David Whitehouse has an article in the HuffPo, reproduced at GWPF. It's about science journalism.
Science and science journalism are needed. Journalists should portray where the weight of evidence lies, but that is the least they should do, and they should not look to scientists for guidance anymore than an artist asks a bowl of cherries for advice about how to draw them! They should criticise, highlight errors, make a counterbalancing case if it will stand up, but don't censor, even by elimination, don't be complacent and say the science is settled in areas that are still contentious. The history of science and of journalism is full of those reduced to footnotes because they followed that doctrine.
Reader Comments (35)
What!! - Balanced unbiased journalism? Not something that happens very often in any field but particularly when climate science is concerned.
Zed and responses gone again. Sorry if you have wasted time responding.
Part of the problem is the extreme lack of journalists who have any science training so many of them have no idea if the wool is being pulled over their eyes or even the ability to actual critical consider what they are being told . The typical UK journalists profile is Oxbridge PPE , and healthy amount of them privately education and oddly the 'liberal papers' being more prone to this . And PPE stand for Philosophy, Politics and Economics which you hope would at least make them numerate but there is no science in it . Take for example out friends at the Guardian, the sum total of the its journalists science qualifications is Monboit 30 years old 2:1 in Zoology an area his never worked in.
So is it any wonder that some 'scientists' can ,sometimes willing ' lead journalists by the nose given they simply lack the ability to ask the right questions , even if they have the will too?
Of course you have other side , people like Black who share ideological outlooks with those 'scientists' who act more like advocates so even if they could they would never consider asking questions and or making challenges toward scientists that would risk damage to ' the cause ' as the Team put it .
Whitehouse hits the nail on the head, and reading it I now think I know why he left the BBC, and why he is the only person the BBC should appoint as its new science editor. I don't suppose he would want the job, which is probably the reason why he should have it.
He has more integrity than any of the spin merchants we have to put up with.
I surmise that there are three types of journalist in general.
There are those who subscribe to this ideal and observe it.
There are those who subscribe to this ideal in principle, but who when confronted with a professional duty to challenge something they'd dearly love to be true, abandon principle, conform to their programming and report what they want to believe and what they want us to believe.
Then there are those who became journalists in the first place specifically to support a political cause and therefore ideals - of the journalistic variety - never came into it.
Roger Harrabin seems to be a prima facie obvious example of the latter. Educationally inequipped to be a science journalist, he cannot plausibly ever have been motivated by a burning desire to convey science accurately to the proles: he doesn't understand science enough to do so, and thus relies on others to explain it to him. His aim must always have been to find kindred political spirits to help him ensure that the right news was reported with the right spin on it, including passing it off as unspun exactly because it came from the BBC.
I guess there's a fourth type of journalist, who reports what the readers want to read whether it's true or not. I'm not sure whether Guardian journalists are the latter or the previous type, or perhaps by a happy coincidence they are able to be both.
"Science in the daily media is too often reported in the same deferential way as political journalists used to report politics in the 1950s."
I remember that mould being broken at the Beeb (yes it was believe it or not) by Robin Day who had politicians quaking in their boots. I also vividly recall when taken to task on-air about his motives, he replied "I am merely a simple seeker after truth".
Black, Shukman and Harrabin at the beeb do not have a scientific qualification between them. They would not know what scientific questions to ask. All they are capable of doing is putting the right political spin on press releases and on what they are told by their "scientific" contacts and the environmental NGOs. Even those with scientific training, like Susan Watts, do not dare shake the tree; careers are at stake.
Whitehouse' article says more in a few words than Prof Jones' report did in thousands.
I don't think scientific training (or the lack thereof) is a problem, or a major part of the reason for the failures Whitehouse discusses. You could argue that journalists would suffer through lack of knowledge of specific topics in science, or through lack of knowledge of the Scientific Method. Concerning the specific topics, any interesting scientific question must be one that can be discussed at many different levels, including a GCSE-type level, focussing on the ideas rather than the technicalities. Anyone who is interested and can think in an abstract way (as I am sure all good scientific journalists can) should then be able to engage. For example, we can all understand the general principles of using tree-rings as thermometers for the past, without needing a PhD in botany or statistics.
Concerning scientific method, I really struggle to recognize anything relating to a "scientific method" that is not simply standard "critical thinking". If you can argue through questions such as "Did Churchill's leadership help win the war?" or "Did the defendant commit the crime?" in a sophisticated way, then you can think about scientific problems in a sophisticated way. Understanding that "hide the decline" is a problem does not require any different thinking skills. I would almost argue that the idea that there is a scientific method, distinct from critical thinking as applied to other problems, may cause some of the problems here. Maybe some journalists have convinced themselves that they cannot use normal types of critical thinking to evaluate the validity of statements made by scientists, because these statements are derived in some mysterious way from an Infallible Scientific Method. There's no such thing.
I would say this is a problem for journalism as a whole rather than specifically in the reporting of science.
There is very little genuine investigative journalism going on be it tabloid, broadsheet or public broadcasting, be it local, national or international.
Scoops are manufactured, PR people now come up with the headline, everything has to sensationalised to get a reaction.
So when you put intellectually corrupt climate scientists in a room full of hacks you end up with CAGW. Nothing else will sell editorially.
All you need do is to search for '@bbc' in the CG1 and CG2 databases to know the truth of that.
Whitehouse's article is very good. Maybe his most important point is that Science Communication and Science Journalism are too entirely distinct undertakings with very different goals and standards. The New York Times, The BBC, and just about every other large international media outlet should learn that lesson. The New York Times seems to hide behind a deliberate confusion between Science Communications and Science Journalism. The Times seems to believe that their fundamental job is Science Communication and that the Journalism part must conform to the Communication part. In other words, they conform to what the scientists are saying and they fail in the task of criticism. But we live in an age in which very few are capable of independent critical thought and those who are meet with serious discouragement for exercising their critical abilities.
A key criticism made by David Whitehouse is that the media - and statistics show that the BBC is the worst at this - practice "Churnalism" - they simply regurgitate press releases, usually from pressure groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc, with no critical questioning. Just cut-and-paste jobs.
Plagiarism in journalism is seen as a sin, a sackable offence. But Churnalism is not much different - earning a big salary by copying others' material. And in the case of the BBC - earning at our expense, pumping out propaganda supported by the compulsory licence fee. I choose not to donate to pressure groups - but I am forced to donate to the shoddy "reporting" exemplified by the endless scare stories from Richard Black, such as his recent ludicrous Churnalism of the claim that a study of just 10 out of 54,000 Himalayan glaciers vindicates the lies of Patchouri and the IPCC.
I can see no way of getting the BBC's science/environmental reporting sorted out properly but to sack the lot of them, or move them off somewhere else - they are tainted, as ClimateGate 2 shows clearly. The BBC has a dominant effect in UK media, it should be held to high standards. On Global Warming it has totally failed.
@Phillip Bratby at 2:30 PM
Susan Watts has had to seek legal advice before, because she thought that BBC management were going to force her to back their line, which she knew to be false.
Jeremy, I agree that 'the scientific method' is not some magic secret incantation that elevates knowledge to a higher and unattainable plane for normal mortals but to say that means there is no scientific method would be a bathwater and baby mistake.
And it is not simply critical thinking - it is much more about observation, hypothesis, data gathering, analysis, and theory.
Karl Popper is most helpful here.
@John Anderson
Yes, I think that "Churnalism" is the single biggest problem -- the leftist pressure groups churn out pressers which the media (most of them) simply re-cycle
imagine if Lysenko could have had the BBC and other "Churnalists" working on his behalf (well in the USSR he had the equivalent and more)
Here's a 'test' to see how impartial science journalists are: let's see who reports the following statements from Dr. Eric Steig, no less...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/06/realclimates-steig-pacific-ssts-influencing-antarctic-melt-no-link-to-human-causes-demonstrated/
Buck
What evidence do you have of that? Is it related to some non-climate news story?
I've always found her climate-related stories to be as blinkered by group-think as the usual culprits. She always seems to be prepared to go the extra mile to denigrate sceptics.
Susan Watts was involved in the David Kelly affair - she needed legal advice at the time of the Parliamentary enquiry and/or the Hutton enquiry ?
I see none of the proper journalism that David Whitehouse asks for in Susan Watts' coverage of Global Warming.
I think he covers most of the bases well, but he only just touches on the difference between science journalism and environmental journalism.
As a general rule, whatever your speciality when you see it in discussed in the press, or on the TV, you are surprised at the lack of depth, and sometimes, inaccuracy, of the discussions. In the case of the BBC it's been taken over by the establishment, that's not new, when the establishment was conservative, with a small "c", so too was the BBC. It's a place where, not particularly bright, public school sorts, lacking in the scientific, engineering and mathematical skills to carve out a living in the real world, can go and be paid megabucks for the rest of their lives. It so happens that the current establishment is, what they like to call themselves, "progressive", hence the BBC mirrors progressive views. We will have to put up with that I'm afraid, we live in a country where engineers are regarded as thickos. So that the BBC limits discussion on the science it believes in comes as no surprise, and that the people discussing the scientists probably last saw science in the GCSEs at their private schools should come as no surprise. Where I do have an issue, especially on the climate change threats, so called, is that they are stifling discussion of the possible policy options as well.
Buck
Is there anything in the public domain about this?
Sorry Bish, please remove the previous as well.
"It holds very true you know, those with the most to be shown up on, are quickest to jump on challenges and try and shut them down."
Like Phil Jones hurrying off to a press conference to tell us there's nothing to see in the foiafiles for example
Your Grace
This Guardian article from 2004 and her Wikipedia page explain Susan Watts involvement with Dr David Kelly and her seeking independent legal advice when she was undere pressure from BBC management to corroborate Andrew Gilligan's story :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/jan/21/huttonkeyplayers.huttonreport
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Watts
.............................
When the heat is really on, sometimes a BBC journalist may buck the system. Susan Watts was put in a very painful position by BBC news management at that time.
But the pattern on Global Warming has been that Andrew Neil, Peter Sissons, David Whitehouse and Paul Hudson appear to be the only members of the BBC staff - among many dozens who have dealt with Global Warming - who have not fully followed the Warmist propaganda line. Not just people on the science/environment side - I mean all the BBC presenters and economics reporters who have covered the matter, all the programme producers and writers who weave Global Warming into almost every aspect of BBC programming, all the "comedians" who make snide remarks about sceptics.
Groupthink to this degree is truly Orwellian.
Just a thought, but if we were to take the low ground we could all "Gang" up for a "cause" and declare that as far as we are concerned, Black, Shukman and Harrabin etc etc should no longer be referred to as Journalists (I think the emails etc prove that point!) and we should all work together to shut down the papers/TV stations they work for! In addition we should work for the same to be done to the "Climate Scientists"!
The only problem is, they would all by now, have a basic understanding of the FOI act and would demand our work emails........Oh! I forgot, we do not get paid by the taxpayers to do our work so we do not count!
Sorry Bish, please remove the previous as well.
Dec 6, 2011 at 5:19 PM | Phillip Bratby
Back over to the D.M. comments then ;=)
@ Jeremy Harvey
I agree that the scientific method is not a unique form of reasoning. In any academic discipline, and in any field of work that requires sifting evidence, e.g. military intelligence, business strategy, or simply diagnosing faults in equipment, logical thinking is required. Science is different in that controlled experiments can be carried out, at least in some fields. (In some sciences, e.g. geology and astronomy, the scope for experimental work is more limited).
Experiments can make it possible to disprove certain theories or can lend support to others. In non-scientific fields, including the social sciences, it is rarely possible to conduct experiments in which all the variables are controlled but logical reasoning and the search for evidence for and against theories are still important.
I am not a scientist but I do have a science degree. Although I have forgotten most of what I learnt at university I am hardly likely to forget the basics of the scientific method. That method should not difficult for any educated person to understand, except possibly for spin doctors and PR types who have spent so long trying to manipulate perceptions that they forget that there is such a thing as reality.
Roy and Josh: I did not mean to imply that Science is not a worthwhile pursuit that can yield robust conclusions. But successors to Popper such as Feyerabend argue that attempts to make a positive definition of Scientific Method that go beyond critical thinking invariably fail when confronted with the diversity of scientific practice. E.g. experiments, while they can not be wrong in one sense (what happens, happens, of course) can be misleading and there are many cases where this has indeed occurred.
But rather than trying to argue that point, a more important one in my view is that we should not disqualify or 'excuse' Harrabin on the grounds that he is a PPE graduate. Any PPE graduate should be able to think through issues such as the divergence problem, and conclude that it is important that it not be brushed under the carpet through hiding the decline. No skill-set unique to scientists is needed.
Excellent article by Whitehouse as usual.
Jeremy makes a good point - you don't really need science training to know that deleting data that doesn't fit your theory, refusing to release data for bogus reasons, trying to get those who disagree with you fired, etc, are bad.
But in defence of the journalists, they have been lied to, or at best misled.
In 3045, Mann writes to Revkin,
" Hi Andy,
The McIntyre and McKitrick paper is pure scientific fraud. I think you'll find this
reinforced by just about any legitimate scientist in our field you discuss this with."
In 1788, Jones claimed to a journalist that nobody at UEA could offer an alternative view.
Clearly someone misled Fred Pearce who wrote in the Guardian that all four referees of Soon et al recommended rejection.
Other examples?
On the matter of NGOs and their press releases- what is it with NGOs? Half a dozen zealots give themselves a fancy name and next minute government ministers are referring to them as "stakeholders".
Jeremy is making a good point here. Science is not a foreign language that you either do understand or don't understand.
The "foreignh language" idea is the view that Harrabin and chums have - so they always want someone else to translate for them - a "handler/minder". This makes them frightened to walk round on their own and talk to different pieces. Instead they always travel with their minders and are terrified of the "big cut-off".
Regarding the qualifications of science journalists, in comparison it is rare to find a historian of science who does not have at least a partial science degree in his or her background. Actually going through the undergraduate exercises, or better yet, struggling with equipment problems and methodologies, gives one insights into the degree of human input required for experiments, observations, trials etc. and the generation and support of theory.
Furthermore, doing undergraduate labs in biology -- or other sciences that skirt the exact sciences of chemistry and physics -- and getting results that did not fit expected outcomes in the lab manuals leads to a healthy degree of skepticism about experimental and observational support of prevailing theories. (Also, getting poor marks for simply recording and interpreting the results of an honestly done experiment that somehow comes out 'wrong' has the same effect.)
While journalists with no science background must be exposed to conflicting scientific ideas, and learn a degree of skepticism, I suspect most will accede the greatest amount of respect to ideas generated by those with the most publicly acknowledged credentials. In lieu of a scientific background, it would helpful if they did a stint in the history or philosophy of science or science studies at the very least. T
@John Anderson
"A key criticism made by David Whitehouse is that the media - and statistics show that the BBC is the worst at this - practice "Churnalism" - they simply regurgitate press releases, usually from pressure groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc, with no critical questioning. Just cut-and-paste jobs."
I think that's a very good point. It increasingly applies, it seems to me, to many more fields. Charities which are in reality pressure groups tend to have very professional public relations people these days and it is all too easy for hard pressed and under resourced reporters simply to recycle a press release. Charities like Brake, for instance, the supposed road safety group, or many of the health charities. Sorry to wander off the point a bit, but it is a widespread problem.
The environmentalists, like all clever special interst groups, cultivate THEIR journalists just as they do THEIR scientists. They give them awards, praise them for delivering their message, enjoy many a luncheon 'interview' and feed them press releases to parrot. (Just imagine what Richard Black is doing in Durban right now.) The proof of this pudding is who is constantly quoted in the resulting 'news' reports.
Step up and we see the organizations they work for doing much the same thing. Thus the whole process of questioning the AGW project relied so much on independent bloggers while most of the MSM just parroted propaganda and remained silent on any questions and on 'little details' like Climategate 1.0.
The sad part is that we used to laugh at the USSR's Pravda and now the same thing has creeped into the West. It was always part of the mix but now it has swamped it. Now I watch or read the BBC only to see how they spin things, and not as anything resembling objective reporting. I must say though, I do miss Shukman's daily climate doomsday reports from the pre-Climategate era. They were Monty Python material. The daily 'extreme weather' reports since, which more subtly softened up the audience for the 'climate disruption' message, lack that entertainment value. On the other hand, I suppose it is vital to know about very minor flood in every Peruvian village to appreciate the profound impact of climate disruption. It is, without question, unprecedented - and by "it" I mean this media coverage.
@Vigilantfish, 8:05pm
Physics has its moments: an otherwise uneventful lab afternoon turned into a marathon as my lab partner and I slowly and painfully discovered that Millikan's oil drop experiment doesn't work as planned, especially if (in utter despair) it's ultimately discovered that the measurement chamber's air plug isn't inserted properly. :-(
In hindsight, we should have just gone all "climate science" and ignored the outliers (as ironically Millikan himself was accused of doing)...
@ woodentop
That describes my experience of school chemistry and physics lessons perfectly. You were given the equipment, told the experiment to do and how to do it, and usually the results failed to correspond to what was supposed to happen. You were instructed to ignore what you had actually observed and instead write up what you were supposed to have observed.
Obviously it is easy to explain away aberrant results in a school chemistry lesson. Probably the answers we wrote up were the right answers. I do wonder though whether this encouraged a pernicious habit among future climate psyentists of asking what the right answer was and then claiming their data or their experiments supported it even when they didn't. If you were relying on the likes of Phil Jones to tell you what the answer was supposed to be...