Monday
Jan202014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Science journalists in the raw
Jan 20, 2014 Media This video of from the Battle of Ideas features a group of journalists discussing how science journalism functions. It's intermittently rather interesting, with discussion of issues like scientists' tendency to authoritarianism, campaigning against those who allow dissemination of dissenting ideas, the indequacies of evidence-based policy and much more.
Reader Comments (10)
It is a long video though; do you have times for any of the interesting bits?
A group of journalists Andrew?
Better to canvass a herd of sheep.
Sir Mark Walport: The Planet in Our Hands: Responding to Climate Change
Tue 4 February 2014, Public talk and discussion 19.00-20.00, Pre-mingle from 18.30, The Rosalind Franklin Room, Explore-At-Bristol, Bristol Harbourside. Price: £5.00/ £4.00/ £3.00 (plus booking fee)
Sir Mark Walport is the new Chief Science Adviser to the UK Government. He has a background in immunology and now turns his attentions to the most pressing issue we face as a global society: our climate. In this talk he explores what the science tells us, and asks what should we, as a developed nation, do in response?
Further details and booking link
http://www.at-bristol.org.uk/markwalport.html
Science journalists ! surly an oxymoron given many of them are little more than human photocopies for any thing green their feed and virtual all them have little science training worth a dam . In fact the standard journalists requirement seems to be an Oxbridge PPE or at a reach English so no sign of any science.
Perhaps that is why they are inclined to just taken anything their feed by the RS etc as gospel truth because they simply have no ability to see the wool as its pulled over their eyes.? In a profession regarded with less warmth than rat catchers Science journalists must be one of low lights.
My two cents, I watched most, skipped some of the Q & A.
There is some real variation of opinion on the panel. The audience is quite inquiring, quite sceptical in the broad sense too. Makes a change from of the creepy green love-in videos that the Bish sometimes torments us with :)
I personally found Michael Fitzpatrick and Jamie Whyte spoke most sense on the panel. Tom Chivers and Hannah Devlin fairly standard meh, standard forgettable journo anecdotes. Mark Henderson, who wrote the Geek Manifesto, lived up to my impression of the keen scientism authority fan. Keen on usurping political authority with science. Henderson literally says at 32 minutes that every policy should have a science "red book" behind it.
I thought Jamie Whyte (a guy I don't recall hearing of before this) made some of the best points throughout. Especially early on at around 16:20 talking about how there is a basic mistake often made in science reporting that lets all science get lumped together and projected with equal authority, and this means immature sciences can be incorrectly projected as having the same authority as the tested physical sciences behind the proven technologies that we all can see around us. Whyte names climatology as an immature science in his examples. He also made a point that immature sciences by their nature usually attract the most vocal enthusiasts and that "all scientists are natural lobbyists for their branch of science".
At about 20:20, just after Whyte, Mark Henderson comes in and agrees with Whyte about one of Whyte's points about journalism not properly discussing uncertainties, but I note he's a bit defensive about climate and seems to spend most of the time defending it in standard climate PR speak while ignoring the greater sweep of Whyte's point.
For example Henderson cites that since: the more greenhouse gases, the warmer the world gets, is basic physics, then this should imply climate has a sound basis, which obviously simplifies the whole of climate science tremendously; and then he goes on to say that climate science critics are more likely to be the kind of people who don't like the economics of the "solutions" rather than people who are particularly expert at the science (BTW Henderson tells us came into science Journalism with a History degree earlier on) i.e. Marky tells us all that he knows the "solutions" to climate and climate science is as sound as saying the simple more greenhouse gas, world gets warmer, stop your internal dialogue.
I have read the Geek Manifesto by Mark Henderson.
It could have been written by Sir Paul Nurse or Bob Ward.
Enough said.
Is that something you do before the mingle? What does it entail?
We are all aware that this is the massed ranks of the former Revolutionary Communist Party, right?
Half the panel are RCP folks. Now that we think about it, the Science Media Centre is RCP also - clearly the long march through the institutions is "on manouvres".
Leopard
Jamie Whyte is a consistently birilliant writer and thinker. Worth exploring.
Thanks Bish for the heads up, I will definitely will