More on Scientists vs. Journalists
Some say journalists are rotten when we don't quote outside sources, others say we're rotten when we do.
There was some confusion over the Guardian commentary piece "Nine Ways Scientists Demonstrate they Don't Understand Journalism", which I blogged about yesterday. The story listed nine complaints the author has heard from scientists, and then offers and explanation for why journalists do things in certain ways.
In the heated discussion that followed on blogs and comment threads, about half of readers thought scientists were complaining that the journalist didn't gather information from multiple sources. Others took it as a complaint that journalist did quote other sources. So really, one can't win in this game. On re-reading the piece, it was clear to me the complaint was actually that science writers quote hostile sources.
"How could you quote that person who disagrees with me? He's wrong!
I hate the straw-manning engendered by the "he says, she says" mode of journalism. But the findings of science are often hotly contested and often wrong. In many cases, journalists uncover flaws in the research while calling independent sources to pull their story together. At Nature, a significant number of news stories are dropped after enquiries because they turn out to be weaker than the abstract or the press release suggested. For the stories that get through, the journalistic process may expose more problems or disagreements that were not caught when the paper was peer-reviewed. If the criticisms seem valid and are not easily rebutted, then journalists have a duty to represent them."
This is not a complaint I would expect to come up too often, but I also think there are cases where common sense dictates checking things out before printing them. If I interview scientist A first, and then scientist B says scientist A's project is wrong, or fraudulent or worthless or something otherwise scathing, I would try to go back to scientist A to get his or her response. I think that's only fair. A good story often requires some back-and-forth, as other sources raise questions I wouldn't have thought to ask the first time around.
There's no reason journalists have to blindside their sources.