This week is the World Conference of Science Journalists (#WCSJ). This is what the Independent’s Steve Connor had to say in an article entitled ‘Lofty medics should stick to their day job.’
“The sixth World Conference of Science Journalists is underway in London. I can’t say it’s going to change my life, as I missed out on the previous five, but I did notice that it has attracted the attention of a bunch of medics with strong views on the state of science journalism today.”
Connor picked up on a gathering advertised by Ben Goldacre (a post-event meet-up on July 1 with Petra Boynton and Vaughan Bell) and quoted Goldacre’s website, labelling him as the ‘bête noir’ of science journalists.
“All three speakers are gainfully employed by the public sector so they don’t actually have to worry too much about the sort of pressures and financial constraints the mainstream media are under. But they nevertheless condescended to offer some advice on the sort of ‘best practice guidelines’ I should be following, for which I suppose I should be eternally grateful.
“But their arrogance is not new. Medical doctors in particular have always had a lofty attitude to the media’s coverage of their profession, stemming no doubt from the God-like stance they take towards their patients. Although I wouldn’t go as far as to say their profession is broken, dangerous, lazy, venal and silly – not yet anyway.”
Ouch. Goldacre spotted it and comments beneath his post, and Connor’s article, are flowing pretty fast. Goldacre also reproduces a letter and email sent to the Independent, on his blog.
- Here’s the letter sent to the Independent (unpublished as yet):
Dear Sir,
Your science journalist Steve Connor is furious that we are holding a small public meeting in a pub to discuss the problem that science journalists are often lazy and inaccurate. He gets the date wrong, claiming the meeting has already happened (it has not). He says we are three medics (only one of us is). He then invokes some stereotypes about arrogant doctors, which we hope are becoming outdated.
In fact, all three of us believe passionately in empowering patients, with good quality information, so they can make their own decisions about their health. People often rely on the media for this kind of information. Sadly, in the field of science and medicine, on subjects as diverse as MMR, sexual health, and cancer prevention, the public have been repeatedly and systematically misled by journalists.
We now believe this poses a serious threat to public health, and it is sad to see the problem belittled in a serious newspaper. Steve Connor is very welcome to attend our meeting, which is free and open to all,
yours
(Drs) Vaughan Bell, Petra Boynton, Ben Goldacre
In other WCSJ news, Goldacre wasn’t too happy with the panel addressing science and investigative journalism yesterday. He tweeted from the event: “so what about investigative science journalism done by bloggers? not a single person addressed the question. these ppl need to read more.”
i think you’re stretching it a bit to say i was unhappy with the WCSJ event on investigative journalism on the basis of one tweet, i thought it was an excellent event.
the funny thing about connor’s angry column (in a national newspaper, about some people meeting in a pub, which seems a tiny bit intolerant) is that while shouting that we’re not allowed to be concerned about inaccuracies in science and health reporting, he managed to get every single fact wrong.
he said we’d met the night before. in fact we hadn’t even met.
he said we were all medics. only one of us is.
and he didn’t make a single substantive point, beyond his rage about doctors.
http://www.badscience.net/2009/07/steve-connor-is-getting-eggy/
to be honest, i think this just demonstrates once again the inability of science and health journalists to engage with the serious concerns people have about their work, which can cause great harm to public health.
here is our letter to the independent, which we hope they’ll publish. below that is our email to the letters editor
Dear Sir,
Your science journalist Steve Connor is furious that we are holding a small public meeting in a pub to discuss the problem that science journalists are often lazy and inaccurate. He gets the date wrong, claiming the meeting has already happened (it has not). He says we are three medics (only one of us is). He then invokes some stereotypes about arrogant doctors, which we hope are becoming outdated.
In fact, all three of us believe passionately in empowering patients, with good quality information, so they can make their own decisions about their health. People often rely on the media for this kind of information. Sadly, in the field of science and medicine, on subjects as diverse as MMR, sexual health, and cancer prevention, the public have been repeatedly and systematically misled by journalists.
We now believe this poses a serious threat to public health, and it is sad to see the problem belittled in a serious newspaper. Steve Connor is very welcome to attend our meeting, which is free and open to all,
yours
(Drs) Vaughan Bell, Petra Boynton, Ben Goldacre
hi guy,
i think it would be good to print this letter from all three of us. we
all take the issue of misleading science and health reporting very
seriously, and feel passionately that patients and the public need to
be well informed to make good decisions about their own health.
unfortunately the media do often make serious errors in their coverage
of health and science, we don’t think it is unreasonable for us to
hold a small meeting in a pub to discuss this, and i think it’s part
of the problem that the profession of science journalism and
journalism generally are so unwilling to face up to the problems,
discuss them, and engage with criticisms.
a good example of that, sadly, was steve’s column which was, sadly,
repeatedly factually incorrect. it talked about a meeting that hadn’t
happened yet as if it had, it described us all as medics, which we’re
not, and it failed to address any of our concerns about the serious
negative impact that misleading reporting can have on public health. i
would have hoped that this is exactly the kind of social justice and
patient empowerment issue that the independent might take a serious
interest in.
i should say i like steve’s work, although we’ve never met, and
there’s nothing personal about this, i just think it would be good if
you could correct on ther factual inaccuracies and give us the chance
to have a small say on such a serious issue by printing our letter.
i’m copying in petra boynton and vaughan bell, which i hope is ok,
ben
I didn’t mean to imply you’d written off the entire event, sorry… It does look like an excellent and enormous programme – I plan to do some more links/follow-up tomorrow.