Scientists And The Media: In Search Of A Healthier Symbiosis

"There are really two cold fusion controversies. One is the technical debate over how to achieve and sustain a room-temperature fusion reaction. The other debate concerns how news about the research has been communicated among scientists and by journalists. This second controversy has raised troubling questions about who determines when research may be discussed publicly and who determines the importance of science news - the journalist or the source? The March 1989 press conference of University of Utah researchers B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann appeared to test the limits of acceptable communications conduct by scientists; it provoked a storm of wild accusations and gossip among the scientific community; and it drew allegations of sensationalism and press overreaction. Those skeptical of Pons and Fleischmann's research accused them of, variously, unwarranted speculation, delusion, naivete, and incompetence. In a few unfortunate instances, critics charged deliberate deception. Even some of those who accepted the research as well-intentioned nevertheless denounced the method of announcement. The two chemists were accused of having broken certain inviolate (but informal) rules of scientific conduct by communicating their results through press conference, by interacting directly with the press and the public. The history of United States science journalism, however, clearly shows that such interactions are common. From the earliest part of this century, scientists have participated enthusiastically in telling the public about science. They have described their own research, analyzed (and criticized) the work of colleagues, and given free-wheeling interviews to jour- nalists, promoting great results from small research. Moreover, scientists have done so willingly, despite an atmosphere in science that does not always regard popularization with approval. Because popularization brings few rewards in the way of promotion or prizes, scientists have needed powerful motives for their public communications activities, but these have not been lacking. For centuries, money, power, and fame have justified all sorts of public communications. In her 1977 book, The Visible Scientists, journalism analyst Rae Goodell categorizes visible scientists as those who are noted for their lifetime media presence. But many other scientists participate throughout their careers, giving newspaper or television interviews from time to time to publicize a specific activity, or to advance a political cause (or book). Scientists have also used the mass media as public forums in which to answer critics of their work. Researchers in a new discipline or proponents of a new theory, discouraged by their colleagues' criticism, have often felt forced to circumvent traditional channels for scientific communication. When that occurs, they treat the mass media like pulpits. They evangelize back to the scientific community while arguing for public acceptance (and possibly funding) of their work. Such use of the mass media, by both proponents and critics of the Utah research, characterized the cold fusion affair. On occasion, scientists also have been pushed into the limelight to fulfill organizational goals. Corporations, universities, and government agencies long ago realized the symbolic value of well-known scientists, using them in public programs and in press conferences. Other powerful motives for publicity relate to personal or professional gain, as scientists seek support for their own laboratories or projects. Early in the century, explorers and expedition leaders who needed investors would write popular magazine articles to draw attention to the importance of their work. One of the most colorful of these was zoologist Roy Chapman Andrews, who routinely wove wild accounts of snakes and sandstorms into popular articles discussing his expeditions. Andrews clearly recognized the potential of publicity devices. In a candid Saturday Evening Post article in the 1930s, he observed that the "ability to lecture or to write entertainingly" is an invaluable professional asset, because then "you do not have to depend upon a second person to state your thesis, and the public learns to know you at first hand." In an interview, a scientist should phrase technical information correctly and appealingly, Andrews advised, because "newspaper reporter must have some peg upon which to hang the serious account of what you intend to do or have done." (Similar advice may be found in any 1990s public relations manual.) Andrews simply saw that, in the game of image-shaping, scientists could never be all-powerful; they could only control the degree to which they cooperated with journalists, not the text the journalists ultimately wrote. He warned that interaction with the press carries risks to the source - "the line between beneficial and harmful publicity is exceedingly thin. Overpublicity is a danger," he wrote, adding that "people become bored if too much is written about an expedition." Certainly, the rise and fall of cold fusion press coverage demonstrated just such fluctuating interest. By June 1989, even Science had declared that it was "intermission time in the cold fusion drama," and reporter Robert Pool correctly observed that "Act Two will not be nearly so exciting to read about in the papers," although "it is where the real science will take place" (Science, 244:1039-40, 1989). For a few scientists, the political motives driving their interaction with the media extend beyond the advancement of their own careers, and beyond specific projects or activities, to the promotion of the general idea of national support and funding for all scientific research. These motives spurred the efforts in the 1920s and 1930s, for example, of such men as astronomer George Ellery Hale and physicist Robert A. Millikan, just as the desire for continued federal support for all types of fusion research justified statements from prominent scientists last spring. To acknowledge and describe the motives of publicity-seeking scientists is not necessarily to condemn them. They simply represent new versions of an old practice, stretching back through the history of science, from public lectures in the 1890s, through the Science Service-sponsored radio talks of the 1930s, to the "sound bites" of the 1990s. The difference is not the motives or even the ever-expanding influence of the mass media, but subtle changes in how scientists communicate with one another, which are affected by new economic pressures on the value of technical information. In turn, these changes may be altering relationships between scientists and the press, as priorities shift and responsibilities realign. There is a longstanding myth that information about science flows from laboratory to the public in some precise, formal way: that scientists publish and then journalists translate for the rest of us. In real life, science journalists learn about ongoing research as the ideas are forming, not just about the finished product. For the result to be accurate and fair, both reporters and their sources must possess extraordinary sensitivity to the status of the information involved. The reporter and scientist become locked in a symbiotic relationship, successful only when each reveres the truth - the scientist neither promising too much, nor revealing too little; the journalist describing the full extent of possibility without ignoring reality. The conventions about how journalists and scientists achieve truthful and responsible reports developed in a time of what, in retrospect, seem highly conservative modes of communication among researchers. Informal communications were face to face or by letter, first supplanted by the telephone and now by the fax and personal computer network. Electronic channels did not change either the motives for communication or the types of information communicated, but they have changed the time lag, have introduced more opportunities for error and misunderstanding, and have enhanced something that is ephemeral (but critical for understanding the cold fusion controversy) - the emotional state of the participants. The rapidity of fax simply lends a false aura of drama to every result. Gossip accelerates into technical speculation; fiction at one end of the line appears as fact at the other. Another critical external factor in the cold fusion controversy has been the economic forces at work in international science, both the need for more and diversified funding and an exaggerated perception of the value of all scientific information, however arcane. Both these circumstances will increase the pressure on researchers to break conventional norms of communication to establish intellectual priority or patent claim; they will prompt more scientists to announce results not through journal publication alone but through press conferences linked to subsequent publication. But this will be controlled communication, for the perceived value of the information also will increase the pressure for secrecy, for breaking the norms of openness and sharing. These conflicting pressures lead to ambiguity in standards. Which convention, whose interests govern? One of the ironies of the cold fusion controversy last spring was that Pons and Fleischmann were frequently criticized for both - speaking out in "premature" announcement, yet failing to reveal sufficient details of their research. Hidden in the emotions, in the accusation of "science by press conference" that surfaced in this and many other recent controversies are serious questions of who should accept responsibility for accurate, truthful science reporting - the journalist or the source? The classic models of the social responsibility of the mass media emphasize that the media have many purposes - to inform, to entertain, to sell, but also to raise social and political conflicts to a higher plane of discussion. In a democracy, the media must serve as a communications channel not just for those in power or with money, but for all those who have something to say. Reporters routinely interview not just the appointed "spokespersons" for science, not just the heads of academies and laboratories, but also dissenters and critics. This practice, in the case of science, frequently draws criticism, especially when it appears to grant legitimacy to eccentric or unproven theories. The controversies over fraud and plagiarism in science, over global warming and nuclear winter, for example, all have included accusations that the media cite the "wrong" sources, the "wrong" scientists. Yet the filtering of news sources raises the prospect of censorship. What is the responsible choice - to report? or to ignore? Inaction, or failure to report on an announcement, is itself an action, especially when the news may affect funding or investment. The newest challenge for science journalists is how to be vigilant critics of those aspects of science in which there is some inherent and vital public interest, such as the announcement of a discovery certain to attract significant government and private investment, yet where no scientific consensus exists. Clarifying where the pendulum of responsibility (both moral and legal) lies is a task deserving closer attention. In a democracy, the press has a clear responsibility to report on science, but should this responsibility be unrestrained? Most often, science journalism fails not because it is biased for or against science, but because it covers the social structure and social implications of science inad- equately or incompletely. Research projects can be described in ways that dispel myths and inform policy debates, but most often they are not. We need far more emphasis on how scientific research is conducted and on what can be realistically expected from conventional research techniques and standards - and far less emphasis on the projected returns from research. Without question, daily interactions between journalists and scientists are quite different from when reporters regarded every Nobel laureate with unqualified awe. The early science journalists, often less skilled or less well-educated in science than their modern counterparts, were much more dependent on their sources, and as a result often became friendly with, even protective of, scientists. There were hidden dangers in such symbiosis. E.E. Slosson, great editor and an unabashed promoter of science, identified long ago the crucial question: Whose interests should science journalism serves - those of the audience or the source? He wrote in 1922 that "popular science need not be incorrect, but has to be somewhat indifferent. The would-be popularizer is always confronted by the dilemma of comprehensible inaccuracy or incom- prehensible accuracy." ("Science from the Sidelines," The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, January 1922, page 475). These questions resemble those faced by journalists on all beats, but they contain special implications for science, in which the scientists themselves guard the gateways of information. It is easy to be drawn into seeing data, for example, from only the scientist's perspective, to take multiple-place accuracy too seriously, or to refrain from warning the public of suspected but scientifically unproven risks. Slosson admonished science journalists not to get "too close" to their subjects, to stand somewhat aloof from science, to write as observers, not as members of the community. Given the shifting priorities and increased economic pressures in science, such advice will be even more important for serving both audience and sources well. Marcel C. LaFollette is associate research professor of science and technology policy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Her book, Making Science Our Own: Public Images of Science, 1910-1955, has just been published by University of Chicago Press.

Scientists And The Media: In Search Of A Healthier Symbiosis

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