Good comments from James Annan that are both spot on and completely useless, I think, regarding what journalists should do with the latest hot results from Science and Nature:
I think the golden rule to remember is that a new item of research, even if it’s appeared in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal, is not in itself a new “truth” about the world. It is only the current opinion of a couple of researchers working in a particular area. It’s always worth bearing in mind that the researchers themselves might change their minds in a few months and even if they don’t, it is quite possible that the rest of the scientific community will decide they are talking nonsense and either criticise or (what is perhaps worse) ignore the study.
The obvious implication is that I should ignore the hot new paper that everyone’s talking about, and wait a couple of years to see how well it holds up in the long run. It would also be in the best interest of the trees if they’d all agree to stay short and didn’t have to waste all that energy on a big long trunk. But as soon as one grows a bit taller, it shades out the others, they die, and only trees with grow-tall genes make it through to the next round.
So everyone’s going to jump on the Bryden paper, unable to resist the chance for a “Europe in Deep Freeze” headline. Or the chance to blame global warming on trees.
It would be helpful to the whole discussion, I think, if the big journals wouldn’t publish splashy papers that contain small results, like the Bryden and methane papers. Those two papers are interesting examples of the problem – interesting and suggestive results with a lot more research needed to flesh out the details. We journalists seem incapable of distinguishing between such papers and the much more broad and solidified results. (Consider this an invitation to you climate science types in the audience to suggest a recent Science or Nature paper that meets this second criterion – or else argue that there really are no such things?)
Ahem.
The obvious implication is that I should ignore the hot new paper that everyone’s talking about…It would also be in the best interest of the trees if they’d all agree to stay short a
No.
The discussion is: here’s a new result, let’s see if it holds up. A reporter’s job IMHO is to report it as such.
If editors don’t want to hire reporters who can contextualize the findings (or can’t find them), or choose to sensationalize findings to sell papers, that’s not our fault. Present company excepted.
The overarching issue here is that we need to wind the clock back 30 years and do a better job of teaching science. And give the Murrican public an attention span.
It would be helpful to the whole discussion, I think, if the big journals wouldn’t publish splashy papers that contain small results, like the Bryden and methane papers.
No.
They publish most of the robust findings that they receive. Their job isn’t to filter out splashiness, or to hold results that might make people confused or mad that it contradicts a paper that appeared last week, or to not publish something that requires some thought to grasp.
For example, the way I read the methane/trees paper was that there is an anthropogenic change in CH4 emissions – we’ve been deforesting, so trees’ contribution is less to GW than in the past; but this is part of the methane cycle anyway, so who cares?. Did I see this contextualized by reporters? No. It would be helpful to the whole discussion if the big papers would do a better job at contextualization.
But, then again, Murricans have been trained to be bored after 30 seconds of anything, so contextualizing anything won’t work in the “market”, and may risk losing market share. That is bad, of course.
/soapbox
Best,
D
I agree with Dano on the fact that Americans haven’t kept up with science and have no attention span – that’s evident about 3 months before an election, when politicians shape up their act to get reelected.
Science is that way too. Very short attention span. That’s apparent in the either ignorance or dishonesty of anyone who talks about temperatures of “the last 30 years.” They are dismissing the cooling of the 30 years before *that*, which was just about as rapid (meaning that yes, those who can put two and two together will pick up on) such that 1940 was almost as warm as it is now. The warming from 1910 to 1940 is much steeper than the warming since.
As far as the press reporting every little story that comes out, any objective person would realize the invalidity of a *3 year* study to determine ice volume changes over the continent of Antarctica – by gravity – at one in 200,000 definition, proving the latest evidence in not necessarily the best – especially if
posted in Science magazine.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t sell papers. But, at least the stories could adequately represent the uncertainties. Then again, the IPCC doesn’t do that, so why should the press?
Steve H –
I agree that proper representation of the uncertainties is important to public understanding in these issues. Could you cite some specific examples where you think the IPCC has not done this?