The Columbia Journalism Review has an insightful article online about the difficulties of scientific journalism. Specifically, the article does a great job of actually recognizing the difference between social/moral/religious/other issue groups, like creationists, and scientists. When some editor tells his staff to cover both sides of an issue like evolution "equally," he's engineering into the article an absurd skew, becuase scientists and social advocacy groups are on fundamentally different footing. I'm really not sure how many people understand how science works, what with peer review and the interface between basic research and clinical practice (in the case of biomedical science) and all. I've talked to a whole lot of smart, but not scientifically-trained, people about my thesis and what I work on, and I'm continually surprised by how few of those people have an understanding that surpasses the 'DNA is the building blocks of life' level. I'm sure that those same people wouldn't be able to effectively distinguish between fringe science and good science except by instinct. And as the continued circulation of tabloids seems to demonstrate, it's easy to overcome the instinctive bullshit meter by making the reader/believer part of a privileged or outsider group.

This really worries me--bad science journalism-->bad science understanding in adults-->badly informed electorate-->bad policy decisions (especially decisions on education, medicine, the environment)-->bad results, poorly educated children {lather, rinse, repeat}. I think that an uninformed electorate is largely responsible for the fact that the bush administration was able to sack Elizabeth Blackburn, who is an extraordinarily respected scientist, from the presiden't council on bioethics. Not a whole lot of ire was raised by this, which is difficult for me to understand. But when you think of the way that science is being "balanced" around here, with scientists' findings being made to kowtow to issues groups when being presented in mainstream media, it makes sense.
[Via Slashdot]