Science and the media

Danielle Somers

Science and the Media

Sometimes careless science publishing can weaken the public’s confidence in science and the government. The Media is enormously powerful and leading and will influence people’s opinions on everything. There are plenty of stories in the media that will change the public’s perception of science or even make them see a new perception. Sometimes these stories are just written to scare the public into believing a certain thing just so they can sell their stories.

Sometimes stories are true and sometimes they are false but it is up to the public to believe in what is right and what is wrong.

In this day and age, where information is available at the touch of a mouse, it’s not surprising that the media is a particularly dominant and powerful force in today’s civilization. Research has shown that newspapers are the public’s primary source of information on scientific issues.

The public sometimes feel confused over what they think may be correct information. They are made to feel scared over certain stories that the media wrongly report. The public are at the stage where they may distrust the media and reject much of what is written. For example, the public are made to believe that global warming is happening, yet then there were other stories rejecting the idea of global warming leaving the public confused. Also, the public were made to believe that mobile phones could pose serious brain injuries due to radiation emissions; this is just to raise concern as there is “no firm evidence of this”.

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Recently there was a scare over the MMR Vaccine that it caused autism and as a result this was leaving parents ‘confused and dangerously misled’. For 10 years the media have continued to blame the MMR vaccine for almost everything from bowel disease to autism to even death. However, there is no evidence of this, just circumstances held upon and beaten up. There is going to be controversy over the MMR vaccine. The public are confused and are unsure about the safety of the vaccine. There is frustration over this and the public are going to fear what they do not understand. Although most of the public will reject much of what the media says about the vaccine. Also, some may be thinking that the damage that can be caused by the measles virus is by far worse than any risk from the MMR. The public’s perception of the MMR vaccine has now changed forever as the scare story will have altered the public’s behaviour towards the vaccine.

Global warming is another story that has raised concern recently. Global warming is an increase in the average global temperatures. There is a controversy over what exactly is causing global warming, some of the public believe it is natural and others believe it is a result of human activities. As there is no real hard evidence that global warming is caused by human activity the public’s interest on the matter is fading. Global warming continues to rank dead last among 22 issues as a top political priority and even among democrats, less than a majority (47%) rate the issue as a major political concern.

There is no link or evidence that suggests that the MMR vaccine is linked to autism. Leaving this story unjustified and places the public still in worry about weather this is true or not. The MMR fear is a myth that was created by one doctor who has now become a victim to the media who are ravenous for headlines. The the media are still leaving Parents in fear over the vaccine with no real firm scientific evidence. The claims that the media make about the vaccine are not necessarily true and they know this.

This story would be more justified if more unbiased research was done on it, although research which is generally biased has already been carried out on the matter. The selective reporting of these cases promotes nothing but a myth which only places children at risk. The headline of the story which is “New fear over MMR link with rising autism” suggests that there may be some evidence that is linking the MMR jab with autism but when reading the story I find nothing, no truth evidence or facts, just a very biased one sided scare story. This is the kind of story that makes the public distrust the media as the story is totally unjustified. The purpose of this story is to exploit the fears of the public. The way the story reported the science behind the MMR jab is very inaccurate.

There are a lot of theories on what exactly is causing global warming and because there are so many theories it makes it harder to believe which one or if any are true. One group of Scientists claim that the global warming assumptions are actually false. Yet the majority of climate scientists say that it is happening and that it is due to humans pumping large quantities of greenhouse gases into the air. This leaves the media open to report what they wish on this matter. One news story suggests that it is natural and that Mars is also heating up and experiencing climate change which is caused by changes in the sun, not by man. Although there is no scientific facts of this in the story which makes it unjustified and hard to believe.

The public are worried as they have don’t know what to believe and some concerns that the public do have about the environment may start fade as they are unsure if what they are reading is true. This is because the stories associated with Global warming are very unjustified and tend to include no real evidence of what it is they are reading.

The media are aware that the fears they generate from their stories have a huge effect on the public and the decisions they make. Yet they continue to report scare stories and lies. The media being the main source of information on important scientific issues plays a huge role in setting the public’s perceptions of science. This means that media trust is very important, but sadly, the majority of the public do not trust the media. And furthermore, the public are very often under-informed about scientific issues due to distrust. Also, it is sad but true that the media do not care about how trustworthy they are the truth is that the public have very little say in what and how they report.

The Media tend to generate fear when they report a certain science story. They try to scare the public with the stories rather than inform them. This is because nothing grabs a reader like a scare story – this is what the public want, this increases sales. They purposely try and exploit public fears. This is a very negative contribution to the public’s perception of science. The public at first may believe these scare stories and make decisions based on them.

The Medias reporting of science is very often inaccurate and not always seen as true. They tend to dumb the stories down so they think that the public will understand them while underestimating the public’s knowledge of science by using non-technical and non-scientific words. They often report things that are false and this is what makes the public distrust the media a lot as they have no idea what to believe and so the media play with their minds and tend to try and convince the public to believe what they believe. The way that the media select and present their stories never will lead to a truthful depiction of the world’s scientific events.

The impacts of the issues the media write about are sometimes looked upon differently by different people in society and the media are aware of this. The media are not going to change their ways because it seems this is what people want else the medias papers would not sell. There is also a lot of restrictions on what the media report by the governments and politicians and this stops much coming to light so the media make the best with what stories they do have.

If the public stopped buying the papers due to the lack of trust, the media may change their ways.