It could be argued that to properly communicate science to the public, that scientists themselves should demonstrate their findings - although Journals, websites and magazines already exist to do this and the general public don't seem interested in finding scientific journals, and it can be a long and slow process to actually have research published, so perhaps a balance between the media and scientists needs to be found. However the next paragraph highlights potential issues with this.
An interesting case is demonstrated in an article by Collins (2011) on The Telegraph's website. Baroness Greenfield was a psychologist, and head of the Royal Institute, and in several cases she has communicated, via lecture or press conference ( and in this case reported in a speech to an all girls school) that video games can deactivate nerve connections and literally kill brain cells. Newspapers and media outlets understandably reported this announcement from Baroness Greenfield. However, Baroness Greenfield has come under a lot of criticism from her peers for this controversial statement. Dr. Burnett wrote a guest article for the Telegraph's website (article written by Tom Chivers, 2011), countering what Greenfield claimed - essentially stripping down the claims and pointing out that there is no scientific basis to any of it, and that essentially, what she claimed isn't true at all and can be put down to a distrust or dislike of entertainment media.
The problem with Baroness Greenfield's claim, is that there was no published research, facts, or figures at all to speak of to make these claims and yet the press immediately published this information with no basis of truth. In another incident, Ben Goldacre wrote an article on the Bad Science website, criticising Greenfield for claiming that video games cause dementia in children - again, an unfounded claim without any evidence to support it reported by several newspapers and news groups.
Evidently, not properly communicating science can mislead and leave the public confounded and ill-informed, perhaps not in a way that will cause danger, but ignorance of the world that surrounds them.
A perfect example of this is a scheme called "Brain Gym" which is a program designed to help children's attention, motivation and improve communication within the brain and to the rest of the body which has been adopted by many schools as part of the curriculum, is funded by the government and promoted by education authorities - and many teachers say it yields positive results (Goldacre, 2008). The premise of Brain Gym is that learning begins with movement, and a group of different exercises are performed in order to integrate body the and the mind.
However, Goldacre (2008) has countered these claims in his book Bad Science, insisting that it is pseudo scientific, and has very little actual science or fact. He claims that exercises such as "Brain Buttons" (where children rub over their collar bones in order to stimulate blood flow through the arteries) are "nonsense" and also said "I'm yet to meet any child who can stimulate his carotid arteries inside his ribcage", whilst also noting that the creators of Brain Gym don't know the difference between oxidization (what causes rusting) and oxygenation (getting oxygen in to the blood) and their claims that processed food contains no water - which is certainly untrue. In this book, Goldacre reviews Brain Gym and dissects various exercises that are promoted by Brain Gym, and goes on to explain why most of these exercises are essentially arbitrary and have no effect - rather that the children are having regular breaks, regular exercise and drinking more water which is having an effect.
Goldacre (2008) comments on the media's portrayal of science and scientists (respectively) as "groundless, incomprehensible, didactic truth statements from scientists, who themselves are socially powerful, arbitrary, unelected authority figures", also commenting how over half of the articles written are health stories, which claim usually that a certain substance causes or saves an individual from death, the only science stories that get in to newspapers are "whacky" and have a comedy aspect, rather than being genuinely scientific and informative, and also claims that these articles are written so "humanities graduates" can comment how "bonkers and irrelevant scientists are"; referencing articles about scientists (the scientist in one story, is not in fact a scientist or lecturer as one media outlet claimed) devising formulae for the most miserable day of the year, or the perfect way to pull a Christmas cracker.
Perhaps the worst (in Goldacre's opinion), is as a story that the SUN posted, about evolution, claiming that humans will have changed greatly in the next thousand years, claiming everyone will have coffee coloured skin, will be over 6 feet tall, with enlarged genitals for men, and more pert breasts for women. The research completely fails to take in to account the speed and forces that cause evolution and that the research was funded by a men's TV channel, and was clearly untrue to scientists, but was reported by all of the major media outlets. This type of reporting relegates science to a novelty subject, and reduces it to something to be mocked.
Goldacre (2008) says the most problematic issue of all is that most science stories published in newspapers simply don't have any published scientific paper backing it up, no peer reviews, or worse; no evidence at all. No peer reviewing means that any glaring errors, fallacies or obvious confounds or design errors, problems with results or inconsistencies are just not seen, and remain in the "research". This is partly due to science being dumbed down for readers, and just being presented as a hypothesis and conclusion in the media.
All of the research mentioned prior discusses the issues with misunderstanding science, but failing to communicate science properly can induce health scares and can endanger the public if they have been falsely informed. The biggest of these is called " The Media's MMR Hoax" by Goldacre (2008). In 1998, a scientist named Andrew Wakefield published research that showed a link between the MMR injection that children receive and autism. The media jumped on this, and immediately exaggerated the dangers and effects, as well as ignoring the scientists and science behind it - Goldacre calls it one of the most misunderstood and misreported papers in the history of academia. The paper itself is supposedly poorly written, and the case series nature of the paper means that there were no experimental conditions or comparisons between groups in the first place, and essentially these participants were all unfortunate enough to have three common issues (bowel problems, autism, and vaccinations), in a hospital designed for bowel problems and behaviour problems. This does not imply any kind of connection, just an unlikely set of circumstances that bring these elements together. Shortly after this, Wakefield made a press conference announcement suggesting that a single vaccination may be a better way to give the MMR; this is because supposedly having 6 different vaccinations separately are more harmful than just 1, and 6 painful injections are not easy for a child and it means it is also harder to miss appointments.
However, despite these circumstances, the media eventually brought the MMR issue to the front pages in 2001 and ignored these facts, as well as deliberately not reporting findings from other scientists that countered Wakefield's, then Tony Blair (then Prime Minister) did not give his son the MMR, which added fuel to the fire and caused a considerable uproar despite evidence from the NHS, the Institute of Medicine and the Royal Colleges that showed MMR was safe.
The studies and examples of media abuse of science stories clearly demonstrate that science isn't being clearly communicated, and it is causing people to be misled about the world that surrounds them, the effects the world has on their health, and causes untold panic and fear within the general public when not handled in the correct way, as in the MMR hoax. The only way to ensure that people are not in a state of confusion about science, is to make sure it is communicated properly, and not overblown (or under-represented) by the media.
References
Bishop, J (1997) Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/research/water-initiative/pdf/iwrm_scicom/general/g3_en.pdf
Chivers, T (2011) Retrieved from: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100111114/guest-post-baroness-greenfield-junk-neuroscience-and-the-danger-of-video-games/
Collins, N (2011) Retrieved from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/8825655/Video-games-can-alter-childrens-brains.html
Goldacre, B (2008) Bad Science, London, UK. Chapters 2, 12, 15, 16
Goldacre, B (2011) Retrieved from: http://www.badscience.net/2011/11/why-wont-professor-greenfield-publish-this-theory-in-a-scientific-journal/
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