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Science communications full of challenges these days
In his first science blog, Barlow looks at the challenges of communicating science news to the public in a world where media outlets, primarily newspaper coverage, is dwindling.
By Jim Barlow, Media Relations
The business of getting the word out on new discoveries in science is fun. Scientists who are willing to talk to university science communicators, like myself, and to the science media at newspapers, magazines and on the airwaves of radio and television, are the real treats, though. They do the work, we listen, we communicate, and the public benefits.
What you are reading is my first SciBlog. This one and those that will follow on a semi-occasional, when-I-have-some-information-to-share schedule are not meant to state my own opinion on anything -- although for the sake of disclosure, I am a Ducks fan and an avid follower of the Indianapolis Colts and Indiana Pacers (the latter being my hometown teams). My blogs won't always be this long, but each will involve science and research involving the UO or items possibly of interest to the science-and-research campus community.
So now that I've stated my approach, I'm breaking my rule: This initial entry is not about campus news, but about the field I work in as a campus science communicator.
I recently returned from the 2007 joint meeting the National Association of Science Writers (NASW) and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing (CASW), which was held this year in Spokane and co-sponsored by the University of Oregon (thanks to Rich Linton, vice president for research and graduate studies).
During the meetings, most of my colleagues spoke about their passion for covering science as a reporter or broadcaster, or, like me, as a university science communicator. However, this year we got some updated numbers on what we already knew is a sobering trend in our profession. This isn't caused by global warming, but it is a meltdown.
The Baltimore Sun recently announced that it is eliminating its weekly health & science section -- barely a year after creating it and announcing a commitment to make it one of the best. Another victim of the bottom line of economics is the reason. Cristine Russell wrote about the topic in the cover story for the Fall 2007 issue of ScienceWriters, a publication of the NASW, of which I've been a member since 1992. Speaking in Spokane, she referred to the numbers in her story.
In the late 1980s, there were 95 science and/or health sections in U.S. newspapers. Since then, despite reports that the public's thirst for science continues to grow, newspapers have axed their coverage and put many science writers out of work. In the 2005 Editor and Publisher International Yearbook, Russell wrote, 34 American newspapers listed weekly health and science sections -- but content dramatically has shifted to soft, consumer-oriented "news you can use" medicine and personal health coverage. If physics, astronomy and earth sciences are your passion, she noted, The New York Times is just about the only place still reporting on them. And with everyone wanting research covered by the Times, imagine the competition to get new findings reported in there.
Locally, as an aside, institutions in Oregon and Washington are waiting to see what becomes of science coverage at The Oregonian, where long-time NASW member Richard Hill retires -- early, of course -- next month. Richard is a jewel in my profession, and I feel that I've barely gotten to know him even though I have friends who have known him for years. These days, more and more good science writers are retiring or being nudged out of the newspaper business.
University-based science communicators face a huge challenge: How do we get the news of our researchers out there where the public can see it? Our news releases now are often picked up by Web-based news "sources" that merely cut and paste, maybe but most often not changing a word or two. Research is losing the perspective of good science writers, who are able to provide the context that tries to define where new findings really fit into the world's knowledge.
Many university science writers are turning to Podcasts or other forms of video and/or audio presentations to capture the interest of new-media-savvy young people. As a 50s-something communicator, an aging Baby Boomer, I question if faculty, in general, are interested in this approach or find it a meaningful experience. Seems to me that this approach, while using new technologies that are fun to produce and probably fun to see or hear, just waters down the subject matter.
Some communicators are trying to use eye-catching graphics with maybe just a short description to portray new findings. Visual yes, but, again, not very informative.
Here at the University of Oregon, some of these alternative-to-the-traditional-news-release approaches -- which have been openly discussed, touted, endorsed, criticized and cussed by science writers and communicators for the last several NASW/CASW meetings, will be debuting on the Web site of Public and Media Relations in the months to come. Ideas welcome! For or against? Email me with your thoughts.
Meanwhile, back in Spokane: There were scientists at the CASW meeting who had interesting stories to tell. Here, I share two brief descriptions. Both involved findings that, they agreed, needed and demanded traditional media coverage.
* Cougars are a problem in the Northwest and should be hunted:
Really? Here's what Robert Wielgus, director of Washington State's Large Carnivore Conservation Laboratory, found as part of an on-going study at four sites. Native mule deer populations are declining. Cougars are killing them, most often in summer, at two times the rate of non-native white-tailed deer that are moving in from the east. White-tailed deer enter the low elevations, closer to humans, where most reports of cougar-related complaints occur. Increased hunting led to the elimination of older male cougars. In one study area, hunting led to a 30-percent decline in the cougar population. Problem solved? Read on.
For every older male cougar killed, Wielgus found, three young (less than two years) males would come from up to 100 miles away to fill the vacuum left by each death. These youngsters, seeking mates and dominance, kill young cougars, male and female, to speed the estrus, or sexual cycle, of females. Females flee into the higher elevations, where, he found, mule deer are being killed the most rapidly -- not by male cougars but by these fleeing females. More mule deer go to higher elevations in response to the increase in white-tailed deer.
Wielgus says "it's time to rethink predator management."
"The punitive solution," of hunting cougars "is causing the problem," which, he said, is defined in the statistics: White-tailed deer populations are exploding, attracting young, aggressive cougars, and the native mule deer could be headed to extinction. Wielgus says the answer to the "cougar problem" may be in controlling the white-tailed deer numbers.
* Older women, chromosomal damage and Down syndrome. A not-so-open-and-shut explanation, says Patricia Hunt of the School of Molecular Biosciences at Washington State. She detailed her work that produced unexpected findings and the realization that the media's role of being "a powerful tool" needed to tapped so the public would know.
Hunt's story is of research gone wrong, resulting in looking at what went wrong and discovering an unexpected and potentially troubling problem for growing numbers of women delaying childbirth. The idea was that age-related hormonal changes influence eggs, compromising chromosomal integrity. Ah, but what the maid did made for a new direction. Data being collected among mice went haywire, with rates of egg problems exploding and research being started anew in different environments -- but again going wrong.
Upon examination, Hunt found that the hired hands who kept cages and animal rooms clean had used high-acid detergent meant for the floors on the cages, plastic water bottles and food bowls of the mice. Turns out the damaged plastic containers were releasing bisphenol A, a synthetic estrogen widely used in plastics and resins for the last 50 years. Now Hunt wonders if long-term exposure to bisphenol A is partly responsible for the explosion in the use of fertility treatments, and she is, reluctantly but necessarily, she said, embarking on a non-human primate study of such exposure. She reminded her audience of the use of DES, also a synthetic estrogen-like compound, in the 1950s to prevent miscarriages. Years later, DES was found to put daughters of women given DES at high risk for infertility, premature labor and cancers of the vagina and cervix.
She told her science-writing audience that "research doesn't change the world, but it is the public reaction to the research -- as delivered by the media -- that does." Intimidated at first by the fear that her research would be wrongly portrayed, she considered that the public often portrays the scientist as aloof and isolated. "If I can tell my story to you," she said, "then what you do with it can help us change the world."
My bet is that science media in that room, as well as the plastics industry, will be closely watching what Hunt finds in the coming years.
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2) Scientists on Science: Should researchers "frame" their work, or is that just spin?
That is all.