Reporters Find Science Journals Harder to Trust, but Not Easy to Verify - New York Times

Reporters Find Science Journals Harder to Trust, but Not Easy to Verify - New York Times

This story in the NYT is something to consider; a report based on the fallout from the Dr. Hwang Woo Suk cloning scandal. It points out that the newspapers and science journals are being duped, and recommends that science reporters start building in a layer of scepticism; what we called 'crap detecting' when I took mass communications in college.

This is going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to exercise. How many science reporters know enough about a topic to write accurately on a subject in the first place? I know as I begin to write on broader and broader subjects outside of my expertise in archaeology, I can only rely on what background and good sense I have to figure out what makes a good story, and then chase down appropriately external reviewers for their comments. But if the journal editors and outside sources are also taken in by studies, how are we, your humble science reporters, to know?

The interesting problem is, as one scientist said to me recently, there are already fewer and fewer scientists who are willing to talk to science reporters because of a lack of trust. This scandal may increase the difficulty in getting good science stories into the public domain.

Ah well. Nobody said science journalism was going to be easy. Maybe this is a signal for the need to increase niche reporting.