Neil deGrasse Tyson: Science journalism has a problem | Big Think

Science journalism has a problem
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Journalists writing about science have become more science fluent over the past 20 years, but the need to be first and the practice of giving equal exposure to opposing views regardless of scientific evidence (e.g. climate change) has been detrimental to the public's understanding of the facts.

Reporting on science from the "frontier" doesn't provide the full picture because it doesn't give scientists time to verify and re-verify the results of experiments.

Journalists have more power than scientists when it comes to disseminating information, so it's their inherent responsibility to get the facts right.
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NEIL DEGRASSE:

Neil deGrasse Tyson was born and raised in New York City where he was educated in the public schools clear through his graduation from the Bronx High School of Science. Tyson went on to earn his BA in Physics from Harvard and his PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia. He is the first occupant of the Frederick P. Rose Directorship of the Hayden Planetarium. His professional research interests are broad, but include star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the structure of our Milky Way. Tyson obtains his data from the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as from telescopes in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and in the Andes Mountains of Chile.Tyson is the recipient of nine honorary doctorates and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. His contributions to the public appreciation of the cosmos have been recognized by the International Astronomical Union in their official naming of asteroid "13123 Tyson".

Tyson's new book is Letters From an Astrophysicist (2019).

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TRANSCRIPT:
Neil deGrasse Tyson: I remember some years ago, 20 years ago, anytime I was interviewed by a journalist, a print journalist. The print journalism is taking what I said and turning it into an article. So it has to pass through the journalist, get processed and then it becomes some written content on a page. One hundred percent of those experiences the journalist got something fundamentally wrong with the subject matter. And just an interesting point about the power of journalists. I had people read the article and say Neil, you must know better than that. That’s not how this works. They assumed the journalist was correct about reporting what I said. Not that I was correct and that the journalist was wrong. Okay, this is an interesting power that journalists have over whether you think what they’re writing is true or not. I even had a case – I have one brother and a sister. I had a case where they misreported that I had two brothers. And I had a friend of mine who had been a friend for five or ten years say Neil, I just read – I didn’t know you had two brothers. And I said I don’t. Well it says it right here. This is the power of journalism. A mistake becomes truth. That was decades ago. In recent years what I think has happened is there are more journalists who are science fluent that are writing about science than was the case 20 years ago. So now I don’t have to worry about the journalist missing something fundamental about what I’m trying to describe. And reporting has been much more accurate in recent years I’m happy to report. However, there’s something that has not been fixed in journalism yet. It’s their urge to get the story first, the science story, the breaking news about a discovery. The urge to get it first means they’re reporting on something that’s not yet verified by other scientific experiments. If it’s not yet verified it’s not there yet. And you’re more likely to write about a story that is most extraordinary. And the more extraordinary is the single scientific result, the less likely it is that it’s going to be true. So you need some restraint there or some way to buffer the account. I don’t want you to not talk about it but say this is not yet verified, it’s not yet this, it’s not yet that. And it’s been criticized by these other people anyway so be more open about how wrong the thing is you’re reporting on could be. Because other wise you’re doing a disservice to the public. And that disservice is you’ll say people out there say scientists don’t know anything. Well what gives you that idea? Well one week cholesterol is good for you and the next week it’s bad for you. They don’t know what they’re doing. That’s on the frontier. On the frontier science is flipflopping all the time. Yes, if you’re going to report from the frontier it looks like scientists are clueless about everything.

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