This is kind of fun, although I’ve only skimmed through it at warp speed (which is speed so fast it warps objectivity and reason).

The BBC, incessantly under scrutiny by its audience, by many critics, and by the government that once held it in tight rein, recently commissioned an academic team to review its science coverage and to draw up some recommendations.

The leader of that project, Professor Steve Jones, an emeritus in genetics at University College London, found much to admire and not a lot of factual errors in the BBC’s radio and TV handling of science, it appears. But his review also found plenty to criticise – seeing for example too little coordination between radio and TV, and a skewed distribution of coverage compared to where the real action is in science. Too much astronomy, anthropology, geosciences, ecology, evolution, he said. Gad, one thinks, those are all  fun ones. Yep, let’s ramp up coverage on mantle plumes in the Archaean, attosecond imagery of metabolic catalysis, and cross-specific mimicry among lyre birds!

It’s a remarkable report, seriously done. Also remarkable is that the BBC presents it upside down. Usually, at least in my impression of the usual, when one releases  the results of an independent report that one has commissioned, the format is to release a preface that says thank you, then the report, and the inhouse rejoinders and reactions added at the end – as appendices perhaps. But the Beeb staples it so that first one sees the rebuttal (and in many places to be sure, concurrence), followed by the argument. So one gets the BBC Trust’s paraphrase and response to the report, then the BBC’s executive department paraphrase and markedly defensive response, and third the report on which the paraphrases and responses turn.

Here it is: BBC Trust review of impartiality and accuracy of the BBC’s coverage of science ;

As I say, I just skimmed. But among other observations by the outside reviewers are that two thirds of the stories concerned news in which press releases were involved (implying a low level of enterprise), that most of the stories concerned news in which a journal publication was involved but unless they were Nature, Lancet, or the British Medical Journal, they weren’t named, and that it is particularly striking how rarely the US  journal Science gets mention. And how come mental disorder in the UK is a far more common burden on people than is cancer, but cancer gets so much more BBC attention?

It asks why so many reports are “cool and emotionless” whereas “Science is as full of hope and despair as any other endeavour.” Hmmm. Maybe I’m wrong, but seems like scientists tend to think their neighborhood’s public scriveners are TOO heavy on hope and despair, and way short of respect for the logic and statistical coolness of science.

There is also, natch, lengthy discussion of due weight and balance when it comes to science and controversial policy predicaments, as with climate change, or genetically modified food. The section seemed a bit murky as it blurred by, but one passage from the professor’s team regarding reporting of diverse points of view jumps out:

Even so, every scientist, perhaps without realising it, accepts Cromwell’s entreaty that “in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken”; they are, when faced with evidence, and however reluctantly, willing to change their minds. That ruling does not apply to many other fields, from politics to the arts or to sport where immovable and contradictory opinion is widespread and even welcome. For science, in contrast, for most of the time, and in most of the subject, there is a wide acceptance of a body of scrutinised fact, interrupted by rare moments when ideas change. Constantly to call in external voices unwilling to accept that principle is not to engage in debate but in meaningless polemic.

That’s on p. 56, should you want to see its context. Who cannot enjoy invocation of Cromwell and the bowels of Christ?

On page 59 is a diverting  passage on the propriety of a scientist remarking, during a BBC program, that astrology is rubbish. Drum roll! When complaints occurred the scientist was asked to respond to those offended. He did:

“I apologize to the Astrology Community for not making myself clear. I should have said that this new age drivel is undermining the very fabric of our civilization.”

Other than that fabric and undermining are not gracefully married in metaphor, that’s a winner.

Serious thinkers on the nature of news and its coverage should read this a lot more carefully than I just did. I know I shall do so.

- Charlie Petit

 

 

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