Though I try not to be too open about my employer on this blog, I have previously mentioned that I am a researcher. I work on population data sets that encompass thousands of data points covering almost 4,000 people. It’s been a pleasure to learn more about how this data is accumulated, how it’s analyzed and finally, what value it brings to the public, to the funders, and to its stakeholders. One thing, however, has consistently troubled me.

We researchers are not very good at talking to the public. And to be honest, the public is not very good at listening.

Maybe it’s that we don’t have enough emphasis on basic science literacy in our increasingly technological and scientific world. (It’s always amused me how though our media and culture steams full-speed toward embracing science at near-religion status, the basic science literacy among the disciples of this new religion is pretty poor. I guess people just want something to believe in.) Maybe it’s that we scientists have not bothered with bringing the research back to the people - though this is changing, it definitely was the case. Research could sit on dusty shelves for years before ever being used for anything - or worse, it was done without thought to what use it might be. Talk about a waste!

Either way, the fact that research is just not well understood by the public at large has been one of the strongest messages I take home from my job. Recently, our lab published two papers - one of them had been submitted to several journals, being turned down not because it was poor quality but because the editors flat-out didn’t believe it, but could not find a flaw in the method. (Don’t ever think that the scientific establishment doesn’t suffer from the same temptations to censor information that challenges them). The second paper is the first in what will be a series of papers on our research project, giving a “high level” view of what we found in our data. Both were published in Canadian journals, both were peer-reviewed (sent out to experts in the subject area for reading and critique) and accepted, and then…

…they were shared with the media. (dun, dun DUNNNN)

Now I confess to a fascination with media. I would consider it a fun and interesting job to be a journalist (”foreign correspondent” is high on my list of “jobs I’d do because they involve travel and mystery.”), and I respect their role as advocates and shit-disturbers. We could not have a free society without a strong press. However - corporate and political interests as they are, I’m incredibly disappointed with the way media deals with science, and I Feel this is partly to blame for the public’s general misconception of research.

The 20-page article we got published (paper #2) involved various themes that the data fell into, had 10 figures and a data table, and went into great length about health providers and their responses in our study. Unfortunately, the first media story based on our article was given a very unfortunate headline that was based on one single datapoint in our survey, and pointed blame directly at the most sensitive of our study population. That was it - the rest of the media outlets picked up this study off the wires and re-used the same headline, the same angle, the same questions over and over, and we were busy doing damage control the whole week long. IT didn’t matter that our study had hundreds of other points, it was the editor who added the headline to that initial story that cast the die.

The danger in this is not just that researchers look bad or the public gets the wrong idea. In our field of research, this means that our participants, or people we hope will act on this research, are given the sense that our research was biased, that we “spun” the data to say what we wanted to say. This throws doubt on all of the research we spent more than $800,000 doing for the last four years - and is a huge waste of money. These irresponsible misconstructions waste research dollars, limit access to research populations, and cast doubt on scientific participation at all. there are some research populations who have been so stung by this that we simply can’t research them anymore. They refuse to participate.

I’ll acknowledge that there is the occasional unethical researcher or biased investigator who can occasionally warrant this sort of doubt. However the constraints that researchers - especially health researchers - operate under keep us in an almost cast-iron straightjacket. Though the journal publication system could be improved, it largely does promote good research. And because only the researchers who understand how to carry out rigorous research get publications in journals (I consider this emphasis on journal publications as our equivalent of “pieces of flair”), and the number of publications and the quality of the journal they are in is considered proof of your chops as a scientist, you can at least be sure that scientists will pour a lot of work into ensuring their publications are accurate, well-written, and relevant.

I wish we could say the same for media articles.

My sister recently wrote on her new blog about her frustration over a recent piece on Global National about a recent UK study of 5-year-olds. Her anger was at the barely 60-second piece and how it blamed parents for the findings of the study: that the children of dual income parents were more likely to be overweight or inactive. Buffy was rightfully angry at this judgement - especially since the researchers expressly indicated that their work should not be a judgment on parents. But GlobalNational has a much, much larger circulation than the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, so what do you think the lasting message was from this? Not “double-income households need more support to ensure they can provide the best nutrition and activity for their children” or “we need to find out whether children of double-income parents are exposed to disproportionate amounts of unhealthy food messaging which needs policy change.” No. The message was, “double-income parents are purposefully putting their children’s health at risk.”

Now, I can’t blame this completely on the media. One of the major problems I have with the research publication system we currently have is that research articles - boring as they usually are - are generally not available to the public. Only a handful of open-access journals make their articles available for free. The rest are behind paywalls, requiring often $25-40 per article. Mass media agencies often have the same types of subscriptions that academic institutions do, allowing almost unrestricted access to articles. But they don’t have the seconds or column inches to publish the whole story - and the corporate pressure is to reduce even the most complex messages into stupidly basic, short-sighted and “sexy” headlines. I’m not sure that any Joe Plumber would have an interest or even know where to look for the article even if it was free, but it’s still part of the picture. Until the journal system allows free access to research articles, science is not blameless in this discussion.

However, the first of our lab’s two articles to be published in September was published by an open-access journal - some of the media about it linked back or cited the article itself as freely available on the journal’s website (one of Canada’s better-known journals too). But to read the comments on the multitude of media stories published online was to see that the public had no clue how research worked. Very few had even read the article - if they had, they would never had asked the questions or made the comments they did. It was a paper about a particular type of healthcare provider and the safety of their type of practice. The dominant comments relayed the utter ignorance of this type of provider among the general public, and would have been quickly addressed if the commenters had clicked the link in the story to read even the abstract (the 250 word summary at the beginning of every journal article). This was eye-opening. There we were, in our lab, gathered around a computer, reading the comments to the news stories about our article, reading comments like “Who are these researchers, anyway? They are probably OWNED by pharma companies and how can we trust them anyway?”

It was bizarre! WE were the researchers, and our group hasn’t ever seen private money. Canadian research is overwhelmingly taxpayer funded, or funded by endowments like the Vancouver Foundation or the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. Ultimately, they are all donated money. Our topic just isn’t marketable enough to attract private dollars. I think ultimately the responsibility lies with the media to report accurately - it’s too much to ask an uninformed public to seek out the journal article when the vast majority of the public don’t know what peer-reviewed articles are or how to find them, and most journals aren’t free. Forget the fact that most articles are written in highly technical language that would put Joe Plumber in a coma of boredom. The function of the media is to get the news out, and to get it right. Currently - neither is happening appropriately.

My top ideas for fixing this problem:
- better science literacy in schools - all schools: mandatory basic science curriculum plus incorporation of discussion about research and how the knowledge taught in schools is generated and ends up in their Math, Chemistry, Biology and social science textbooks. It’s a language that is increasingly depended on to drive the worlds advances, people. Y’all need to know it exists, if not speak it.
- mandatory research process course in J-school: the best and brightest who will fill seats on nightly news shows and write column inches in every local paper in the country 5 years from now should be compelled to learn about science writing in school. If they don’t understand it, how can they tell it?
- Regulation of science citations in print media: anything online or in the paper printed based on a research study should have one line at the end mandated by law: “You can read the actual study here:” and a link or citation that is understandable to the public.
- Mandate that all research articles should be made available to the public for free in PDF form on the journal’s website for 3 weeks following the issue’s publication.