In a post last week, I was trying to work out whether science journalism can do something more for us than just delivering press releases from the scientists. Specifically, I suggested that journalists with a reasonable understanding of scientific methodology could do some work to assess the credibility of the research described in the press releases, as well as the credibility of the scientists issuing those press releases.
Although the post was concerned with the general question of whether science journalism can do this bit of evaluative work for a lay audience that, by and large, is both rusty on the basics of scientific methodology and at least a little scared of thinking hard about technical issues, it was prompted by the particular strategy Chris Mooney set forth for his reporting in The Republican War on Science, and by Steve Fuller's critique of that in his essay for the Crooked Timber seminar on Chris's book. And, in a comment on my post, Steve Fuller brings us back to the question of the particular strategy Chris was using, and of the sorts of standards to which journalistic work guided by this strategy ought to be held. I think this is a fair question, but it brings us into the turbulent waters at the confluence of science and politics, where journalism may go beyond presenting an objective picture of the terrain and may exhort us to choose a side.
So you might want to grab a life-jacket before we begin.
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