ben goldacre witters on and on and on about things that are too long to post on twitter and not clever enough to post on his main blog at www.badscience.net
Tim Harford has a column today on whether it's good for economics journalists to have economics degrees
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/27ee2108-49ef-11e0-acf0-00144feab49a.html#axzz1GN42e7Gd This comes up in science a lot. Here are three quick thoughts while I wait for the coffee machine to sort itself out:1. i suspect having a degree in science is a risk factor for writing competently, but not a guarantee, in the same way that being a specialist correspondent is a risk factor, not a guarantee (eg here, here, here, etc) 2. a science degree in one topic obviously doesnt mean you know about ALL of science3. therefore "having a science degree" is in some respects probably just a proxy for "caring enough about science generally that you also care about not getting stuff completely wrong" I don't think that I've had much impact on science writing generally, but there's one meme that seems to have died out (it's possible that people are just too scared to say it near me).When I started writing about science, it was extremely commonplace to meet people, in journalism and in television, who would proudly tell you that they know nothing about science, and then explain that this meant they were in a better position to communicate science to a lay audience, because they could better identify with the mindset people who didn't understand it. "If I can understand my article, then the public can too". This is plainly untrue. Communicating ideas to people is always a matter of empathy: you need to be able to model, in your own mind, what it would be like not to already have the knowledge that you have. Every time you read your article back, after rejigging it, before you send it to be printed, you have to imagine that it's the first time you've ever seen it, so you can spot the missing bits, that after a deletion only exist in your head, and so on. Ignorance does not bring you a special path to this kind of empathy. To communicate an idea effectively and honestly, it's clear you need to understand it well yourself, but more than that, the deeper your understanding, the better your ability to develop new ways of expressing it, the more you are able to develop new and valid metaphors, allegories, parallels, and examples. I've said it a zillion times before, but I think one of the best places for science communication is Radio 4, for this precise reason: the majority of the words spoken in a radio 4 science documentary are spoken by the scientists themselves: http://www.badscience.net/2008/08/my-placebo-programme-on-bbc-radio-4/I’m an enormous fan of BBC Radio 4 science, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about why they’re so great. As well as resisting the drive to dumb down, there’s also one very important structural factor: around 70-80% of a radio science documentary – by necessity, for auditory colour – is made up of words spoken by the people who have done the science themselves.
This is the kind of unmediated communication which is also so great in blogs by academics, because it is academic scientists explaining things in their own words, and even better, with the help of media people. This is exactly what the print world needs more of: fewer writers, and more editors, helping people who actually know about stuff to express it in a structured fashion for an intelligent audience lacking background knowledge.
I like stats. I'm a doctor. I write about dodgy scientific claims in my spare time.
This isn't my main blog. Find me here:
Blog:
www.badscience.net/
Book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Science-Ben-Goldacre/dp/000728487X/?tag=bs0b-21
Tweet:
www.twitter.com/bengoldacre
TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_battling_bad_science.html
I like stats. I'm a doctor. I write about dodgy scientific claims in my spare time.
This isn't my main blog. Find me here:
Blog:
www.badscience.net/
Book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Science-Ben-Goldacre/dp/000728487X/?tag=bs0b-21
Tweet:
www.twitter.com/bengoldacre
TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_battling_bad_science.html
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