No-one understands...

The science journalist’s first and foremost duty is to understand the science – and secondly – in terms of time – to re-write this science into popular language. Simple!

So what’s happening - why aren’t the public not better informed? Why has scientific rationale appeared to bypass the public debate over GM crops? And why do scientists continually lament to the poor standard of scientific knowledge held by the general public (in Africa and elsewhere)? Time and again during interviews in South Africa on the implications of biotechnology I have heard from scientists that the general public basically knows nothing about biotechnology, they’re misinformed, or they hold views that are fly in the face of rationality. Presuming that the scientists themselves feel they know more - what’s going wrong with science journalism in Africa?

For a start, science journalists are chronically under-resourced and have few (and fewer) outlets for their work. The general impression is that situation is getting worse -–not better – as newspapers tighten their financial belts and fewer journalists (of any kind) are located in sub-Saharan Africa. But, while these issues are important, there are more fundamental issues that need to be dealt with in order to bridge the science-to-public gap. These are issues about communication. Put bluntly, much of the job of a science journalist is to talk to scientists. Unfortunately, this cannot be done if scientists are generally hostile to ‘non-experts’ in science. Time and again I heard from science journalists that they cannot carry out their basic journalistic duties because scientists won’t talk to them. As a result journalist, one journalist I talked to estimated that about “90% of our stories about biotechnology get dropped because nobody actually comes back to us.” Not wanting to give up a good story, African-based science journalists attempt to complete articles using contacts from elsewhere – such the US or Europe – where the culture of communication appears to be stronger. The net result is that African science is starved of publicity and the general public gets the impression that science is something that happens outside of Africa!

Delve deeper into the source of the communication barrier and one finds that scientists often accuse science journalists of misquotation, misinterpretation, and not being any good at science. In attempt to control this situation they might insist on being directly quoted for an entire article – effectively taking the journalists job away from the journalist. The result is a mutual antipathy which is unhealthy for both scientists and science journalists. Instead of increasingly the flow of information, which, arguably is the purpose of science itself – if loosely defined as the creation of new knowledge about our environment – the flow of information becomes minimal and strangled by mutual fear. Firstly, there is the fear of the science journalist that they might upset the scientist, and then there is the fear of the scientist that what they said will be taken out context, misinterpreted, or misquoted.

Obviously, it will take time to overcome the barriers between scientists and science journalists. Both sides need to understand each other better – what are each parties’ respective objectives, methods, and target audience – this will be both enlightening and challenging. What’s in it for scientists? The answer is publicity; the same publicity that turned genomics from a technical (and frankly baffling) mystery about cell division, replication, maintenance, and repair - into a global phenomena – biotechnology in all its forms. Without publicity – without being taken up by other areas such as agriculture, health, and now engineering (with the birth of synthetic biology and bio-blocks) – it would have stayed well within the confines of the laboratory. Genomics as a discipline took a chance – a risk – that collaboration might bring new ideas about how genomics could solve age-old problems. It doesn’t take too much imagination to realise the public itself is also searching for solutions – to food shortages, illness, and alike – and is willing to engage in a rational discussion about what genetics can bring to the table. Only by loosening the shackles and taking a risk has genomic science developed into a something altogether more powerful and potentially (even immediately) useful. Contrary to the perception of many scientists that the public is irrational and hostile to science – there is a ready market for scientific knowledge – the only question is whether both scientists and science journalists are ready to take on this challenge together.