At the World Conference for Science Journalists going on in the United Kingdom presently, three attendees — specifically, Ben Goldacre, Vaughan Bell, and Petra Boynton — are scheduled to visit a pub tonight and discuss just how broken the world of science journalism is. This prompted an angry screed by Steve Connor of the UK paper The Independent, attacking the scientists for “condescending” to tell him that his job and his reporting is broken, venal and silly.
And in the process, gets two facts of extreme significance wrong, and marches out the old trope of doctors having a God complex.
The three attendees correct the record in a letter to the Independent:
Your science journalist Steve Connor is furious that we are holding a small public meeting in a pub to discuss the problem that science journalists are often lazy and inaccurate. He gets the date wrong, claiming the meeting has already happened (it has not). He says we are three medics (only one of us is). He then invokes some stereotypes about arrogant doctors, which we hope are becoming outdated.
In fact, all three of us believe passionately in empowering patients, with good quality information, so they can make their own decisions about their health. People often rely on the media for this kind of information. Sadly, in the field of science and medicine, on subjects as diverse as MMR, sexual health, and cancer prevention, the public have been repeatedly and systematically misled by journalists.
Pro tip: if you’re going to attack someone for daring to tell you you’re doing a shoddy job, don’t expose just exactly how shoddy a job you’re doing in the process.
