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A Dangerous Balancing Act A dangerous balancing act Grimes, D. R. (2019). A dangerous balancing act: On matters of science, a well-meaning desire to present all views equally can be an Trojan horse for damaging falsehoods. EMBO Reports, 20(8), e48706. https://doi.org/10.15252/embr.201948706 Published in: EMBO Reports Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal Publisher rights Copyright 2019 the authors. This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the author and source are cited. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact [email protected]. Download date:26. Sep. 2021 Science & Society A dangerous balancing act On matters of science, a well-meaning desire to present all views equally can be an Trojan horse for damaging falsehoods David Robert Grimes1,2 n an era of increasingly polarised coverage to both positions. And yet, in realised confounding public understanding discourse, journalistic impartiality is a attempting to maintain impartiality, this is was their strongest defence against the ines- I virtue that media outlets should strive to precisely what many outlets end up doing. capable evidence that their product was achieve in order to provide readers and Even an institution as August as the BBC highly toxic. A now infamous internal memo viewers with unbiased, neutral information. has fallen victim to this error. In 2011, they from 1969 makes for ominous reading: In a hyper-partisan world, dedicated and were harshly criticised by the BBC Trust for “Doubt is our product since it is the best balanced reporting is more vital than ever to “undue attention to marginal opinion” on means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ cleave sound from fury, to help readers to climate change, due to “over-rigid applica- that exists in the mind of the general public. make sense of conflicting narratives. But as tion of editorial guidelines on impartiality”. It is also the means of establishing a contro- laudable an aspiration as this is, overly rigid The net result was climate change deniers versy”. Tobacco executives and the public application can do more harm than good— being afforded far too much air-time. A 2014 relation firms they engaged stoked a manu- and nowhere is this more obvious than on follow-up found that this key conclusion factured controversy, which succeeded for scientific topics. “still resonates today” [2]. decades to lure the general public into a Take, for example, climate change. The ...................................................... perception that the health risks of smoking evidence for anthropogenic global warming were unclear, when the scientific evidence is overwhelming. A wealth of data points to “If one position is supported was unambiguous [3]. the same stark conclusion: our climate is by an abundance of evidence That revealing memo remains a blueprint rapidly changing, driven by human activity. whilst another is entirely bereft for those eager to negate overwhelming scien- This conclusion is not controversial among of it, it is profoundly tific consensus. Parallels with contemporary scientists; in fact, climate change denial is efforts by the fossil fuel lobby to downplay about as well-supported as the obsolete misguided to afford equal climate change are hard to overstate—they concepts of spontaneous generation or phlo- air-time and coverage to both essentially read from the same script. These giston theory. Yet, denialist positions were positions.” devious tactics rely on exploiting the journal- afforded roughly equal media coverage as ...................................................... istic desire for balance. And to be fair to jour- the scientific consensus. This dichotomy nalists, striving to eliminate bias is admirable. tremendously skewed public perception. False balance is insidious, giving dubious In matters of opinion and politics, treating While scientists are virtually in agreement positions an illusion of respectability. While opposing views as equally worthy of merit is on the reality and causes of climate change, well-intended, it is all too frequently a Trojan generally a sensible approach. But this policy up until recently approximately almost all horse that allows the most odious of fictions breaks down utterly for scientific issues, articles in prestige American media gave to gain a foothold. False balance creates a where positions and consensus are crafted equal coverage to climate change denialists perception in the public mind that an issue is based on the preponderance of evidence. If as they did to scientific consensus [1]. scientifically contentious, when it is not. This one position is buttressed by an overwhelm- ultimately means that even urgent issues ing weight of evidence while another is bereft Skewing the balance such as climate change can be dismissed as a of empirical support, it is profoundly wrong- mere difference of scientific opinion. This headed to treat them as equal. And yet, this is This is an example of false balance, which confounds not only public perception of precisely what occurs all too often in the occurs when one tries to treat two opposing science, but creates an aura of doubt, which coverage of scientific issues. positions as equally valid when they are canbeabusedtocreateatoxicinertia,beguil- simply not. If one position is supported by ing us to sleep-walk into disaster or placidly The ideological Trojan Horse an abundance of evidence while another is accept situations we should vocally protest. entirely bereft of it, it is profoundly This has long been exploited by the The tobacco and fossil fuel industries have misguided to afford equal air-time and duplicitous. Decades ago, tobacco companies obvious financial incentives to muddy the 1 University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. E-mails: [email protected] and [email protected] 2 Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK DOI 10.15252/embr.201948706 | EMBO Reports (2019) 20: e48706 | Published online 9 July 2019 ª 2019 The Author. Published under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license EMBO reports 20:e48706 | 2019 1 of 4 EMBO reports David Robert Grimes waters. But false balance is frequently the dedicated anti-vaccine activists frequently controversial was hugely damaging to public unwitting ally of ideological positions bereft backfire, entrenching them further in their ill- confidence, and uptake fell markedly. of evidence, occurring in arenas with no founded views. As the World Health Organisa- ...................................................... obvious financial interests. Evolutionary tion wearily notes, “How one addresses the theory is the bedrock of modern biology. To anti-vaccine movement has been a problem “A study or claim in isolation biblical creationists however, it is seen as since the time of Jenner. The best way in the cannot be fully understood borderline blasphemous as it contradicts long term is to refute wrong allegations at the without the requisite context biblical accounts of the dawn of mankind. In earliest opportunity by providing scientifically 1999, religious conservatives began to valid data. This is easier said than done, and background, and yet too promote “Intelligent design” (ID) as an alter- because the adversary in this game plays often this is completely absent native to evolution by natural selection. It according to rules that are not generally those in coverage.” was nothing more than a rebranding of of science [5]”. ...................................................... creationism with the pretence of science. Even so, its promoters argued that as evolu- A licence to scaremonger Consequences were devastating: vaccina- tion was merely a theory, then their theory tion rates across Western Europe fell well was equally valid, and should be taught Anti-vaccine activists have proven extraordi- below the 94% immunisation levels required alongside evolution. narily adept at exploiting false balance to to stem the onslaught of measles, a disease ...................................................... evangelise their discredited views. The so virulent each single case tends to produce “ measles–mumps–rubella (MMR) vaccine 12–18 secondary infections. A spate of cases Anti-vaccine activists have controversy is an infamous illustration. In ensued across the UK and Ireland, resulting proven extraordinarily adept at 1998, English gastroenterologist Andrew in the deaths of innocent children. Around exploiting false balance to Wakefield held a press conference about a the same time, investigative journalist Brian evangelise their discredited paper he had published in the Lancet, specu- Deer turned a more sceptical eye to Wake- views.”
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