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Perspectives PERSPECtiVES journalists combine these two elements to SCIENCE AND SOCIETY present scientific results as embroiled in controversy, especially important political How geneticists can help reporters controversies such as gay rights, racial justice, patent rights and so on4. to get their story right On the other hand, science journalists also feel compelled both by journalistic norms, and by the canons of the science they Celeste M. Condit are covering, to give much of their space Abstract | Many geneticists are disgruntled with the coverage of genetics in to ‘objective’ representations of the subject matter that they are covering. There has the mass media, yet geneticists themselves have a part to play in improving that been substantial debate about the possibility, coverage. This article aims to help geneticists to do so by explaining the forces desirability and meaning of objectivity in that shape science news. It provides some specific options for reducing hype, news coverage and in general5–7. However, countering genetic determinism and preventing the use of genetics research into reporters’ norms has indicated to reinforce discriminatory messages, slants that many reporters are inclined to that they attend to what they perceive as objectivity, and that they operationalize it give to their articles. largely by the inclusion of statements from ‘both sides’ of a subject8. This means that Geneticists and critics of genetics might common problems, including hype, genetic two sides are presented, regardless of how agree on little else than that the coverage of determinism and discrimination. many sides might actually warrant attention. genetics by the news media is lamentably As a result of this conflict between the need poor. However, scientists bear some respon- What drives science journalism? to hype and the need to give space to detailed, sibility, both in their own writing and in Science journalists, for the most part, are objective treatments, science news articles their discussions with journalists, for the people who find science interesting and at often feature a combination of dramatic over- content of the news about genetics. This idea least potentially valuable. However, many statements and colourful descriptions mixed has recently received clear evidential support news pieces about scientific topics are with statements that ostensibly balance by the research of Bubela & Caulfield1. Their not written by reporters who specialize these claims with opposing or moderating comparisons of original scientific sources in science news, and journalists are paid views and a limited level of technical detail. and news reports about those sources in primarily to attract demographically valu- Science news therefore usually has a slant, Canadian and US newspapers showed that able audiences so that advertisers will pay or frame9, that plays up the wonders (or the ‘hype’ and much of the key content high rates. This creates a problem for science occasionally the potential threats) of a in the articles was in parity with the original journalists, which has been described as scientific breakthrough, but also includes scientific articles. Although scientists cannot the ‘hype–space conflict’2. That is, science a more-or-less detailed nod at ‘the other side’. ensure that journalists get the story right, reporters experience a conflict over whether The slant or frame is not merely a they can certainly enable journalists to do so. to use their space to present hyped content subtle shading of a story. It can determine Scientists have a social responsibility or more dispassionate and thorough the meaning that a story communicates. to talk knowledgeably with reporters, and to descriptions. Horowitz’s10 recent analysis of press coverage do so is in the interest of science in an era On the one hand, science journalists of research into gene–environment interac- when public funding and control over sci- must create articles that attract the interest tions is illustrative. He showed that news ence is significant. However, some scientists and attention of many people, and they are stories about a high-impact article by avoid this task because it is onerous. At competing against more titillating informa- Caspi et al., published in Science in 2003, a minimum, it requires the same level of tion about sports and celebrities, more were generally framed by the idea that men- preparation that one would give to a plat- frightening information about rapes and tal illness was genetic, rather than by the idea form presentation at a scientific conference. murders, and more immediately momentous that the cases of depression that were studied Such time and care are warranted, because the information about war and global econom- were the result of a gene–environment inter- reach of the reporter is larger than that of ics. This leads to the need to hype the article. action11. The original scientific article was the academic conference (at least in the short As Dorothy Nelkin observed long ago, jour- distinctive because it showed that depression term). To become more skilful at guiding nalists most often do so by designing stories in humans could result from a particular journalists, it might be helpful to understand that frame science as offering wonders and gene–environment interaction; specifically, the nature of journalistic articles, and this miracles, and occasionally do so through from the co-presence of an allele of the Perspective seeks to help in this by examining frameworks that present scientific discov- 5-HTT gene (also known as SLC6A4) and potential solutions to a few important and eries as frightening threats3. Frequently, major life stressors. It specifically indicated natuRE REVIEWS | GENETICS VOLUME 8 | octobER 2007 | 815 © 2007 Nature Publishing Group PERS P ECTIVES news stories announcing the discovery 6 of alcoholism as a genetic disease at three Balanced widely separated time points. The first major 15 period reported heritability studies, the sec- Yes, mostly 9 ond reported genetic association studies and No, mostly the third focused on women. In each wave, Conrad and Weinberg’s analysis showed that the news articles presented undue optimism 2 about a cure based on the research, and/or No only an overemphasis on the genetic component of the condition. 6 Yes only The enthusiasm of scientists for their work can feed such hype (as can the demands for grant funding). For example, in 1993, medical geneticist W. French Figure 1 | Slant on the issue of whether race is genetic in a sample of news articles about Anderson predicted that soon, “…any human genetic variation. The figure shows an analysis of all news articles from 1990 to 1992 and physician can take a vial off a shelf and Nature Reviews | Genetics 18 from 2001 to 2003 in LexisNexis academic, in which there was co-occurrence of ‘genetics’ inject an appropriate gene into a patient.” and ‘race’, or co-occurrence of ‘human’, genetic’ and ‘variation’, within ten words. Articles were The enthusiasm for the prospects of gene coded for the degree of slant by a paid independent coder, after establishing inter-coder reliabil- therapy among some members of the ity using two coders trained on the five fixed categories plus an ‘ambiguous’ category (which was scientific community drove a tidal wave of empty). Data from REF. 2. optimistic reporting that suggested a 10-year time frame for gene therapy as practically a cure-all19. The optimism was immensely that the presence of the allele alone was not people with advanced degrees in other fields overstated, at least for the time period for associated with variation in levels of depres- — cannot be expected to have the technical which it was predicted. sion; nonetheless, the ‘genetic discoveries!’ vocabulary that is required to understand Scientific findings can be enormously frame that was used in the news articles details of specialties such as genetics. For distant from social applications for both left the impression that this was a ‘gene for this reason, science journalists must be technical and social reasons. Although the depression’, rather than conveying the more expert at simplification. Figures of speech implications of this distance might seem interesting and complicated portrait of the such as metaphors constitute a fundamental obvious, in practice they have been repeat- pair of interacting variables. resource of language13–15, so they are often edly overlooked. To provide an accurate There are often strong trends among used to provide comparisons that can be eas- picture of the implications of a scientific journalists’ choices of frames for particular ily grasped. For example, in a single article discovery and to avoid a sense of betrayal by topics. For example, coverage of genetics about cancer genetics by Gina Kolata16, the public, when speaking with journalists for human medical interventions is usually scientists are quoted or directly attributed about their work, geneticists might consider more favourable than coverage of genetics as using seven rhetorical figures, including curbing their own hopefulness. Instead, they for genetically modified crops (GMO)12. snowball, chain reaction, Achilles heel, look- might enumerate the scientific roadblocks, However, there are also differences ing ‘mean’, bomb, molecular razor and black and perhaps the social ones, that stand in among reporters. In Europe, substantially box. Such simplifications inevitably contain the way of the desired applications. In most more reporters have chosen a negative misrepresentations. To take common exam- cases, it also would be appropriate to remind slant on GMO than in the United States12. ples, a gene is neither precisely a ‘blueprint’ the reporter of the ever-present potential for Similarly, as FIG. 1 indicates, journalists in the nor a ‘recipe’ because it is not consciously results to be overturned by further research. United States came to the issue of whether drawn up by a designer or a chef. Because race is genetically grounded with a range of such simplifications are nonetheless neces- Avoiding determinism slants, but leaned mostly towards the frame sary for communicating with non-experts, In the narrow sense, genetic determinism that ‘race is genetic’.
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