As someone who works in communications in a very science-heavy field: in fairness, journalists are also typically terrible at summarizing scientific papers.
Do you recall any examples of science journalists doing it well in your field? I’ve been increasingly interested in science journalism, and have been on the lookout for examples of it done right.
I don’t, really. But my field is also kinda niche (it’s not like some popular field like genetics or infectious diseases. There aren’t many journalists covering us at all, yet. I work in marketing for an industrial exosuit company (think practical, assistive, biomechanical wearables). Most of the journalists that are covering us at this point are used to covering news about forklifts or warehouse automation, so they aren’t used to reading peer reviewed scientific publications at all. Their exposure to papers on biomechanics and injury risk factors is more rare, and they might as well be Latin (well, sometimes they do have a lot of Latin).
But it’s also something of a joke. When I was back taking journalism classes for my communications and marketing degree, the professors would joke about how journalists covering either legal summaries or scientific summaries would say that 1 + 2 = 5 all the time, leaving out important details that were critical to the conclusions because they weren’t interesting. I think the scientists put up with it because as long as the conclusion is correct, they’re just happy to have anyone paying attention.
As someone who works in communications in a very science-heavy field: in fairness, journalists are also typically terrible at summarizing scientific papers.
Do you recall any examples of science journalists doing it well in your field? I’ve been increasingly interested in science journalism, and have been on the lookout for examples of it done right.
I don’t, really. But my field is also kinda niche (it’s not like some popular field like genetics or infectious diseases. There aren’t many journalists covering us at all, yet. I work in marketing for an industrial exosuit company (think practical, assistive, biomechanical wearables). Most of the journalists that are covering us at this point are used to covering news about forklifts or warehouse automation, so they aren’t used to reading peer reviewed scientific publications at all. Their exposure to papers on biomechanics and injury risk factors is more rare, and they might as well be Latin (well, sometimes they do have a lot of Latin).
But it’s also something of a joke. When I was back taking journalism classes for my communications and marketing degree, the professors would joke about how journalists covering either legal summaries or scientific summaries would say that 1 + 2 = 5 all the time, leaving out important details that were critical to the conclusions because they weren’t interesting. I think the scientists put up with it because as long as the conclusion is correct, they’re just happy to have anyone paying attention.
This is super interesting insight, thanks for sharing.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with this