Misinformation On Cancer

The best popular scientific literature is written by scientists who having a command of their subject to begin with, learn to express their thoughts in prose clear and simple enough that the average person can understand it; in short, they successfully "write down" to their reader. Possibly the worst science writing is the reverse of this process; a journalists or some other unqualified commentator "writes up" to a subject, trying to explain to the reader something that he himself only vaguely understands. In "Cancer", Bewa Doherty attempts just such a feat and fails rather miserably.

There is nothing more detrimental to the understanding of modern science than fuzzy definitions. Miss Doherty says that one treatment for cancer is the use of "radioactive isotopes from the heart of the smashed atom." Now radioactive isotopes have something to do with atomic energy, but by no stretch of the imagination do they reside in the hearts of atoms nor are they released in the process of nuclear fission. There are several other bad errors.

On the general subject of cancer and the patient, the authoress is a little more competent--not because she knows any more about doctor-patient relations in cancer but because the element of drama which the interjects is more apropos to hospital scenes than to the laboratory. But her tear jerking little stories about women who are too modest to submit to examination and girls who must lose their ovaries are overly melodramatic. Such writing might increase the popular fear of cancer rather than control it.

Popularizing the symptoms of cancer--this the writer does well--and keeping the public up to date on research work are two very important jobs that modern scientific journalism must do. But the public must be competently informed; the average reader takes such romantic descriptions as the authoress has given and becomes convinced that he has his finger on the pulse of scientific progress.