Journalists Query Whether Scientists Give the Press Accurate Information

Calling science a trade instead of a profession, two prominent journalists yesterday questioned the accuracy of the information scientific researchers give to the press.

"Science is actually a trade, not a profession," said Philip J. Hilts, who has been covering science and medicine for the Washington Post since 1980. At a forum held at the school of Public Health, which featured two journalists and two Harvard science professors, Hilts said, "The answer to whether scientists tell the truth comes through seeing science as a trade."

"We accept that every trade has its ideals and every trade fails to meet them. We must understand that science is the same," he said at the forum sponsored by the Center for Health Communication.

"Institutions and profits can get in the way of truth" in science as much as anywhere else, said George A. Strait, Jr., science and medicine correspondent for ABC News.

"Scientists lie to people like me and Phil Hilts, to reporters, and therefore to the American public," he said.

"Large chunks of endeavor in science are not actually science and are not involved in truth," said Walter Gilbert '53, Tinkham Professor of Biology.

Gilbert, one of the two scientists on the panel, responded to the criticisms by saying that the types of situations to which the journalists were referring are isolated instances in the scientific profession.

"I see the truth of science in a different domain," he said. The important part of scientific research is not what the public sees, he said, but what goes on behind the scenes in scientific circles.

"We are not talking about whether scientists tell the truth. We are talking about whether those scientists contacted by journalists tell the truth," Matthew S. Meselson, Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences, said in response to the charges by the journalists.

Gilbert admitted that science, as an effort made by people, is subject to human failings, but "a more serious problem in the notion of fraud," he said, is that many scientists are not always aware of whether their colleagues are truthful in their research.

It is true that most scientific research is never explicitly verified, Meselson said. However, he said, science is a self-correcting process because it builds upon itself.