Mixing Research With Reporting

Just the other day, scientists made a great discovery: that exposure to controlled amounts of light can counter the effects of jet lag. The media pounced on the results and by the end of the day, nearly every major radio station in Boston had broadcast the miraculous discovery. "No more jet lag," the announcers promised.

But behind the next step to an easier, happier life for the yuppie jet-setter, lay a deeper discovery--that the media tends to leap without looking. What the news failed to discuss amidst all their accolades were the conditions in which this amazing cure was found. One elderly woman whose biological clock differs from those of most people.

In other words--with all due respect to the incredibly generous woman who allowed herself to be used as a human guinea pig for 114 days--so far, this cure has been proven to work only on an abnormal sample. The researchers explained that the reason they chose this hapless woman was that her unique biological clock made her body experience what is the middle of the night for most people in the early evening. This way, they could conduct their research in the afternoon rather than in the middle of the night.

Fine. That's the scientists' prerogative, especially if they make it perfectly clear in their write-up, which they did. What isn't fine, however, is for the media to tout the discovery as something it isn't--a major breakthrough. In fact, the media makes this mistake quite often when dealing with medical discoveries. A comparison of the articles that run in the weekly New England Medical Journal and your local newspaper will quickly confirm that.

While researchers are often careful to cover their bases and qualify their results, the reporters who cover medical discoveries tend to make a media mountain out of a scientific molehill. Frequently after the local papers follow up on a tentative big medical discovery about, say Alzheimer's disease, doctors are plagued with patients worrying about their parents being stricken by the now-chic disease. And this can be directly related to the article in The Times or The Globe which reported, but did not qualify.

Reporters in almost any other branch of journalism qualify their statements constantly. You would never read a rewritten version of a politician's press release in a paper, but you are very likely to find a doctor's press release, slightly reworded, in newsprint. This is not because doctors are known to write better than politicans, but because by and large the reporters may shy away from trying to understand science.

Science, however, is not as incomprehensible as it may seem. If the average reporter following the medical beat made even the slightest attempt to grasp the concepts at play, the average reader would be correspondingly better informed. And thus science and research would become less of a mystery and more of an accepted and well understood field, more along the lines of politics than magic.

Journalists have long had a camaraderie with politicians. They drink together, travel together, schmooze together. If the media tried to establish a better understanding with the scientific community, then perhaps scientific coverage would be more like political coverage, with the reporter analyzing and thinking while reporting, not just asking the researcher how to spell the big words.

The media frequently lacks any sort of scientific discretion when covering the world of science. Reporters should be able to see past blanket press releases and ask questions, the right ones. If the media analyzes more, the readership will learn more and won't misunderstand discoveries.

Although jet lag is only a minor discomfort to most people, it is a perfect example of media-distorted science. Far from heralding a new discovery, this latest announcement shows only how far from a cure for jet lag the scientific world is. One study, one woman, worth little more than one minute's mention on the radio and television news.