World Association of Young Scientists

This is a comment on
Maxine Clark's "End of the line for science journalism?".

I can see an end of the line for science journalism only when either science or journalism were to disappear, or the connection between them. None of these scenarios seem very likely, and at least for the third, the opposite appears to me far more probable for years to come: If, as the editorial asserts, "the deeper value of journalism" is indeed "to cast a fair but sceptical eye over everything in the public sphere — science included", then the current growth in the amount of publicly available scientific information (in fields as diverse as genetics, astronomy and climate sciences) will certainly do its share to shift a possible end of the line for science journalism a fair bit into the future.

Yet large amounts of such information are not yet available to the public. This includes, ironically, most scholarly publications (a problem highlighted in the comment above by Björn Brembs), but also much of the work that has been performed on the way towards an accepted manuscript - raw data or computational tools, for instance, are not routinely made public along with a paper, nor is any notable fraction of all the effort that has gone into grant writing or into peer review of grants and manuscripts. Taking steps towards making these processes more open is in the interest of most of the parties involved: Scientists would be enabled to take credit for these so far hidden efforts, and to build more quickly on each other's work. Science funders could reduce the probability of spending money on an approach already funded by another funder, and would require less reporting to assess the effects of their engagements. Science journalists could enrich their current "scientists found out" reports with some of the "scientists are investigating - let's see how they do it!" variant, or reports on topics like animal rights in research with more pertinent data. Finally, the public would benefit from all of this - shorter research cycles, more efficient use of research funds, and a better understanding of what it actually means when scientists "found out" or "are investigating" something.

In the process, the distinctions between science journalists and scientists are bound to be blurred - scientists may start to communicate directly with the public (including journalists) by means of blogs, wikis or other social software, while science journalists (and indeed other members of the public) may well provide informed feedback on planned or ongoing research projects. At the end of the day and despite the enhanced interaction, however, everybody will still have to focus on their core business, i.e. scientists on research and science journalists on reporting. The public may turn either way or elsewhere, and the diversification of media that allows for people (if so inclined) to turn away almost completely from any scientific information seems to me much more of a concern than putative ends of the line for science journalism.