How To Research

         One of the most influential parts of modern media outlets is the accessibility that it offers to both authors and consumers of news and media.  It is with this unrestricted access to produce or read anything that one can type into Google that comes the presence of limitless ungrounded theories.  The wealth and density of articles, opinions and scholarly papers online puts it in the hands of the consumer to search for, and interpret these articles without preliminary bias, and using scientific supporting evidence.  This is my reasoning for saying that promoters of the vaccine-autism link CAN, in fact, be labeled as scientifically illiterate or ignorant (based on the details of their research efforts). 

         For example, our search in class yesterday for ‘whether or not swimming on a full stomach can kill you’ was researched, one article was found, and it said that it could indeed kill you.  At this, the person guessing that celebrated that they were ‘right’ all along.  This example clearly shows that the person who guessed it to be true was starting their search with preliminary bias.  However, the rest can still be saved if you can be discerning about which articles to use as sources.  I’ve just found 3 articles that say that ‘eating before swimming can kill you’ is a myth, and three that support that statement. The rest is left up to searching for unbiased scientific data about the internal biological processes at work in metabolizing food, and in anaerobic exercise. 

         The tendency of people to believe the first “Cosmo” article that they find shows that they are researching their topic improperly.  Firstly, beginning with a preliminary bias in a search makes finding articles that support a vaccine-autism link much easier.  However, the indiscriminate use of articles without researching supporting scientific evidence can be just as damaging to the truth.

         For my grizzly article, I wrote about doctor’s reactions to the vaccine controversy currently going on.  Many doctors are calling for a government-backed project to support vaccine safety to increase the public’s trust in vaccines.  I have learned the same thing from individuals who readily accept Jenny McCarthy’s theories, which is that if you want something with scientific evidence to be realized by the general public, you still have to present the evidence in a flashy way.  Scholarly articles simply do not reach the public as effectively as those backed by large names. 

The News is the Priority

           The role and freedoms of journalists in the process of conveying news is a concern of mine that came up during a lecture given by a currently practicing journalist.  Many journalists have the idea that they can ask enough questions to understand the material well enough to write about it.  Although this is true to a certain degree, it is completely analogous to handing in a rough draft of an article without having the teacher check it for mistakes first.  Without an article being reviewed, are you not at risk of misrepresenting the news, and at the same time, misleading the public? I believe that there must be a system of checks and balances for journalists and the subjects of (and information within) their articles to ensure that the news is represented accurately.

            This brings me to the point I was beginning to make earlier.  While I understand that journalists are attempting to have an impact on the articles they are writing, it is important to understand that the news itself is the priority.  It is my personal belief that (scientific) journalists should not be able to submit an article written about someone else or their work without their review.  There should be an understanding that while their writing is a valuable part of the process, and, if good, can provide a link to their audience, the information in the article is not theirs to manipulate (intentionally or unintentionally).

Journalists Putting the Beauty Back in Science

         As we grow up, many topics that once seemed mysterious, majestic and magical, such as dinosaurs, spaceships, earthquakes and volcanoes are taught in an increasingly more technical fashion.  The intricate assembly of math, physics and chemistry knowledge that is used to understand these once-unexplainable becomes a boring blather of relationships between values on a piece of paper.

         In middle school, at least from my own experience, there was a large shift in the style of teaching and learning from a more theoretical and light approach, to a more intensive, memorization approach.  This was especially apparent in science classes where you had to memorize various values and equations that are invaluable for further scientific exploration, but are truly a bore to learn.  It is due to this change that many students who love the large, relevant scientific concepts and ideas lose interest in pursuing science.  It is almost as if middle school science classes are the first string of “weed-out” classes for scientifically oriented students. 

         Scientific journalists are at a rare advantage when publishing scientific news articles.  They have the ability to over arch all of the raw scientific data to make inferences from the data and to relay those concepts to the public in an understandable and entertaining way.  News articles that involve titles such as “Asteroid Mining”, “Ancient Dinosaur Bones Uncovered”, and “Coral-Killing Starfish…” are examples of how the beauty and mystery of science can once again be relayed to the fraction of the public who are not scientifically oriented.