Written evidence submitted by Jerome Davies (COM0013)

I am an IT Manager living in Inverness; I have a BSc in Materials science and have had a keen interest in the sciences all my life. I would like to put a few points regarding science communication for the committee’s consideration.

Science Communication

For the purposes of this note, I’ll be regarding “science communication” as the transmission of peer reviewed scientific papers to the general public.

Science communication and the media

Science is most usually communicated to the general public via the media. Unfortunately this introduces three significant problems

1. Very few journalists are scientists. So the people interpreting the science generally don’t have the tools required to understand it. This frequently highlighted by the media’s inability to use statistics correctly.
2. Media outlets, mainly in print and online, have their own agenda. Media outlets wilfully distort scientific findings to support their own agenda.
3. Media require sensationalism and science is seldom sensational. This can lead to distortion of scientific results as a sensational result will be reported widely, but boring results that contradict it won’t receive the same attention.

In my opinion these factors can lead to a distorted reporting of science and in some case this can be highly damaging. As a case in point, the “MMR vaccine causes autism” scare was a single study of a sensational nature that the press could use to sell papers. Once the idea was put into the public consciousness it was very difficult to refute however many studies countered it.

Irresponsible use of scientific results by the media leads to a distrust of science which is potentially dangerous.

April 2016