Science Journalists Should Shun Objectivity

by Andrew McGregor

If someone were to say that Barry Bonds is a better baseball player than Babe Ruth every sports writer in the country would have a very strong argument backed up by statistical analysis.

Tom Siegfried argued that science writers should be more like sports writers; science writers should be able to understand statistics and be very well-versed in their field.

A good science experiment has to be objectively verifiable, but science journalists should not strive for objectivity because in science journalism there is a right and a wrong.

Think back to the coverage of the health risks connected to smoking cigarettes.  It is difficult to imagine that cigarettes are somehow healthy, however, the field of journalism very much failed to inform the public about the issue because of an interest in fairness—to give both sides to every story.

In this case the tobacco companies had no legitimate scientific backing for their claims and common sense dictates that cigarettes are at best unhealthy.  Yet, journalism’s tendency to strive towards fairness led to coverage of the health risks of cigarettes that was false and pernicious.

If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is part of a grand process constantly refining and improving itself, promising through the scientific method to prove itself false as the verification that it is true.  Science journalists then have a responsibility to inform the public by being accurate to the best of their abilities rather than resting upon the intellectually indolent ideal of fairness.