Science Writing and Sensationalism

Now don’t get me wrong: I very much respect doctors and those in the medical field, and I think their life-saving work is noble indeed. However, I long ago gave up the disillusioned idea that doctors “know it all” because medical studies supposedly provide “all the solutions” to health problems we seek. One of my siblings has very severe food and environmental allergies; just her food allergies alone include: dairy products, eggs, gluten, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, beef, pork, mustard, yellow corn, kiwi, and asparagus (as far as I know). And out of the many, many doctors she has seen, very rarely will two agree even on the type of allergy treatment or dietary supplements she should take. And yet, although I don’t believe in the omniscience of doctors, David Freedman’s “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science” about the credibility—or lack thereof—of medical research still threw me for a loop.

According to Freedman, meta-researcher John Ioannidis has statistically discovered that “much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies…is misleading, exaggerated, and often flat-out wrong” (114). On one hand, especially after reading his entire article, one might conclude that Freedman’s statement seems to make sense, especially when reading an article like Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Treatment.” Freedman points out that false publications can result from the researcher’s desire for more funding; thus, we may have reason for suspicion after reading Gladwell’s account of the “miracle-drug” elesclomol discovery which saves Synta Pharmaceuticals in 2006 and provides inquiry for further research (159, 175). Gladwell’s quote from cell biologist/drug researcher Lan Bo Chen, who basically admits that they “are totally shooting in the dark” (173), also does not instill our confidence in the reliability of one of medicine’s supposedly top-notch lines of research: “in some cases you’d have done about as well by throwing darts at a chart of the genome” (Freedman 121).

On the other hand, we could be skeptical even of Freedman’s article itself. After all, Jeanne Fahnestock explains in her paper, “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts,” something changes in the translation from original scientific findings to the science news articles that laypeople could understand. That “something” is the shift from uncertainty (or at least heavily-hedged claims) to a low-supported certainty of specific results or hypotheses. To roughly summarize her paper, this shift in apparent confidence of fact occurs because of the journalist’s need to sensationalize the news to capture reader attention. Although The Atlantic, the magazine Freedman writes for, is deemed a high-quality intellectual read, it nonetheless is not specifically a science journal. The very flaws Fahnestock associates with “scientific accommodation” may very well be present in Freedman’s representation of the work of John Ioannidis.

I realize that sensationalism basically refers to something used to excite or thrill the senses. However, I think sensationalism in science writing results from using Fahnestock’s “the wonder” and “the application” appeals (279)—essentially, “how is this interesting” and “why does it matter”—in conjunction with each other. We see this especially in the readings from The Best American Science and Nature Writing this week: for example, in “The Deadliest Virus,” Michael Specter writes, “One of the world’s most persistent horror fantasies, expressed everywhere from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Jurassic Park, had suddenly come to pass: a dangerous form of life, manipulated and enhanced by man, had become lethal” (136). “The wonder” appeal: one of our worst nightmares has scientifically been produced. “The application” appeal: we’re all screwed. Though the problem of a possible pandemic is no doubt real, if we do a little digging, we most likely will discover that Specter’s writing sounds a little over-the-top compared to scientific reports and statements written by the scientists themselves (not the quotes given through phone conversations). Sensationalism in science news writing loses some of the accuracy (though Freedman would oppose this term) found in the original scientific reports, but it also effectively captures the public’s attention and stimulates funding for further research. Which is the higher priority?