The problem with science journalism, according to scientists

NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt just posted the kind of thought that could serve as a disclaimer on most stories about scientific discoveries: journalists tend to cover new studies, because that’s where the news is, but over time, those newsy findings often prove inaccurate.

The vast majority of mainstream media items about science are related to new hot-off-the-press studies, often in high profile journals, that report a new breakthrough, or that purportedly overturn previous ideas. However, while these are exciting news items, this preponderance of coverage given to these state-of-the-art studies compared to assessments such as from the National Academies, can give a misleading impression about the state of a scientific knowledge. The more mature and solid a field, the less controversy there is, and thus the fewer news stories. Ironically, this means the public is told the least about the most solid aspects of science.

One effect of this tendency is that quite often news stories are focused on claims that turn out to be wrong, or if not actually wrong, heavily reduced in importance by the time the dust settles. This is not deliberate, but merely how science works at the frontier. People push measurements to the limit of their accuracy (and sometimes beyond) and theories are used slightly out of their domain of applicability.

via RealClimate.

Schmidt offers a few examples from the science and journalism of global warming. The most striking of those, to me, is the 2006 finding by scientists from the Max Planck Institute that living plants produce methane. You may remember the flurry of stories that followed suggesting that forests cause global warming (what an excellent excuse to cut them down!). Since 2006, scientists trying to replicate the finding have concluded that, actually, “plants are not a major source of the global methane production.”