Towards Better Science Communication
The Freelance Journalism Alliance supports quality science communication.
Scientists find the cure to cancer, the key to immortality, and discover that smoking is good for your health. Actually, that’s not true. But if you read some of the news reports out there, it certainly would sound like it’s true. Unfortunately science communication suffers because journalists want to draw people in to read their articles, and because of poor foundations in understanding how scientific research works. We, as science communicators, have a responsibility to both the scientists and the masses. We are obligated to do the best job that we can do, in order to ensure that findings in scientific research is being properly transmitted to the general population.
The above schematic shows that science journalists are crucial components in the process of communicating scientific information. So we need to be the best science communicators we can be. Good science journalism starts with a solid foundation in both journalism and the philosophy of science. While many authors have shown us that it’s possible to become a very popular science writer, without such a…
