Guardian Newspaper: Nine Ways Scientists Don’t Understand Journalism

At Inside Science, our role as science writers and editors is to disseminate news about science to as large and wide an audience as we can reach in the general public. Ananyo Bhattacharya, Nature’s chief online editor, wrote the following article for the Guardian newpaper. It’s circulating widely, and we thought it’s definitely worth sharing. We would love to hear your comments about it.

Guardian Newspaper: Nine ways scientists demonstrate they don’t understand journalism

While I don’t agree fully with all of Bhattacharya’s points—for example, Inside Science News Service places great emphasis on obtaining outside perspectives and mentioning the significant caveats associated with a research finding--I think this piece nicely highlights differences that exist between scientists and science journalists due to their different roles.

I’m sure there is an equally good piece out there on how journalists don’t understand scientists! It’s a good reminder of how we as science journalists are necessarily different from research scientists in order to be effective in carrying out our roles in communicating information to the larger world.

Your thoughts?