ABSW to boost links with Uganda Science Journalists Association

This article originally appeared at  The Association of British Science Writers.

ABSW is planning to strengthen ties with its twin association — the Uganda Science Journalists Association (USJA) — hoping to help train science journalists in Uganda. This partnership is the result of the World Federation of Science Journalists' (WFSJ) Science journalism COOPeration (SjCOOP) project, which aims to develop science journalism in Africa and the Arab world. USJA has been participating in this project as an ABSW 'twin' since it joined WFSJ in 2007.

Connie St Louis, ABSW chair, says that Ugandan delegates will attend the UK Conference of Science Journalists in 2012 where they will get additional training and pick up more skills. They will also get an opportunity to say what they need, and what they would like to do in terms of partnering with the ABSW.

William Odinga, USJA chairman says: "There is a lot of experience in ABSW from which USJA stands to gain. If the partnership is strengthened, especially through sharing of information, certainly the rich knowledge of British science writers will help nurture science journalists in Uganda where the concept of science journalism is relatively new."

USJA arranges "training opportunities, especially in partnership with science based institutions, to equip journalists with the necessary skills for science reporting," says Odinga.
It was founded in Kampala in November 2005 at a media meeting discussion about the spread of bird flu, in order to create a forum for discussion between science journalists and scientists.
Before this, access to scientists had been difficult, Odinga says. "They have for long feared that journalists would misrepresent them."

"One of the key challenges for Uganda science writers has been to get their story published. Editors would not welcome science related stories saying they were boring," Odinga says.

However, "the rise and rise of science journalism in Uganda" has been linked to raising public awareness of issues such as environmental activism, food security and HIV/AIDS. Odinga says that "the basic role of a science journalist in Uganda is to make scientific information simple and accessible to the public".

Yet, all journalism in Uganda is still affected by political censorship and corruption, he says.

"For example, a story about a powerful politician or businessman degrading a wetland may not be given a chance by media establishments for [fear of] their own survival. What USJA does is to continue encouraging journalists to produce quality science stories without fear or favour."

Odinga is optimistic about the development of science writing in Uganda — awareness about the importance of science is increasing, even among the politicians and the government, he says.

Poorly targeted campaigns against animal-based research will hurt the wrong people

Animal Aid have published a report describing the use of animal-based research funded by medical research charities such as Alzheimer’s Society, Cancer Research UK, Parkinson’s UK and the British Heart Foundation.  It forms part of their call for a boycott of these charities and they intend to support it with a series of newspaper advertisements and a postcard campaign.

This has been described, quite rightly, as “irresponsible” by Colin Blakemore, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and roundly condemned by the charities named.

One thing that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned so far is the disingenuousness of targeting bodies that fund animal based research.  In doing so Animal Aid is refusing to engage directly with the people whose work they so strongly oppose.  This suggests a close-minded and anti-science attitude, similar to the attitude of anti-vaccinationists and creationists.  Scientists are often accused of arrogance but presenting a list of non-animal-based research techniques and implying that these are superior in all cases to animal-based techniques surely deserves the same label.  This is particularly true when their limitations have been spelled out repeatedly by weary scientists (for instance here).

As a scientist I am tired of reading the same arguments against animal research over and over and over again.  I am tired of being labelled not only cruel but lazy for my use of animal-based techniques.  It would be naïve to say that animal research is perfect or the only way forward but work is carried out with knowledge of the limitations of animal-based techniques, as with any other techniques (see here and here for examples discussion of some issue within my own area).

Implying that people are cruel or lazy without a full understanding of the topic smacks of laziness itself as does targeting charitable organisations in order to make a point about animal research.  It seems, however, that public opinion is in favour of animal-based research so hopefully charities funding vital research will not bear too much of a burden of these poorly aimed and tired attacks.

Embargo system is broken, says Universe Today, and leaves the game

This article originally appeared at  The Association of British Science Writers.

With some online outlets challenging the controversial embargo system and the Ingelfinger rule, could this be the beginning of the end for love-it-or-hate-it feature of modern science journalism?
The space and astronomy news site Universe Today has decided to simply ignore embargoed stories as of 31 March 2011. "Everybody knows embargoes are broken, but nobody's willing to take the first step and abandon the system," Fraser Cain, publisher of the Universe Today site, told ABSW.
The site will only cover studies that are publicly available to promote a level playing field in science journalism.

"My main problem with embargoes is how they create a dual class society of journalists," Cain said. "There are the 'credentialed journalists' on one side, who get access to the embargoed material, and then everyone else. That leaves out the bloggers and part time freelancers who […] write solid science articles," he said, adding that excluding bloggers and freelancers in this way ignores the importance of their contribution to modern, internet-age journalism.

We recently covered the thorny issue of embargoes, agenda- and tone-setting press releases and the Ingelfinger rule, which have all had their dose of controversy and criticism, but now science news outlets have started abandoning the rules.

Ivan Oransky, editor of Embargo Watch, regards the issue as something of a moral stand as "the site is willing to sacrifice timeliness for reporting, and trying to level the playing field". However, Oransky told ABSW that "to really have an effect on the embargo system, they'd have to stop agreeing to embargoes altogether, and you'd need a number of outlets to do that. […] Without reporters to agree to them, they [the embargoes] would go away."

But some say the buck doesn't stop with embargoes because even without them, the infamous Ingelfinger rule, which only allows publication of work in journals that has not already been presented elsewhere, would keeps scientists from talking to the press until their studies have been published.
Another site has decided to go against this rule, though. Faculty of 1000 (F1000), a group facilitating post-publication peer review, now allows conference posters to be exhibited on its site. As these posters often consist of unpublished work, their publication online is a potential violation of the Ingelfinger rule.

F1000 contacted various scientific journals to discover whether submitting a poster to F1000 would preclude publication in them. They found that while some journals like Science would simply refuse to publish papers containing data that appeared in F1000 in poster form, others such as Nature and British Medical Journal, would be happy to accept such papers, provided there was additional unpublished information in the submitted paper.

Ironically, some journals unwilling to publish papers that appear on F1000 have previously published papers based on posters that had been published as part of the proceedings of scientific conferences.
"My hope is that by exposing the frankly contradictory policies of some journals, F1000 will bring pressure to bear, and force some change," Oransky said. But he added this is unlikely "to spell the end of the Ingelfinger Rule, but what the response of journals to the site does is point out just how stubborn and brittle publishers can be".

Oransky himself has shown how pressure can bring about real change with his 'Honour Roll' of journals that have responded to criticism of their embargo policies by changing their rules. It seems that science reporters and news outlets may also be able to change the rules by deciding not to be bound by them.

UK libel law strikes again: MMR vaccine book to be delayed

This article originally appeared at  The Association of British Science Writers.

In another example of UK libel law being used against a science writer, the UK version of Paul Offit’s new book, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All, has been delayed by threat of litigation.

Offit, a medical doctor and inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, is re-writing a page in the book after being threatened with a libel suit by Richard Barr, solicitor and member of the Society of Homeopaths’ Board of Directors.

The controversial sentence claims that in order to support his lawsuit against the makers of the MMR vaccine, Barr paid researcher Andrew Wakefield to carry out a study to investigate links between the MMR vaccine and autism, work which was later found to be fraudulent and resulted in Wakefield being struck off the medical register last year. Rather, the money Wakefield received came from the Legal Aid Board (now the Legal Services Commission) and was distributed to him by Barr.
 
This dispute has delayed the original 17^th of March UK publication date in order for a revision to be made to the sentence in question. This case again highlights the powerful silencing effect of simply threatening a suit under current English libel law.

Offit said that in writing his previous book Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, "I did have it in my head that these [Barr and Wakefield] were English citizens and that that puts me at a special risk … Yes, I feared British libel law."

He also remarked that in the present case he was aware that Barr "could have been a much bigger adversary” and that he had been “extremely nice about it."

Offit also referred to a US lawsuit brought against him and Amy Wallace in 2009 by Barbara Loe Fisher, the head of the National Vaccine Information Center over an article by Wallace in Wired magazine which quoted him saying: "She [Fisher] lies".

Comparing US and English libel law, Offit said that he is able to say that in the US because "that's my opinion and in order for her to prove that I’m wrong she really would have to prove that she’s never lied."
The judge dismissed the claim in 2010, writing that "a remark by one of the key participants in a heated public health debate stating that his adversary ‘lies' is not an actionable defamation"; it was instead a "protected expression of opinion".

"It is yet another sad indictment of English libel law that a book available in America has to be delayed and edited before being published in Britain" said Simon Singh, who won his libel case against the British Chiropractic Association last year.

"Why is it that an American researcher must have his free speech curtailed in this country, when the rest of the world can read what he has to say? As the Government prepares to publish its draft defamation bill, this is a reminder that reform needs to be urgent and radical."

Casting a critical eye on the embargo system: one year of Embargo Watch

This article originally appeared at The Association of British Science Writers.

It has been a year since Ivan Oransky, executive editor of Reuters Health, started Embargo Watch, "a long-term blog examining trends in embargoes and how they were affecting news coverage".

In his opening post on 23 February 2010 he said: "I’m going to try to keep track of anecdotes about embargoes. Are they helping journalists? Helping journals? Who’s breaking them? And, most important, are they helping the general public? My hope is that by chronicling these stories and trends, I can help make embargoes work better. For some [...] that may mean doing away with them. For others, it may mean refining them."

So, what have we found out about embargoes since then? Should we be sticking to them, do we need them and if so, why?

The usual line of argument is as follows. Proponents say that embargoes are necessary to allow journalists time to report in depth on topics that are not in their area of expertise. Critics point out that embargoed press releases can undermine this aim when the embargo period is too short or when the press release overemphasises a single study.

Press releases and embargo rules are more broadly criticised for corrupting the reporting of science.

Freelance journalist Stephan Van Duin says that embargoed press releases create artificial news events. He argues that science should instead be reported as the ongoing, never-ending enterprise that it is. The definition of science news has to be altered, and editors need to be involved in this, he says.

The oft-stated intention of embargoes is to give reporters time to write in depth articles about subjects that are often highly technical and to protect the depth of reporting from editorial pressures. Catriona Kelly, of the University of Edinburgh Press Office, says that embargoes "give me a deadline to work towards, which means I can prioritise my workload and do the best job possible in terms of getting each story that I deal with out to the press".

But this aim can backfire when embargo times are short, leading to an overreliance on the press-release rather than the actual paper. This can result in a selection of very similar articles appearing in a variety of outlets, something Martin Robins recently criticised on his Guardian blog in a post titled "This is a news website article about a scientific paper". Van Duin points out that "if that time isn't increased reporters will go for the lowest hanging fruit and that's when you end up with a bunch of identical stories".

The goal of giving journalists enough research time sometimes falls flat. The Embargo Watch has documented situations such as the 49 minute embargo, the Groundhog day embargo (that was repeatedly lifted every hour, dependening on the time zone the reporter was in) or embargoes on information that is already in the public domain. Oransky cites these as "some of the bizarre policies I've found while doing Embargo Watch". He now has an unofficial honor roll for the institutions that sort out their embargo policies and part ways with such bizarre practices.

Oransky also notes that "giving journalists time is at best an afterthought". Instead, it seems that embargoes are being used by journals to control information and improve their own cachet among both scientists and reporters. "For the most part, scientists like publishing in journals that get press attention. It means more glory, and more funding for their work. And embargoed journals get more press attention. The more attention-getting papers a journal publishes, the more reprints it can sell."

John Rennie, science writer and former editor of Scientific American, points out that because journals are businesses they have their own pressures to issue high-profile embargoed press releases: "Any journals that don't issue press releases risk being lost in the crowd of others that do."

Van Duin thinks that there is also a level of demand among media outlets "for sensation, for headline-worthy science news" that further raises the pressure on journals to control information in this manner.

Meeting the demand for science stories that make headlines has resulted in the ‘big paper of the week’ model of science reporting. Embargoed press releases result in coverage fixated on single studies or events as reporters try to ensure they do not miss the week’s big news.

But critics say the incremental progression of scientific discovery does not conform to the event-based reporting of current affairs journalism.

Oransky argues that embargoes are actually a distraction from the "bigger picture" which includes "conflicts of interest and flawed research investigations." There is also a danger that presenting science stories without the necessary context hinders the effectiveness of science reporting in contributing to readers’ understanding. Van Duin points out that "there is a lot to gain in contextualizing science – it's the only thing that is essential to science and at the same time mostly overlooked in science coverage in regular media."

Rennie has recently proposed, as a thought experiment, an "informal moratorium" on reporting studies for a six month period after their publication as a remedy to shallow media coverage of the "big paper of the week". Putting this idea into practice would be impossible but it does indicate what may be missing in science journalism at present. Science writer Ed Yong was inspired by Rennie’s proposal, and came up with an interactive timeline that put the latest news into a wider context.

Reducing reliance on press releases may lead to a decrease in churnalism – the rehashing of press releases without the addition of original reporting. The Media Standards Trust’s new project Churnalism.com, described on their website as "an independent, not-for-profit website built to help the public distinguish between journalism and ‘churnalism’", provides a graphic overview of the amount of copying and pasting that goes on in the media.

Some argue that if reporters waited to write about new scientific papers, scientific opinion about the paper would develop following its release and give reporters greater scope of opinion from scientists in the field. Currently, the presence of embargoes means that scientists in the field may not yet have read a paper when they are asked for an opinion on it. "This is what makes all those 'expert opinions' rather worthless," says Van Duin.

Rennie comments that his point behind his proposed thought experiment "was that the definition of science news that we editors and reporters use has typically become so narrow that it's almost inconceivable to us that we shouldn't fall over one another racing to publish a story at the moment an embargo ends. We don't question why a paper's publication suddenly makes it real news, and we don't push ourselves to find other ways to cover science."

Alice Bell, senior teaching fellow in the Science Communication Group at Imperial College London suggests a contrasting approach on her blog: she proposes an emphasis on ‘upstream’, science-in-the-making, reporting as a way to increase understanding of the scientific process.

But standing in the way of early-stage reporting of scientific research is the Ingelfinger Rule. This is a policy originally adopted by the New England Journal of Medicine to refuse to publish data that had already been published or publicised elsewhere: it has since been widely adopted by other journals as well.

Oransky feels that this policy has had a "chilling effect" on the dissemination of science.  He says that in the time he has run Embargo Watch he has come to think of embargoes somewhat differently. "The more I think about embargoes, the more I realize that the Ingelfinger Rule is the real problem," he says, pointing to scientists’ concerns that they will not be able to publish research that has already appeared in the media. This requires researchers to deal with a flurry of interest in their papers in a relatively short period around publication, reducing the time available to them to make insightful comments about their work.

Another worrying aspect of embargo-driven emphasis on single studies is a lack of transparency concerning which stories are selected for embargo. Journals choose to embargo the stories that they feel are likely to garner the most media attention, irrespective of the importance of the paper within the field. In other words, journal press officers are pitching their press releases to be as headline-worthy as possible. It can be easy for journalists to forget that press releases are not an unbiased source of information.

"Just because a paper says that it has found a ‘missing link’ or whatever doesn't mean that reporters should parrot that claim without checking it adequately," Rennie argues.

Although the ostensible purpose of embargoes is positive, they have had something of the opposite effect on science reporting, says Oransky: they have been "distracting reporters from the bigger picture".

Science coverage in the mass media is largely characterised by quickly written stories based on embargoed press releases. This might partly be because of the time and staffing constraints on the news desks; even without embargoes journalists would not have any more time to investigate and write a story. Solutions to this are not easy to devise, given the multitude of pressures on writers, journals and scientists.  Modification of restrictions on scientists communicating with the media prior to publication of their article may be the root of the problem, rather than embargoes per se.