Short abstract
But journalists are more critical than some scientists make out
What are newspapers for? Why do people buy them? It would have been helpful if the Royal Society had paused to consider these questions before issuing its ill judged appeal last week to newspaper editors to curb their coverage of claims by maverick scientists.
Its open letter on cloning was prompted by newspaper headlines of Panos Zavos's claims to have transferred the first cloned human embryo into a woman's womb. As the letter pointed out, this is not the first cloning claim and it will not be the last. The Italian specialist Severino Antinori and the Raelian cult have made similar claims in the past, raising the hopes of infertile couples and giving the impression that fertility specialists are engaged in a race to create the first human clone.
The Royal Society's letter concluded with an appeal to editors to consider waiting in future “until real evidence appears before providing these individuals with such a prominent platform.” But what is “real” evidence? And what should be the media's role in assessing it? In a comment on the open letter, one of its signatories, Professor Chris Higgins, director of the Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre at Imperial College, London, said: “While journalists did their best to challenge these scientists about why they choose to go public before submitting to the scrutiny of other scientists in the usual way, the very fact that the story achieved such prominence will have suggested that this is mainstream work.”
Professor Higgins cannot be serious. I attended the press conference at which Panos Zavos made his announcement on Saturday 17 November and I cannot remember in more than 10 years of daily health news reporting another occasion where the questioning was more sceptical or more hostile. The journalists present lost no time in exposing the threadbare basis of Dr Zavos's claims. His position was demolished.
More importantly, this was clearly reflected in the ensuing coverage. The man was ridiculed, his claims dismissed, and his ethics attacked. I cannot see how anyone listening to the news bulletins or reading the press reports could have gained the impression that this was “mainstream work.” Bonkers, maybe, but not mainstream.
That said, the Royal Society's anxiety about how maverick scientists get their names in the headlines is understandable. That brings us back to the questions at the start of this piece. Why do people buy newspapers? Among the reasons I suggest are to learn something of what is going on in the world, to keep them occupied while making the breakfast toast and on the journey to work, and to give them something to talk about once they get there.
Figure 1.
Boycotting the Zavos claim on human cloning would have been a disservice to newspaper readers
Credit: STEFAN ROUSSEAU/PA
If you accept this analysis then it is difficult for any news organisation to ignore an event like the Zavos announcement. Specialist reporters are under constant pressure to cover stories which, in our professional judgment, do not deserve notice but because they are running on the news wires or have otherwise acquired common currency are wanted by news editors. The argument is between giving unjustified publicity to an unsupported claim and denying our readers an insight into a story of the day. It is a debate that goes on constantly in newspaper offices and often the best outcome is to write the story, including the necessary sceptical or balancing elements, to allow the readers to make up their own minds. When stories appear which are unbalanced—and yes, I know they do—then criticism is justified.
The first cloned human being would be a huge story and whatever the criticisms of Dr Zavos, he has the technical expertise to achieve it (despite the latest allegations about his qualifications, or lack of them). True, his latest stunt only became an event because of the prominence that the media gave to it, and yes, it would be possible in theory to agree a general boycott of scientific claims not backed by good evidence. But who is to make this judgment, and how?
One way might be to say that only claims that have been subjected to peer review ought to be reported. That would satisfy the Royal Society and the scientific establishment but, at a stroke, silence any voice outside it. Would Darwin have got a hearing for his theory about the origin of species? What of Alfred Wegener's ideas, ridiculed at the time, about continental drift? And was not Barbara McClintock's discovery of jumping genes mocked before it won her a Nobel prize?
A senior lawyer who worked on the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) inquiry told me that after months of studying scientific papers his main conclusion was that the system of peer review had failed the public. And when you think of the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine, peer review has not exactly protected the public. Andrew Wakefield's 1998 paper, which set the hare running, appeared in the Lancet.
Where I can agree with the Royal Society is that giving uncritical coverage to unsupported claims by maverick scientists is not a happy outcome. Had the Royal Society saved its ammunition for an attack on the recent spate of stories about deodorants and cancer, for example, it would have had my support. But the coverage of Dr Zavos's claims was not uncritical—quite the reverse. Individual media organisations can and do take the decision to ignore scientific claims that they consider to be inflated or unsupported, and they are to be applauded. But a general policy to boycott claims that have not been peer reviewed would, I submit, be a disservice to readers and do more harm than good.
Scientists have only to wield the trusty sword of truth. For journalists life is a bit more complex. It is a question of choosing not the best option but the least worst.