Press releases and the framing of science journalism (page 35)
John Timmer
Summary
In a recent summary of a significant publication, I devoted a few paragraphs to slamming the press release that accompanied the results, since I viewed it as presenting assumptions as established fact with no underlying data to support them. This seems to have happened at a time where a general debate has erupted over the ways science gets presented to the public and the role of journalists in the communication process. I’ve now viewed the internals of pretty much every step of the pipeline that runs from results to public press, and I’ve given some thought to what goes wrong along the way to produce press coverage that’s misleading and/or inaccurate. So what follows is both a description of the process for the curious, and my take on what the problems are.
