Promises, promises….

London

July 2, 2009

The text of a paper presented by ISWA President Cornell in a panel on "ethics in science journalism" at the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ2009) in London on July 2. The session, entitled "Promises, Promises: The Ethics of Unbridled Optimism," continued the theme of ethics first explored at the ESOF meeting in Barcelona last year. ISWA member Wolfgang Goede of Germany's PM magazine, a panelist in both sessions, presented "Science Under the Swastika," an examination of how German science journalists supported the Nazi regime. His paper, as well as comments on both the London and Barcelona sessions and links to other speakers, can be found at his bog:

The title of this session is "promises, promises"… reflecting in part Kai Sempler's concern that too much of science journalism is devoted to an upbeat and overly optimistic view of a bright and shining future where everyone has a long and healthy and satisfying life-- free of dandruff, halitosis, and hangnails.

But there is another kind of promise made by science journalism-implicit in the definition of our trade---and that is to serve as public watchdog and to perform cautious, discerning criticism of all overblown claims, dubious results, and cost overruns.

Alas, by contrast with the first type of promises, the second are much less frequently kept, even in supposedly advanced, sophisticated democracies where press freedom should allow journalists to follow the money and ferret out the real cost/benefit ratios of research.

Do note that "money" is the operative word here.

In the modern world, a vast and interlocked government-industrial enterprise underwrites most research, especially in the areas of physics, space, and medical science. These fields have become dominated by mega-projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider, the International Space Station, and the Human Genome Project, all of which demand not only enthusiastic public support but generous public funding.

And, when the "promise" of such projects is framed in terms such as

the Du Pont Company's famous PR slogan-- " Better things for better living…through chemistry" or the LHC's claim that it will find 'the God particle"-it becomes increasingly difficult for reporters to fulfill their other promise.

Let me give a couple of examples, starting with one in which journalism promised life itself.

In the spring of 1998, a close relative was dying of ovarian cancer. It was not surprising then that I--and literally millions of other people around the world-- were galvanized by a front page story in The New York Times that claimed a researcher in Boston-Dr. Judah Folkman-had hit upon an approach that seemed to eradicate tumors in mice.

Actually, the story by Gina Kolata simply restated previously reported results from Folkman's lab that showed the angiostatin and endostatin had had almost miraculous success in blocking angiogenesis in tumor-ridden mice. In other words, the drugs interrupted the blood flow that fed and fueled the growth of cancerous tissue.

These were not new results, and the reporter repeatedly stressed that they had been seen so far only in mice. What was new-and electrifying-was a quote, high up in the story, from Nobel Prize winner James D. Watson that said: "Judah is going to cure cancer in two years."

Various media-including The New York Times itself-- had reported almost all the details--angiostatin, endostatin, and the cured mice-- before. But as Robert Cooke, author of Dr. Folkman's War, would write: " Quotes like Watson's put the story in a whole other category-news that took on a life of its own, spreading like a virus onto the news budgets of virtually every major media operation in America, as well as many outlets abroad."

And why not? Here was the ultimate promise: A cure for the most dreaded disease of our time. Proclaimed by a famous scientist, supported by other authoritative sources, and validated by the nation's most respected newspaper. Not surprisingly, most readers -and the scores of commentators at other news outlets-skipped right over the literal news about cures in mice to the speculative conclusion that the end of cancer was at hand.

Folkman's lab at Children's Hospital was flooded with calls and emails from thousands of desperate cancer patients and their relatives in the US and abroad. Many were ready to fly to Boston that same day. He was hard-pressed to convince them that human trials-and possible success-was still many years away. For his part, Watson claimed he had been misquoted. No one believed him.

"The story was also big news on the stock market," according to chronicler Cooke. "The Friday before the Times story, stock in EntreMed, the small biotechnology that had supported Folkman's work and held the licenses for both angiostatin and endostatin, closed at twelve dollars [a share] on the NASDAQ exchange. On Monday morning, EntreMed's shares jumped to eighty-three dollars [a share]."

The share prices remained highly volatile for the next two years, rising or falling with every new tidbit of news from Folkman's lab. Although this led to some speculation that Folkman was manipulating results for his own gain, he held no stock in the company.

A much more positive, but less noted, development was the announcement three months later that the National Institutes of Health would accept proposals for studies in blood vessel biology. The call made specific reference to the angiogenic process. This was a complete turnaround for an agency that nearly three decades before had denied Folkman's own proposal for research along these lines. Federal money-and support--was now available for the research he had pioneered. According to Bob Cooke, recognition by the medical community was much more important to him.

Ten years later, the promise of antiangiogenesis therapy has yet to be completely realized, just as Folkman and others warned. It has been applied with great success to the treatment of some eye diseases and many individual examples of tumor reduction have been seen, but the final "cure" is still elusive.

However, just within the last month there has been an exciting new result. Researchers associated with Folkman, looking for reasons why persons with Down Syndrome have unusually low incidences of solid tumors, discovered that such people lack a gene responsible for angiogensis. In other words, their own systems seem to block the flow of blood to potential tumors, thus preventing their growth. The finding suggests a genetic approach to cancer treatment might be possible.

Sadly, Dr. Folkman was not able to see this latest milestone along his research path. He died unexpectedly last year of a heart attack while travelling to a scientific conference.

One other footnote to this story. Bob Cooke had been following Folkman's work for nearly 20 years, from the time he had been a science writer at The Boston Globe. In early 1998, Cooke put together a book proposal about the research and was shopping it around-with not a great deal of success-to various publishers.

When The New York Times story broke on May 3, Cooke was on a raft floating down the river at the bottom of the Grand Canyon…out of touch with the rest of the world and unaware of the media frenzy then engulfing his subject.

He emerged from the canyon three days later to find a telephone message waiting from his agent: She had sold his book idea-- and the advance would be $1 million.

* * *

The next example is one of how journalists themselves can come to believe their own promises, and not always with beneficial effect.

From its inception, the American space program found a willing, able and usually uncritical partner in the mass media.

And, again, why not? Space research is glamorous, exciting, and most photogenic. Sometimes it can even be intellectually stimulating.

When space exploration and discovery involves humans, the appeal became irresistible and, with a few exceptions, most science journalists became unabashed supporters of US space efforts--right or wrong.

Even when the human component evolved from the role of individual adventurers during the Moon Shot Era to that of glorified truck drivers aboard the Shuttle, the media

love affair with astronauts--and NASA--persisted. Very few reporters questioned the worth of the Shuttle system--or that of its supposed goal--the International Space Station. And very few strayed from the official PR view, primarily because their main sources of information were members of the NASA PR team.

There were critics, of course. Four years after the program began in 1981, Discover magazine writer Dennis Overbye, initially an enthusiastic supporter of what he called America's "brand-new chariot to the stars," detailed a host of potential technical problems with the Shuttle.

I thought about Overbye's check-list when I attended a launch of the Challenger in July 1985. I was in the press section as a representative of the Smithsonian Institution, which had an Ultraviolet Telescope as part of the Spacelab 2 mission aboard that flight.

Despite the host of astrophysical experiments making up that package, the real media buzz in the Press Section was about the Shuttle Shoot-out between Coke and Pepsi. Both soft-drink makers had created high-tech cans of cola that would allow astronauts to sip carbonated beverages in the zero-gravity environment. The dueling drinks would be tested in space-and, of course, the results televised back to consumers on Earth.

The flights of the Shuttle had become so routine-and boring-by then that the reporters apparently needed the sugar jolt of a cola drink to excite them about this flight.

After several delays, including one when countdown was halted with just 3 seconds to go because a faulty valve shut off all three main engines, the launch took place at 5 pm on July 29. All my previous experiences with rocket launches had been with smaller research satellites. Nothing had prepared me for the sound, sight, and shock waves generated by a Shuttle rockets. It was truly impressive…and awe-inspiring.

Perhaps because it was so new to me, I remained in the outdoor press area

simply staring upward at the dissipating trail of smoke…Most of my press colleagues--veterans of many other launches--headed for the parking lot.

But five minutes and 45 seconds into its ascent, Challenger's number one main engine shut down prematurely due to a faulty high-temperature sensor. This was the first time that a main engine had failed in flight. At about the same time, a second main engine almost shut down because of a similar problem, but this was observed and inhibited by a fast-acting flight controller, otherwise the Shuttle probably would have fallen into the ocean.

Suddenly, the entire situation changed. An alarm siren sounded, and the loud speakers that normally broadcast both the countdown and the minute-by-minute tracking information following launch started blaring out: " Abort to Orbit, Abort to Orbit."

I sure didn't know what that meant-but apparently neither did any of the scores of reporters who heard the announcement in the parking lot and began running back to the press area.

No wonder, perhaps, we were puzzled: The phrase had never been used before in any Shuttle Flight. Essentially, it meant the loss of one main engine -and drop in power--would demand an Abort-to Orbit, or ATO trajectory, whereby the shuttle achieves a lower than planned orbital altitude, with an option of aborting the mission by landing in North Africa.

The mission continued, however, albeit at the lower altitude, for its original planned duration plus three extra days. But, technically, it had been a failure, and several planned experiments were scrapped. The Smithsonian's UV telescope operation, for example, was degraded by the increased atmospheric density of the lower altitude.

But NASA never conceded failure, and the press--with the exception of the specialized space and aviation trade publications--never questioned the official statements or even sought opinions form the scientists most affected.

The Coke vs. Pepsi battle did get considerable coverage, however, especially since neither delivery system worked particularly well and the astronauts complained about the rather messy burps produced by carbonated beverages in space.

I had reason to reflect on our near disaster and the media's lack of interest six months later--in January 1986-- when the same Challenger spacecraft exploded shortly after launch killing all seven crew members, including teacher Christa McAuliffe.

Many Americans had viewed the launch live due to her presence onboard as the participant in the Teacher in Space Project. Indeed, media coverage of the accident was extensive: one study reported that 85 percent of Americans surveyed had heard the news within an hour of the accident.

If public awareness of the disaster was immediate and direct, the subsequent revelation of its cause and consequences was not. In an unprecedented move, NASA simply closed down its press centers and issued gag orders on all its usual spokespeople, especially those associated with the Shuttle and astronaut programs.

The result was devastating to those reporters who had covered NASA as their regular beat. The former sources who were once more than willing to pass along happy news--about Coke and Pepsi, for example--now had nothing to say about the tragedy--or literally anything about the agency, its policies, or its response.

With the normal beat reporters shut out of the information loop and news pipeline, digging up the story ( i.e., what and why it happened and who was to blame) fell to reporters from other beats--technology, economics, national affairs--who sought out non-NASA sources. Indeed, it was a team of just such unconventional specialists at The New York Times won the 1987 Pulitizer Prize for " coverage of the aftermath of the Challenger explosion, which included stories that identified serious flaws in the shuttle's design and in the administration of America's space program. "

Several members of the Times team went on to other science journalism jobs, premier positions in the news business, and other prizes. Sadly--or fittingly, depending on your point of view-- for those other reporters who had believed the promises of the NASA PR machine, the Challenger disaster and the news drought that followed proved to be career-ending events.

Oddly, even if the US space program has never quite recovered from Challenger ( and the subsequent loss of the Columbia vehicle in 2003) and even if it seems to lack a true sensed of mission for the 21st Century, the space agency's PR machine continues as a force of nature.

As William Broad of The NY Times as written, "NASA's public-affairs and educational arms, with hundreds of employees coast to coast after 40 years of growth, are the envy of other Federal agencies. They give tours, publish magazines, set up satellite feeds for television networks, develop course material for teachers, run Internet Web sites, promote high-tech gadgetry and regularly hustle out astronauts to meet an admiring public."

The success of NASA's outreach program has not been lost on other national and international science organizations.

For example, as Broad has noted, "the European Space Agency labored in obscurity for many years, achieving dozens of feats in the heavens that were ignored by most Europeans. Then, in 1983, Europe's first astronaut soared into space aboard a shuttle. Suddenly, millions of television viewers across the continent were glued to their sets, watching a good-looking European explorer risk life and limb on the high frontier.

"Officials at the agency's headquarters in Paris were ecstatic," says Broad. "Eager for more, they quickly got the same religion as their counterpart in America…NASA, which long ago had mastered the art of promoting space-age heroism. Belatedly, the Europeans discovered that public enthusiasm for sending people into space, a venture steeped in risk and danger, drama and the right stuff, was a sure way to win political support for space exploration and its great costs. "

Obviously, the same techniques-taken to even greater extremes, some might argue-have been applied to promoting the Large Hadron Collider, an enterprise even experienced science writers find difficult to describe -or understand. This has not discouraged reporters from embracing and extolling an inexplicable and obscenely expensive effort to look for an elementary particle that may not exist.

That elusive particle, called the Higgs boson after Peter Higgs, the English physicist who described its theoretical possibility in 1964, is supposedly responsible for endowing all other elementary particles in the universe with mass.

As Dennis Overbye has written, "in a stroke of either public relations genius or disaster, Leon M. Lederman, the former director of the US National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, first referred to the Higgs as "the God particle" in a popular book of the same name he published with the science writer Dick Teresi in 1993.

"To Dr. Lederman, it made metaphorical sense…book, because the Higgs mechanism made it possible to simplify the universe, resolving many different seeming forces into one, like tearing down the Tower of Babel." Besides, as Overbye points out, who had ever heard of the Higgs boson?

"In some superficial ways," writes Overbye, "the Higgs has lived up to its name. Several Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work on the so-called Standard Model, of which the Higgs is the central cog. Billions of dollars are being spent on particle accelerators and experiments to find it, inspect it, and figure out how it really works."

No matter whether it is found or not, and even if the LHC staff denies it, the God Particle has become the central theme in the accelerator's publicity campaign.

Again, the promise is extraordinary: Give us enough money and we can find God. Or, at the least, we might understand what he was thinking about…

Ironically, given the uncertain state of the LHC operations, one has the feeling that the whole enterprise was undertaken to 1) give a group of rapping physicists a chance to make fools of themselves and 2) to provide a promotional boost to a really bad movie.

After $8 billion and 14 years, the latest timetable calls for the search to resume in September. Let's hope that is at least one promise they can keep…

* * *

My last example is one of a promise broken--that is, the promise of journalists to serve as guardians of the public good. No where was this promise abandoned more completely than in the media coverage of the deadly impact of cigarette smoking in the USA.

It is not so much that American science journalism ignored the facts about smoking and public health but that it allowed itself to be manipulated by the tobacco industry into confusing the issue--and unnecessarily prolonging an obvious threat to the public.

By midpoint of the last century, a host of epidemiological studies had demonstrated a strong causal link between the growing consumption of cigarettes in the USA--some 2500 per person per year in 1950--and the increased incidence of lung cancer and other cardio-vascular and respiratory diseases.

American news media reported these findings broadly. According Alan Brandt, who has documented the case against tobacco in his book The Cigarette Century, one article in particular had great impact. Journalist Roy Norr, writing in the October 1952 "Christian Herald," a small circulation magazine, noted that "what gives grave concern to public health leaders is that the increase in lung cancer mortality shows a suspicious parallel to the enormous increase in cigarette consumption." Two months later, the article was seen by millions of Americans when it was reprinted in "Readers Digest" under the title "Cancer by the Carton."

Many other major newspapers and magazines followed up with similar stories based on the studies, and the American tobacco industry went into crisis mode-trying to decide how to respond to both the growing body of medical evidence and the rising tide of public criticism.

The industry strategy developed in 1953 by John W. Hill and his staff at the PR firm of Hill & Knowlton was simple--and brilliant--and here I quote directly from Brandt's book:

"Dismissing as short-sighted the idea of mounting personal attacks on researchers or simply issuing blanket assurances of safety, they concluded instead that seizing control of the science of tobacco and health would be as important as seizing control of the media.

"It would be crucial to identify scientists who expressed skepticism about the link between cigarettes and cancer, those critical of statistical methods, and especially those who had offered alternative hypotheses for the cause of cancer

"Hill set his staff to identifying the most vocal and visible skeptics. These people would be central to the development of an industry scientific program in step with its larger public relation goals.

"Hill understood that simply denying the harms of smoking would alienate the public. His strategy…was to insist that there were "two sides. Just as Edward Bernays had worked to engineer consent ( i.e., public acceptance of smoking in the years after World War I) Hill would engineer "controversy' [over the public health aspects of smoking].

"This strategy--invented by Hill in the context of his work for the tobacco industry, " concludes Alan Brandt "would ultimately become the cornerstone of a large range of efforts to distort the scientific process in the second half of twentieth century."

What Hill had hit upon was a basic flaw in the philosophy and practice of North American journalism. In the cause of fairness and objectivity, American journalists felt a need to give both sides of every story, offer space to dissenting opinions, and provide a forum for critics of any standard argument.

Thus, the findings of tobacco industry scientists--or even just the statements of its spokespeople--had to be given equal weight with those of smoking opponents.

As Brandt puts it: "The industry worked to assure that vigorous debate would be prominently trumped in the public media. So long as there appeared to be doubt, so long as the industry could assert 'not proven" [about certain findings], smokers would have a crucial rationale to continue, and the new smokers would have a rationale to begin. "Equally important," Brandt claims, "the industry would have cover to resist regulation of its product and the basis of a defense against new legal liabilities. The future of the cigarette came to depend on the successful production of a scientific controversy."

Remarkably, this approach would sustain the cigarette trade for almost the next 50 years, surviving two devastating reports by the US Surgeon General, one in 1964 and the other in 1968, the placement of health warning labels on cigarette packs ( Remember, however, that the original phrasing warned only that smoking "may be" harmful to your health.), and the 1969 ban on television advertising, as well as efforts--finally culminating three weeks ago--to designate cigarettes as "nicotine delivery devices" subject to regulation by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Although I have no evidence to back up my speculation, it is possible to imagine that the so-called "objectivity clause" also gave the media itself some form of protection. Remember that tobacco companies were--and are--major advertisers. Interestingly, in the year after the television ban, cigarette ad space in major print media as much as doubled. By offering both sides of the cigarette controversy, newspapers and magazines not only were being fair and objective--they weren't alienating any advertisers either.

The manufactured controversy, as well as other PR and legal strategies of the American tobacco industry began to crumble by the end of the century as findings about the deleterious effects of second- hand smoke and evidence of industry deceit and criminal behavior became known--and central to court cases resulting in massive financial judgments against the industry leaders.

While medical and scientific reportage has become much stronger, much more pointed and focused in the past two decades, it should be noted that the major revelations about the industry practices came not from investigative reporters but from whistle-blowers and litigators who used the process of discovery to uncover damning internal documents.

Most remarkable, perhaps, is the fact that even after journalists realized they were being manipulated by Big Tobacco, the same techniques of twisted science and manufactured controversy were used--often to the same effect--by many other groups, including the opponents of evolution and, most notably, global warming deniers.

* * *

We have looked at three promises: One about a cure for a deadly disease that may perhaps--who knows--actually come true. One about individual adventure and societal achievement that was so appealing even the supposed monitors couldn't recognize its flaws and limitations. And one--the promise to serve and protect the public--that was subverted by the very forces journalism was supposed to guarding against.

Because this session is about the larger issue of ethics in science journalism, I must ask the following: Do any of these examples of promises--broken or unfilled as they may be-- really violate any ethical principles? Technically, probably not.

Sloppy reporting, hyperbolic claims, over reliance on single sources or, worse, self-interested sources, but, unethical. I don't think so.

Still, some stricter monitoring by media watchdogs might have at least tempered the frenzy over a very preliminary research finding, or forced government officials to look more carefully at the design and maintenance of an overstressed and overworked space vehicle, or even pushed for more critical examination of an industry knowingly dealing in a deadly product.

Remember, too, that all my examples are really from that pre-blog era, when twitter was something birds did and mass media performance was pretty much unchallenged. Today, there are literally thousands of citizen critics waiting to ferret out untruths, inconsistencies and inaccuracies and to call the miscreants to task.

That's the positive side. Alas, there are an equal number of bloggers making their own irresponsible and unsubstantiated claims.

Now more than ever, there is need for some sort of international monitoring system to watch for and guard against lapses in ethics and professional standards, as well as to correct inaccuracies in reporting that could affect public health and safety.

As difficult as it may be to impose universal standards worldwide, I do believe it is worth the effort and--and given the state of global electronic networks--probably doable with relative ease. To this end, I propose that the World Federation of Science Journalists create a standing committee on ethics and professional standards. Although, realistically it probably cannot impose sanctions, I believe peer pressure can be a most effective tool for changing behavior.

* * *

Let me close with one final example of how--like a boy crying wolf--a journalistic promise can be made a bit too often to be believed. A couple of weeks ago, I saw on-line a report that archaeologists had discovered in southern China what they claimed to be the earliest site of pottery production. I mentioned this to my wife, who has done research on ceramics, and asked if she wanted to see the full article. "Don't bother, she said. "I'll wait for the National Geographic special."

The implication is that, today, even the most serious discoveries--especially those with broad, popular appeal-- are most likely linked to some commercial sponsor, with magazine, book, and video productions to follow posthaste.

And, that, I can promise you, is one promise that will be kept…

--END--

REFERENCES

Brandt, Alan M. THE CIGARETTE CENTURY, Basic Books, New York, 2007

Broad, William J. "Ideas & Trends: Heavenly Rewards; Shilling the Right Stuff," The New York Times, November 1, 1998.

Cooke, Robert. DR. FOLKMAN'S WAR, Random House, New York, 2001.

Overbye, Dennis. "What's in a name? Parsing the 'God Particle,' the ultimate metaphor," Symmetry, December 2007, http://www.symmetrymagazine.org