Sir

Your Editorial on how the scientific community should respond to public controversies (“Responding to uncertainty” Nature 437, 1; 2005) suggested that researchers should attack, on a “scientific basis”, misleading reports that appear in sections of the media. I would like to make some further points about the responsibilities of the media.

Certainly the media should be free to report the opinions of maverick researchers, no matter how unrepresentative these may be of the rest of the scientific community. After all, mavericks are occasionally right. But it is not in the public interest for the media to present these views in a way that creates a misleading impression about the amount of support they have among other scientists.

As you point out, journalists often strive to achieve a balance by reporting one view and then presenting a diametrically opposed counter-view. When presented in the same way time after time, this can make the research community seem to be evenly divided, even if there are a thousand on one side and one on the other.

The scientific community should make every effort to ensure that the media and public know where the weight of opinion lies. Robert May

As researchers at Cardiff School of Journalism have shown, much of the public gained the wrong impression about how few scientists believed that the triple vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), mentioned in your Editorial, was linked to autism and bowel disorders in children, partly because of campaigns in the media. Even more difficulties are created if there are many differing viewpoints.

But the real problems arise when parts of the media decide to campaign on an issue. To take some UK examples, such campaigns may be openly declared, as with attempts by The Sunday Times in the 1990s to convince its readers that HIV was not the likely cause of AIDS, and by The Independent on Sunday at present to promote the view that genetically modified (GM) foods pose an inherent danger to human health and to the environment. Or they may be undeclared: The Daily Mail, for example, seems to be running a campaign to deny the existence of a link between greenhouse-gas emissions and climate change.

In any country, such campaigns can mislead the public about where the weight of scientific opinion lies.

The scientific community should undoubtedly make every effort to ensure that the public and media know where the weight of scientific opinion lies on issues such as the MMR vaccine, GM foods, HIV and climate change. But surely the media also have a responsibility to find out and convey that information as well?