Keep Cool Science Journalists

The real meat of Ruben's column is his "unwritten rules of popular science journalism." These "rules" poke fun of standards widely used by science journalists when reporting a popular science story. See for yourself:

• Put the reader at ease by discussing at length the small details of the day you met the scientist. Did you have coffee? Who ordered what? These elements are just as important as the details of the scientific discovery.
• All science is boring except when you can spin it as a harbinger of things to come. This month, Chinese scientists teleported a photon over 60 miles. That's, um, the whole story. Which is why you have to jazz up that boring old teleported photon by talking about teleporting people!
• If you can find someone to make a nice infographic, you might as well stop writing your article right now.

I don't know about you but I find them funny. Why? Because his dissection of popular science journalism is spot on-the all-important element of truth in any good humor piece is there. Admittedly, those three points above were not in the spotlight of science journalists' fury. These were:

• Relate the research to readers' everyday lives. For example, avoid writing, "Studying dung beetles like these teaches entomologists a lot about dung beetles like these." Instead, write, "Studying dung beetles like these might help lower gasoline prices!"
• Remember that ordinary people cannot understand units of measurement. Therefore, you should always explain measurements in relation to familiar objects, such as the length of a football field or the number of something that would fit within the period at the end of this sentence.
• Don't think of what you're doing as "dumbing down" science. It is, but don't think of it that way.

The major criticism going Ruben's way is that he appears to have missed the actual point of popular science journalism, which is to convey science to a mainstream audience. Some of the standard points he makes fun of (the above three points, for example) are essential in the making of a good popular science story. For instance, to relate science concepts to the mainstream audience, many science journalists adhere to humanizing the science. They convince readers that science isn't something detached or far-away by purposely showing them that it is done by humans who are very much like us all. This way, readers are more receptive to the actual scientific ideas and notions which they are thereafter presented with. This technique or method works and more and more science journalists have converged to employing it until it eventually became the standard way of writing popular science stories.

Ruben though, is not part of the mainstream audience. As a practicing scientist, he does not need to be convinced. He is very much aware that science is a human enterprise. He also knows all the determination and hard work that are required in scientific research. Ruben's sarcasm instead, clearly stems from his frustration, as a scientist, with popular science. When Ruben reads a science piece, he does not care about the human aspect of science because he already is all-too-familiar with it. Instead, he expects to read about the actual experiments and results. From his perspective, popular science is prolix. I can almost hear him shout in desperation: "Get to the point already!"

It is apparent that Ruben benchmarks himself as the typical reader of popular science journalism in his column (and this is what caused such an uproar in the science journalists' camp). This was not the right call because it is simply not true: he is not part of the mainstream audience which popular science journalists target. As such, his criticism of popular science journalism, despite being funny, is irrelevant.

It is disconcerting that some prominent science journalists opted to argue against Ruben's column using a furious attitude. Although this was no doubt precipitated by the existing tension that exists between science journalists and scientists, it does no less to condone it. All in all, those science journalists missed an opportunity to do what they usually do so well: educate in a calm, caring and meticulous manner.

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P.S. Ruben also made fun of the way scientists write their science papers in a previous column.

Image credit: Floyd Brown (from flickr).