Not every professional article related to the topic of Science and Media is that positive and “gentle” as previously mentioned “Sharing the love of science: thoughts on Beddington” by Fiona Fox. Guardian, British daily newspaper with mightily popular web page, releases a series called Bad Science, led by a writer and doctor Ben Goldacre. His harsh article from September 2005 called “Don't dumb me down” explains how and why media simplify and distort science.
Goldacre impressively states his hypothesis that “the media create a parody of science, for their own means”. He accuses media of then attacking this parody and pretending to attack science. This is perhaps connected to why people do not take science seriously; they consume distorted information served by media and are mostly not willing to investigate issues further. The author divides media science stories into three categories and concisely and entertainingly explains them. These categories are: wacky stories (often assuring people that what they do is ok; e.g. “Infidelity is genetic, say scientists.”), scare stories (exaggerating risks not supported by enough evidence) and “breakthrough” stories (small new findings which may be significant, but need far more research to become really important). Goldacre says that media “dumb down” the stories in a belief that people do not understand science anyway and accuses journalists that they often themselves do not understand what they write about.
Although the article is not written in a serious tone and it is very critical, I can only recommend it, because it brings harsh and comprehensible explanation of media approach to science.
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