Dear Editor,
Part of the role of journalists and editors is to assess the veracity of what they are reporting on or publishing. News reporting should be factual and opinion pieces or letters to the editor should be grounded in reality. Declining to publish certain articles or letters is not censorship, rather it is a core part of editing a publication.
Many journalists, editors, and broadcasters come from humanities backgrounds rather than scientific ones and while it may be valid to seek a range of opinions on some matters, this is not the case when it comes to well established areas of science. Unfortunately, in the name of balance and neutrality, we’ve seen climate change deniers (invariably bankrolled by fossil fuel companies) being given equal time with climatologists, or creationists being given equal time with evolutionary biologists, making these issues much more contentious than they really are.
Science is the most powerful tool we’ve developed to understand reality. Science is not simply a body of facts, theories, and laws to memorize, it is a way of thinking, of asking and answering questions about our reality. Scientific discourse has its own language, and the differences between this and the language we use in daily life is also responsible for some misunderstanding.
How do we resolve this conflict between what science is telling us and what some wealthy, powerful individuals and companies would have us believe? Ultimately, we need a much higher standard of scientific literacy within the media and within the general public.
Steve Gabell
