Evidentia

George Tombs: Peter Doherty, you are a leading immunologist based in Melbourne, Australia. You have had a lot of experience interacting with the media, particularly since you won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1996, for discovering how killer T-cells recognize infected cells in the body. What makes good science journalism good?

Peter Doherty, shown with the Nobel Prize in Medicine he shared in 1996 with Rolf Zinkernagel for discovering how killer T-cells recognize infected cells. (Photo byLars Åström)

Peter Doherty: Of course the constraints for audio-visual media are different from those for print media. The first question about any form of writing concerns: Who are you writing for? What is the intended audience? Talking about science journalism, one end of the range is the professional scientists and educators who read the broader commentaries in Nature, The Scientist, New Scientist. The details differ, but such people live substantially in the science culture. Here the task is reasonably straightforward, and may simply require some broad explanatory background to develop stories that focus on this or that specialized area.

George: What about science journalism destined for the broader public?

Peter: Here the problem of communicating science in a print-oriented way again varies with the audience. The average individual who isn’t New York-based but reads the New York Times is, I suspect, likely to be well educated, thoughtful and accustomed to objective thinking and the statistical idea of relative risk. Science writing for this group can be reasonably sophisticated and can presumably assume that people understand, for instance, that their bodies are made up of cells, that DNA transmits the inherited material and so forth. However, this doesn’t describe the majority population in any society that I’m familiar with. How may people outside that type of group, for any instance, have any interest in reading authors like Dava Sobel or in picking up Bill Bryson’s book on “Everything”?

Killer T-cells. (Photo by Gilla Kaplan, PhD, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey)

George: Is there some secret to making science interesting without losing the accuracy or validity of the scientific knowledge being transmitted?

Peter: The basic problem is how to make science accessible and intriguing, while at the same time being informative and honest, for a much broader audience. The fact of the matter is that most of us think subjectively, but are fundamentally “self referential” and are much more interested in reading “people stories” with high emotional impact than anything that deals with objective reality. This is, of course, the antithesis of the way science works. Stories about medical advances that we can relate to personally are popular. Anything that has an ethical or religious component is likely to draw people in. However, do people want to confront the fact that the cost of keeping people alive on artificial support systems or warehoused in nursing homes after effective brain death inevitably draws down on the resources that might be used for preventive medicine in the young, or to educate the next generation? Are we prepared to attack the difficult issues?

George: What is your own experience of popularizing science?

Peter Doherty has written popular works on science.

Peter: I recently wrote a book for the general public about how science works. The professional editors who helped me structure this from my first draft were well-educated people with background in the humanities and journalism. Basically, I was amazed by how much of it had to be dumbed-down. I also have the sense that the level of general science writing and complexity of thought that would have been thought acceptable 20 years ago is now considered to be too demanding. You could try to bring science writing closer to the reality of how science actually works, but I suspect that many people would have little interest in reading such responsible accounts. What we have to attempt is to tell good, honest science stories in an entertaining and engaging way. Many of the best, generally accessible books about science are now written by journalists rather than by scientists. A well-sourced and responsible science novel that grabbed the popular imagination or the interest of the young, in the way that Harry Potter or the Da Vinci Code does, would be one way to go. I can’t identify anyone who is succeeding at doing this. In fact, we have people like Michael Crichton who have made a career of doing exactly the opposite. Otherwise, I think the best way of getting science across is via the web and the visual media. The problem there is in ensuring that the material is honestly presented.

George: How do you see the overall quality of science journalism nowadays?

Peter: Overall, there are positive and negative trends. The world of ideas is on the back burner for many. When we might formerly have had 5 or 10 spare minutes to think, we now use that time to call someone on our cell phone. Celebrity rules over substance, and our societies are increasingly dominated by a sort of mindless consumption and low mercantilism that is deeply depressing. On the positive side, there is broad interest in preserving the environment, maintaining air quality and so forth that wasn’t around 30 years ago. How do we build on this type of dynamic? How do we induce people to place much greater value on reality and the exercise of reason? The problem of getting science across is just part of this broader phenomenon.

Peter Doherty on a visit earlier this year at Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland.