Beyond the Hype - Fiona Fox ****

Fiona Fox runs the UK's Science Media Centre, which acts as a kind of interface between journalists and scientists to try to improve the reporting of science in the media. This is the story of that Centre and its major events.

As a science writer myself, it's a strong area of interest, and Fox puts across the story in a lively fashion. There is no doubt that there was a need for something like this from both sides. Many scientists are poor at communicating their work - yet it's essential that it is done well, both because that work is often publicly funded and to make sure the public understands the scientific view. Similarly, many journalists, particularly those without a science background, over-hype science results (especially when reporting initial, small-scale medical studies) and need help in accessing the right people to get the story straight.

As, for example, Covid and climate change demonstrate so clearly, science has a huge impact on our lives and fostering a better understanding is essential. Apart from these topics, Fox also covers a good range of others, from GM and animal experimentation to dealing with breaking news and the interplay between science and politics. The chapter I found most interesting was the one on the furore that exploded after some unwise, intended to be self-deprecating, remarks by a male scientist (Tim Hunt) about female scientists that was taken out of context and resulted in a major collapse of his career. Fox not only covers the Science Media Centre's involvement, but gives some valuable insights into the ways that the media reacted to the story.

The only thing I didn't like about the book is that it did sometimes feel like a book-length advertorial for the Science Media Centre. Perhaps this is inevitable in the circumstances - and Fox does note a few times when they got it wrong - but it might have been better if someone else had written this book to put a little distance between the author and the topic. Fox is clearly proud of the centre and what it has done, which is great - but, particularly in the introduction, her enthusiasm can come across as a little heavy-handed.

If you have an interest in the way science is communicated to the public, this is an essential read.

Paperback:

Kindle:
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free hereShort

Comments

It's On You - Nick Chater and George Loewenstein *****

Going on the cover you might think this was a political polemic - and admittedly there's an element of that - but the reason it's so good is quite different. It shows how behavioural economics and social psychology have led us astray by putting the focus way too much on individuals. A particular target is the concept of nudges which (as described in Brainjacking ) have been hugely over-rated. But overall the key problem ties to another psychological concept: framing. Huge kudos to both Nick Chater and George Loewenstein - a behavioural scientist and an economics and psychology professor - for having the guts to take on the flaws in their own earlier work and that of colleagues, because they make clear just how limited and potentially dangerous is the belief that individuals changing their behaviour can solve large-scale problems. The main thesis of the book is that there are two ways to approach the major problems we face - an 'i-frame' where we focus on the individual ...

Introducing Artificial Intelligence – Henry Brighton & Howard Selina ****

It is almost impossible to rate these relentlessly hip books – they are pure marmite*. The huge Introducing … series (a vast range of books covering everything from Quantum Theory to Islam), previously known as … for Beginners , puts across the message in a style that owes as much to Terry Gilliam and pop art as it does to popular science. Pretty well every page features large graphics with speech bubbles that are supposed to emphasise the point. Funnily, Introducing Artificial Intelligence is both a good and bad example of the series. Let’s get the bad bits out of the way first. The illustrators of these books are very variable, and I didn’t particularly like the pictures here. They did add something – the illustrations in these books always have a lot of information content, rather than being window dressing – but they seemed more detached from the text and rather lacking in the oomph the best versions have. The other real problem is that...

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader. We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard. This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...

Search This Blog