I recently had my first taste of the dark side of science writing: the advertorial. I got to write a longish article for the purposes of what Insight publishers call ‘research dissemination.’ The idea is that a researcher wanting to get a bit of extra recognition amongst funding bodies can do that by paying to publish his or her work in a magazine targeted directly at funding decision makers.
Paul Fowler studies how feeding cows on land fertilised with environmental chemicals affects their reproductive health. Hopefully this will help us learn about how our own species is affected too.
My task was to interview Paul Fowler, clearly a man with a large brain and a genuine desire to solve real human problems. Fowler’s project, REEF, is interested in finding out if low level environmental chemicals harm female reproductive health – and ultimately – is there anything we can do to stop it, if it does?
A worthy cause. But journalists and writers can sometimes refer to this sort of writing as ‘the dark side’ since you are engaged to write an article with a predetermined point of view; i.e. that this person’s research is brilliant. If you happen not to think that once you’ve done a bit of digging around and finding out facts – well, tuff. You still have to make them sound brilliant.
On a parallel point, it’s often considered difficult to remain impartial and keep a discerning and critical point of view in science journalism, since the subject matter is often hard for the journalists themselves to understand. This often results in copy getting shown to the researchers doing the work being reported on for fact-checking purposes. But, as a recent article in The Guardian shows, this can be controversial.
Personally I don’t think it’s a big deal to show your copy to someone you’ve interviewed for fact-checking purposes – as long as that’s all it is. But I respect the opinions of hugely more experienced people than me, who say it can, and does, lead to sticky situations.
One way to potentially avoid this is to get clued up about science and check the facts yourself. There will always be situations where you don’t know everything about a subject you need to report on, but the more you digest and remember the better your journalistic skills are and the less you rely on experts.
That’s why I believe the odd advertorial type piece of work is probably no bad thing. It’s clear to everyone that these types of article are not objective journalism, but writing and researching them probably helps a journalist learn more about science as a whole.
Aren’t the great discoveries found by serendipity anyway?
Also, just in case anyone thinks I don’t like Paul Fowler’s work and I’m subtly trying to dis’ him: I’m not!