Science in the Media

I was reading this article that my physics professor has assigned and it totally reminded me of some of our discussions earlier in the semester. It was pretty much about how the public tends to have more faith in science portrayed in the media than any other subject, and it went on to give several examples and reasoning for why this is so. First of all, the general public has less knowledge about science then it does about sports and politics, so when football and political affairs are in the media the public is more critical of the reporter and the broadcasting if the facts aren’t straight. Because less is known about the scientific world and the verbiage is very complicated and unfamiliar, people tend to put more trust in this area of reporting. As in sports for example, they believe a network or editor would not put an unknowledgeable person in charge of reporting an issue they do not understand. The article discussed scientific inventions that were reported to the public as tremendous advances, when in fact they were not because they defied all the laws of physics. However, these people in charge of these projects advertised tremendous progress and they audiences were enthralled. They got caught up in the hype and excitement and bought into these inventions. In one particular example he mentioned, the inventors sited “achieved, world-known, published physicists” as experts, when actually they were unknown physicists experimenting in the same field with little achievement. But when the public hears that experts are verifying these inventions they tend to trust it, whether it be true or not because they do not have the knowledge of the subject or means to verify the information they receive. The author said this was the biggest issue due to the fact that it misrepresented science to the public. Science is generally held as a trustworthy institution, and when “frauds” enter into it and misrepresent the facts, it could change the public’s perception of science, in a negative way.

The article also went on to show how companies and reputable institutions buy into the hype. The author gave an example on how NASA, an very trusted and influential organization, invested in one of the scientists inventions concerning producing extremely large amounts of energy using very little to begin with. He explained that companies do this because they usually do not have to put much capital into it, and if it works the payoff is huge. However, he questions the organizations that invest because some of the projects they are investing in have zero payoff, and companies are still investing. He goes on to claim that this could be fraud, portraying something to the public that isn’t true, and through careless research is “tricking” the public. I thought this article was really interesting because at the beginning of the semester we discussed in class how science does hold some sort of power over the public. The public generally believes what is portrayed in the media as truth, and this article shows this is true, but that when represented by frauds can lead to a negative impact on the scientific world and its perception in the public.