Sense About Science will be holding a Standing up for Science media workshop at Charles Darwin House (headquarters of the British Ecological Society) in London on Friday 15th June. This full day event is free and for early career researchers in all life, medical and bioengineering sciences (PhD students, post-docs or equivalent in first job).

During the workshop Sense about Science combine discussion about science-related controversies in media reporting with practical guidance and tips for how to deal with the media. Please find further information at http://www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/VoYS_Workshop_SOB_15th_Jun_2012.pdf
These workshops are very popular and places are limited. To apply send a CV and cover letter explaining your reasons for applying to Victoria Murphy. If you are a member of a Sense about Science sponsor organisation, please state in your application – sponsors hold five priority places.

Closing date for applications is Friday 1st June.

Consumers, voters and patients should demand evidence for scientific and medical claims to counter a tide of misinformation, say leading scientists and public figures.

Derren Brown, Jonathan Ross and Dara Ó Briain have joined with representatives of Mumsnet, patient groups and science bodies to back a national campaign, launched on 14th September by the science education charity Sense About Science. Its aim is to get more members of the public asking advertisers, companies, government bodies and other organisations to set out the evidence they have for their claims.

The public are bombarded with scientific and medical information: on advertising material, product websites, advice columns, campaign statements, celebrity health fads and policy announcements. Even where there is some regulation, in advertising or trading standards, claims that are not based on good evidence keep reappearing. The only way to address this is to equip people to ask questions about evidence for themselves. Over 5,000 scientists and hundreds of organisations are now on hand to help.

Tracey Brown, Director of Sense About Science, said: “We have been working with scientists and the public for some years to challenge misinformation, whether about the age of the earth, the causes of cancer, wifi radiation or homeopathy for malaria. It’s often very effective but no sooner is attention turned elsewhere than misleading claims creep back up again. To make a permanent difference, we need the public to be evidence hunters. We are delighted to have so many high-profile people asking their audiences to do this. Organisations that seek to persuade people about products or policies should expect questions about their evidence.”

Lord Krebs, Chair of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, said: “Everyone should have a mental tool kit for interpreting what they read in the media, see on TV, hear on the radio, or hear politicians or ‘experts’ claiming. A key part of the toolkit is asking for the evidence, and understanding how good the evidence is. Does prison deter re-offenders? Does wearing a cycle helmet help to reduce your chance of serious injury? Does culling badgers help to control TB? Does class size influence the academic achievement of pupils? Confident assertions are often made in the evidence-free zone, or are based on very weak evidence.”

Derren Brown, Illusionist, said: “To not just mindlessly believe what we’re told, but to know how to question and test a claim, has lifted us from the Dark Ages. And when the untested assertions of health products and celebrity endorsements, of psychics and faith healers, of politicians, religious leaders and journalists go routinely unquestioned, we are put at risk. But we need the understanding and the tools to question these claims in order know what we should believe. This campaign offers those resources to anyone wanting to know how to find out the truth.”

Síle Lane, Sense About Science: “In our experience, patients and consumers have been very effective at holding organisations to account for what they claim. People don’t, for example, have to become an epidemiologist to ask searching questions about the status of claims regarding mobile phones and cancer. They can ask whether evidence exists, how conclusions have been reached, whether there has been a fair test, whether results have been peer reviewed, replicated or challenged.”

The campaign is being launched alongside publication of results from an Ipsos MORI study conducted for Sense About Science, which found that over half of the British public understands that science is a process of testing and questioning.

The ThinkBIG report, which was released this week, is designed to provide information for local authorities, land managers, farmers and communities as to how they can contribute to the move towards landscape scale conservation outline in the Natural Environment White Paper, which was released earlier this month. ThinkBIG was written jointly by the statutory bodies, NGOs, land owners and farming communities that make up the England Biodiversity Group. The report in support of the move towards landscape scale conservation and ecosystem approach outlined in the recent Natural Environment White Paper provides advice on how to implement these ideas by reviewing case studies of landscape scale conservation and highlighting the lessons learned.

Maintaining and repairing ecosystems needs to be the focus of environmental projects and planning if ecosystem services are to continue benefiting the economy and society. Every sector of society and the economy has a role to play in landscape scale conservation, no matter how small their contribution is perceived to be.

The report gives some excellent examples of how landscape scale conservation can work in practice, demonstrating how each situation is different and requires a slightly different solution. Some of the most interesting and varied include:

Moors for the Future – This is a moorland restoration project in the Peak District and South Pennines, delivering a variety of ecosystem services such as erosion regulation and water regulation, and improving biodiversity of ground nesting birds and plants.

The Victoria Business Improvement District – This is a business led partnership to improve prospects for local wildlife, businesses and communities by expanding and enhancing green infrastructure. The project has reduced pollution, carbon dioxide emissions and flooding whilst simultaneously supporting invertebrate diversity and several bird species.

Cambourne New Town – Landscape scale conservation can also be included in new development projects such as Cambourne New Town which was built on agricultural land in Cambridgeshire. Careful planning has ensured that local residents are able to benefit from being reconnected with nature, whilst creation of new habitats has re-introduced several species that were once extinct in the area.

Although uniform guidelines to implement this sort of project would be hard to construct the report emphasises several fundamental components that must be in place for projects to be successful. These include accurate information on the current state of the environment, partnership and co-ordination between stakeholders and those involved in implementing the project, incentives and regulations, sensible strategies at the appropriate level, and conflict management. Connected and enhanced wildlife sites which are effectively protected and buffered from human activity are most likely to be successful. The success of many of the initiatives outlined in the Natural Environment White Paper will depend on the extent to which these general principles are adhered to.

The document is intended to provide background and supporting information for local authorities, land managers, farmers and communities, and highlights what different groups of people can start doing now to achieve the aims set out in Lawton’s review of protected areas ‘Making Space for Nature’, and the Natural Environment White Paper, including supporting the work of local conservation charities, managing farmland and woodland more sustainably and collaborating with others within local and national government to help ensure the success of environmental projects.

The Guardian, Observer and the Wellcome Trust have launched a new prize for budding science writers. In an article on the Guardian’s website, journalist Alok Jha launches the prize and gives a few tips on how to get started in writing about science.

Introducing the award, Alok Hja says, “in summary, we’re looking for an 800-word article from non-professional writers suitable for publication on guardian.co.uk, in the Guardian or The Observer. There will be two prizes, one for professional scientists and another for everyone else.”

“As long as you’re not already a professional writer or journalist you can enter this competition. To encourage more people to discuss and think about science, we want to bring brilliant new writing to the attention of all our readers.”

Full information about how to enter is on the Wellcome Trust website. The closing date is 20 May and the prize will be awarded in October.

The South Downs National Park, Britain’s newest National Park, is celebrating its first anniversary today, with bell-ringing, a celebratory walk and morris dancing. The National Park stretches from Winchester in Hampshire to Eastbourne in East Sussex and is the fourth largest National Park in England and Wales. Covering 1,600 square kilometres, 85% of the Park’s land is under cultivation.

The South Downs National Park was sanctioned by the Government in March 2009 and was formally designated one year later. Today, on the first anniversary of the Park’s creation, responsibility for planning decisions within the Park’s boundaries passes to the National Park Authority, which becomes the eighth largest planning authority in England. The Park Authority expects to deal with 4,000 planning applications per year, and whilst the Authority will take responsibility for setting a strategic visiton for the Park, day-to-day decisions will be delegated to the 15 local authorities within the Park.

Speaking in a BBC interview this morning, Margaret Paten, chair of the National Park Authority, said that ‘National Parks are good for the economy’, but made it clear that the creation of the National Park would not result in additional and uneccessary beaurocracy for the Park’s residents. The NPA will try to balance economic growth and investment with preserving and conserving the beauty of the landscape for people to enjoy.

Some residents have expressed concern about the additional pressures which will be placed on the land through increased visitor numbers. Speaking to the Guardian newspaper, an RSPB spokesman countered these fears, commenting on the importance of encouraging people to visit the National Park; “If people are going to appreciate the countryside, they have to be allowed to go and see what it’s like”.

See South Downs: bells ring out to celebrate Britain’s new national park (Guardian, 31st March)
and ‘Historic Day’ for South Downs National Park (BBC, 1st April)

Should news be presented as a ‘view from nowhere’ or should science journalists bring in their own opinions when reporting science stories? That was the central topic of a debate last night at the Royal Institution, chaired by Fiona Fox of the Science Media Centre. The panellists discussing the motion were Mark Henderson of the Times, Ceri Thomas, editor of the BBC R4 Today Programme, Steve Rayner, Professor of Science and Civilisation at Oxford University and Ed Yong, Information Manager at Cancer Research UK and a prominent communicator of science.

Mark Henderson viewed a science journalist’s job as absolutely to ’second guess what’s right’ and to be as accurate as possible when reporting. There’s a fundamental difference between balance and fairness, he said. Science journalists should strive to be fair, but lending equal weight to both sides of an argument when the evidence suggests otherwise is misleading. Mark suggested that having an opinion is helpful to good journalism, making reporters go the extra mile to research and find out the truth for themselves. As long as opinions are transparent they can be a force for good.

Ceri Thomas argued fundamentally against the idea that science journalists should take sides. This should happen no more than a political correspondent should take a side in favour of a particular political party, or a sports writer report in favour of a particular football team. Science doesn’t deserve special treatment. Yes, journalism should take the side of reason and evidence, and yes, this will often be in science’s favour, but scientists get it wrong if they think that reason and evidence are all that matters: emotional and irrational factors matter too, in reality, and so science needs to stand its ground in arguments with these. When news outlets such as the BBC give too much credence to the emotional/ irrational however, that’s when they are getting reporting wrong.

Steve Rayner made some very interesting points about how policy debates have been re-framed as debates about the quality of the science over the years. He highlighted climate change negotiations as a particular example, arguing that by 1992 climate change science, although flawed, provided evidence which was at least as strong as that which Governments use to justify making decisions on monetary and defence policy. Since then society has been debating the quality of the science but actually what we are really debating is how to move forward with difficult and differing policy options. It’s not the case that ‘more and better’ science will solve the seemingly intractable problem of how to tackle climate change, and actually, Steve argued, framing the solution to the problem in one particular way – via the Kyoto protocol – which he described as the result of ‘collusion’ by scientists and policy-makers – has prevented more innovative solutions being taken forward.

Ed Yong agreed largely with Mark Henderson, arguing that if a journalist didn’t provide analysis and context for their science report, someone else would – in the age of blogging and twitter, when anyone can have an opinion. It is the duty of journalists to state where the consenus lies. You can get a plurality of views without these necessarily having to be at extremes and at odds with one another. Overall, Ed argued, transparency and ‘taking sides with the truth’ were the most vital qualities in a piece of science journalism.

Amongst points raised through a very interesting discussion with the audience, Alok Jha, science writer with the Guardian, asked Mark whether it was in fact appropriate for science journalists to bring their opinions into their writing. This was fine if this was a writer trusted and known by the reader, but what if you were reading the work by someone you hadn’t come across before: how could you know whether their work was objective? Mark maintained that adding interpretation from the journalist could get the journalist, and the reader, closer to a nuanced understanding of the truth. Overall, Steve Rayner argued, we need to create a society where the public and policy-makers can make informed judgements themselves about science news, through general scientific literacy.

Mark Henderson is organising two more events in this series -one on genomics and one a post-Comprehensive Spending Review Q and A with David Willetts, Science Minister (26 October). See the RI website for details.

Living with Environmental Change, the £1 billion cross-Research Council and Government Department research initiative, has established a Citizens Advisory Forum. The Forum, established with the Sciencewise Expert Resource Centre (Sciencewise-ERC), will help to inform the aims of the programme by allowing the public to comment on areas of environmental change which particularly concern them.

(From the Society of Biology weekly policy news update: 15 September)

Engaging the public in decision-making about their local areas is key to making sure that landscapes of the future are ‘landscapes of desire’; that was the key message of yesterday’s BES event at the British Science Festival. We were joined by a number of excellent speakers who each adopted a different perspective on future landscapes, exploring how the multiple demands a growing population will place on these spaces can be modelled, and how our landscapes may be managed to take these into account. The Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management partnered the BES in organising the event.

Prof. Roy Haines-Young, University of Nottingham, began the session with an overview of his work on scenario-building as part of the National Ecosystem Assessment. Prof. Haines-Young discussed how backcasting and forecasting can be used to explore people’s ‘landscapes of fear’ and provide different models for the development of ‘landscapes of desire’. Prof. Haines-Young argued that scenario-building is as much about stakeholder engagement and talking to people, as it is about computational modelling.

The theme of public engagement continued through the talks of Francis Hesketh, from TEP Environmental Consultants and Landscape Architects, and Prof. David Miller, Macaulay Land Use Research Institute. Francis discussed how green infrastructure can be used to enhance the experiences of those living in an area – providing mental and physical health benefits – as well as providing services such as urban cooling and flood amelioration. David introduced participants to the Virtual Landscape Theatre – an innovative piece of technology which allows the public to ‘fly’ through a virtual landscape – and how it can be used to seek people’s views about how they would like to see areas near them develop.

Mark Felton, Natural England, introduced the concept of the ‘perfect storm’ and the multitude of factors which will impinge upon our landscapes beyond 2030: from a growing population to climate change, an increasing demand for meat and milk from an increasingly affluent population, and enhanced demand for water – with less available. Mark illustrated how one farmer, working with Natural England, in the River Till catchment in Northumbria, has been able to increase profits whilst entering his land into an agri-environment scheme and so managing his land sustainbly – a potential model for widespread agricultural land use into the future.

A lively question and answer session followed – with over 70 people in the audience. One question concerned the Prime Minister’s ‘Big Society’ agenda: how can communities which aren’t engaged in their natural environment at present be relied upon to manage it voluntarily. Won’t this simply lead to an increasing cycle of disengagement and degradation of green spaces? Roy Haines-Young, chairing the session, acknowledged this as a real difficulty. Many people have lost their connection with nature – the only thing to do to tackle this is for us, as scientists and those concerned about the environment, to get out to hard to reach communities and convince people of nature’s value.

Our press release, with further details about the event, is available from the BES website.

The Virtual Landscape Theatre will be appearing at the British Science Festival all week, and is free to visit.

Building public trust in science should be the scientific community’s top priority. That is the conclusion of an editorial in this week’s Nature (Vol 466: 1 July 2010), which should act as a rallying cry to researchers to engage with the public and policy-makers. Another editorial feature highlights the potential of science blogs to allow researchers to do this.

The stimulus for the editorial is a news feature (p24-25) examining the erosion of public trust in science in the wake of the ‘climategate’ controversies (leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at UEA and contention over reporting of glacial melting in the latest IPCC report). Despite concerns that public belief in the reality of climate change has taken a nosedive in recent months, the article suggests that the situation isn’t as dire as many researchers believe: a survey at Cardiff University this year indicated that 78% of UK residents believed that the climate was changing, compared to 91% in 2005. More than three quarters of respondents ascribed climate change at least in part to human activity. A recent BBC poll showed that although there was a drop from November 2009 to February 2010 in the proportion of those believing climate change is caused by human actions, those who had heard about the ‘climategate’ controversies had not shifted their opinion as a result. In fact, it’s more likely that the decline is attributable to the exceptionally cold winter experienced in the UK. In the words of one contributor to the article, Jon Krosnick, a social psychologist from Stanford, “the way people decide whether climate change is happening is by sticking their finger out the window”.

There’s no doubt that climate scientists are facing mounting attacks on the integrity of their research. What can the scientific community do to face these challenges robustly and ensure public support for action to tackle climate change? Sheila Jasanoff, a science-policy expert at Harvard (and a contributor to Monday night’s Royal Society Science Policy Centre Debate, covered on this blog) says that more communication is good, but warns against the simplistic ‘deficit model’ – that a problem can be solved simply by transferring more knowledge. Researchers should instead seek to include the public in decision-making, for example as members of advisory bodies.

The editorial piece urges scientists to recognise themselves as ‘public figures and honest brokers’, avoiding hype and over exaggeration and welcoming legitimate scepticism into debate. They must provide policy-makers and the public with clear, accurate and credible information, acknowledging uncertainties and nuances. Polls in the U.S. have consistently shown the public trust in scientists is second only to military leaders – and jointly tied with physicians. To maintain this level of trust scientists and scientific institutions must become more transparent and open about the scientific process and the current limitations of our knowledge.

From the editorial at www.SciDev.net:

Historians of science have long known that Gregor Mendel, the 19th century Augustinian monk who discovered how genetic traits are inherited, ‘fudged’ some of his data. His experimental methods were not as rigorous as they should have been and he failed to publish results of experiments that did not turn out as expected. Such revelations show that science is less exact than many people would like to believe. But they do not invalidate Mendel’s insights, which have become the cornerstone of modern genetics.

The same could be said of the ‘Climategate’ row that erupted last month after emails were hacked from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The emails suggest that some university researchers may have selected favourable data in their publications to boost arguments about the severity of climate change and its origins in human activity.

Opponents of action on climate change have leapt upon the emails and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been forced onto the defensive, with its officials condemning publication of the emails as an illegal act intended to discredit the panel’s work. But dismissing the emails on the grounds that they were obtained illegally misses the important point that they show science to be a more human process than is usually portrayed. The emails reveal that the scientists who wrote them were frustrated by the attacks of critics and, like Mendel, were anxious to sharpen the strength of their conclusions.

To gain public trust, scientists are coming under increasing pressure to be open about how they achieve their results. However, if researchers are to be more transparent and avoid accusations of tampering with data as being unscientific, the public must also accept how science is actually practised. To achieve this, scientists must do more to present a human face when explaining their processes and practices instead of hiding behind the claim that science is entirely objective.

Climategate is teaching the IPCC this lesson the hard way. By relying excessively on the apparent objectivity of its research assessments to give the panel its authority, it has made itself and its conclusions politically vulnerable. Now any criticism that challenges the objectivity of research used by the IPCC, however minor, undermines the panel’s reputation.

The IPCC, to its credit, tries hard to be transparent in its own handling of scientific evidence by making good use of communication channels. For instance, it logged and replied online to each of the estimated 300,000 comments received on its latest assessment report, published in 2007. But unless it is prepared to accept a more accurate picture of how scientific evidence is compiled, such transparency will not be sufficient.

The media, too, must improve its understanding and description of science. It often demands a black-and-white picture of scientific evidence, rather than a more nuanced description based on the social nature of scientific inquiry. This undervalues the true robustness of the scientific process and undermines the strength of political decisions based on conclusions emerging from it.