Climate Change: Science says X, media reports Y.
Matthew Glover at Renegade Conservatory Guy has created an infographic that portrays the inability of the media to accurately portray Science in an honest way. I won’t even go so far as to give the media the benefit of the doubt, in this case. Instead, I’ll simply say that media outlets often engage in sleazy tactics to sell their products. In general, mass media is not interested in communicating facts, and often spins stories with whatever their particular agenda may be.
In this case, we are talking about climate change. The infographic below illustrates just how poorly a job the media does at communicating Science to the general public. For those who are wondering, a Scientific consensus is NOT the same thing as a general consensus. What it means, in this context, is that 97% of climate scientists agree (based on evidence) that climate change is occurring. As you can see, the reporting that the media engages in is either dishonest at worst, or completely stupid at best. Granted many journalists do not have backgrounds in Science, but I am completely baffled as to why (aside from trying to sell more units) any journalist would want to purposefully misrepresent such an important issue.
I think the important lesson to learn from this, aside from the fact that the media cannot communicate most Science for their lives, is that Scientists have to interact more with the general public. Instead of relying on the media to hopefully do a decent job at pushing their research to the public, Scientists have to learn to write papers (and give public access to said papers) for the general public in mind. These issues of communication failures are yet another reason why open science is a good thing, and why increasing scientific literacy in the US is a good thing.
Check out the infographic below, courtesy of Renegade Conservatory Guy. Click the image for the full size PDF.
