"Bollocks Watch" - feedback to evening event at #IASBB on proactive science stories

Time for another teeny blogpost on #IASBB. I think serialisation of my blog posts is likely to work better in terms of me actually getting stuff down ;)

This follows on from my post yesterday although the discussion mentioned below actually preceded the discussion mentioned in yesterday's post. At the evening reception for the 'Beyond Blogging' event hosted at the Wellcome Trust by Gallomanor / I'm a Scientist we heard feedback from discussions at the afternoon sessions, which were looking at ways to engage people slightly more actively with science (and scientists ... with public) via online activities.

The first person to report back was Paul whose group had come up with 'Bollocks Watch', a sort of 'proactive version' of some of the sites already in place that react to bad science, such as Behind the Headlines. No slight towards BtH is intended by my use of the probably a bit loaded terms 'reactive' and 'proactive'. I'm a huge fan of BtH and use it frequently at work - even went to the celebratory party a few weeks ago.

I think I'd like to hear more about this Bollocks Watch - the more I write up these mini posts the more I wish I'd been at the earlier part of the event.

My first reaction was - is this really that new? Everyone seems to be addressing the terrible reporting of science in the news™ (I'm not sure if we've stopped yet to notice if it's got better, or if we just notice the bad stuff without remembering the good).

Working for Diabetes UK I do tend to notice any bad stories about diabetes, and health stories - it's my job to find out about what's going on and what people will contact us about. Well-reported clear stories probably don't generate as many calls or emails, or a response that requires a sort of Behind the Headlines explanation. I've also written on this blog (somewhere towards the back) that sometimes the article is fine and people just misunderstand something in it. I wonder what the situation is for science stories that have nothing to do with health.

Anyway - I'm not pretending by any means that all is perfect in science communication via the newspapers etc. And I'm pretty sure we're going to put on our website a guide to spotting terrible science reporting in the news fairly soon ;-)

Paul's group's aim was to counter misinformation arising from bad science reporting (am vastly in favour of correcting misinformation obviously) but more by being creative - generating a story and getting it out there, in the hope of replacing the bad story with a good one. This would involve having a recognised 'brand' and creating an active message of positive stories to 'make the truth better than the fiction'. Paul talked a little about the viral strategies used by 4chan and popbitch (I'm not familiar with these sites to be honest) and having a site where the public can rate reporters, publications and their content (yikes!).

As always I wondered how this might fit in with ventures already in place to address misinformation - I don't know of any that are actively retaliating by trying to get a 'more correct' version into the press, or if that would work. Presumably the initial press release (assuming it's not a fiction itself) is going to be telling a reasonable story (I know, I know) - I'm just thinking aloud how a bad story would be reversed by a second press release.

Are journalists / newspapers / BBC embarrassed by being cited in Behind the Headlines? Does it lead to the story being amended?

On the topic of the reporting of statistical information in the news I'll be interested to see what happens during @scijourntrain's analysis of training opportunities in stats for non-science journalists, and other resources - I added a comment to his blogpost here which I think is relevant.