THINK LIKE A SCIENCE JOURNALIST:
I’ve been having many discussions recently about journalism and science journalism in this pandemic. One of my main points: Context is king, caveats are central.
Few stories illustrate that as clearly as today’s news of a #SARSCov2 re-infection.
I’ve been having many discussions recently about journalism and science journalism in this pandemic. One of my main points: Context is king, caveats are central.
Few stories illustrate that as clearly as today’s news of a #SARSCov2 re-infection.
The news itself seems simple: Scientists finally have good evidence that someone has been infected twice with the virus that causes #covid19:
One man, two infections. Simple story.
But what does it mean?
One man, two infections. Simple story.
But what does it mean?
You can take the view, as @K_G_Andersen does that there is basically nothing to be learnt from this story of one man and his two infections.
@K_G_Andersen But there is a ton of science journalism to be done and it is almost pure context and caveats.
@K_G_Andersen Some caveats first: This is one case out of more than 23 million reported #sarscov2 infections. Nothing in biology is 100% and if you have a sufficiently high number of events even rare things will crop up. That is an important concept we can explain to readers/viewers/listeners.
@K_G_Andersen Another caveat: There’s a lot we don’t know here. For instance: Was the man actually infectious the second time? Was he shedding infectious virus? Scientists are still trying to figure that out, trying to culture live virus from his samples.
@K_G_Andersen Context: How surprising would it be to have some people be re-infected? Not very, it turns out. “I think most virologists were waiting for this to happen and it was more of a question of when rather than if,” @DrCJ_Houldcroft told me.
@K_G_Andersen @DrCJ_Houldcroft Why? “It’s almost impossible to be protected completely from a reinfection, especially [with] upper respiratory tract viruses and bacteria,” @MarkSlifka told me. “We get reinfected all the time.”
@K_G_Andersen @DrCJ_Houldcroft @MarkSlifka Context: One of the authors of the study told me his conclusion was: “This case proves that at least some patients do not have life-long immunity.” @MarkSlifka thinks the opposite: The first infection protected the patient the 2nd time. Not from infection, but from disease!
@K_G_Andersen @DrCJ_Houldcroft @MarkSlifka So the question is: What does immunity mean? We use that word all the time, but do we mean immunity from infection, immunity from disease, immunity from death? All of those can exist. There is fascinating science here.
@K_G_Andersen @DrCJ_Houldcroft @MarkSlifka And finally, and most importantly, we are generally terrible at describing the PROCESS of science rather than just RESULTS. But this pandemic has shown again how important it is that we explain the process. And this story gives us plenty of opportunity to talk about process.
@K_G_Andersen @DrCJ_Houldcroft @MarkSlifka That is partly, because the process appears to have broken down in this instance. There is a press release but no preprint. Scientists (and journalists) were left scrambling for some pages posted on twitter. This, on a story, that was sure to generate headlines. It’s a disgrace.
@K_G_Andersen @DrCJ_Houldcroft @MarkSlifka As @angie_rasmussen told me: “It seems designed to stoke sensationalism by leaving all these provocative questions unanswered, some of which could probably be answered by just reading the paper and examining the figures."
@K_G_Andersen @DrCJ_Houldcroft @MarkSlifka @angie_rasmussen There is more of course, but it’s late and I just wanted to give an idea of how I as a science journalist think when I see a story like this. (Thanks to @nataliexdean, who I think came up with “Think like an epidemiologist”, which was so brilliant I’ve been wanting to copy it.):)
@K_G_Andersen @DrCJ_Houldcroft @MarkSlifka @angie_rasmussen @nataliexdean My story which touches on these points and a few others is here: sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/s…
