Science journalists have done a great service by telling the public when the science is "settled," eg around climate change, the theory of evolution, etc. Those are areas in which there is a real scientific consensus. They do a disservice when they become advocates...
for one side or the other of a debate in which the science is not settled and there is no consensus. We are seeing way too much of that with the lab-leak hypothesis, in some cases outright cheerleading by science journalists and loose use of the term "conspiracy theory."
I taught science #journalism to grad students at two major universities for a number of years, and while we dissected false notions of "objectivity" we never said it was okay to become advocates for positions that have very little evidence either way. The pendulum...
has swung too far the other way, especially with issues like the lab-leak debate, and we need a course correction badly.
Oh, and in case anyone is wondering: I do not have an opinion on the origins of Covid-19 controversy. How could I when there is so little firm evidence for either side? But there is plenty of evidence that #China has suppressed data that would help figure it out. Why?

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More from @mbalter

8 Jul
I’ve now had a chance to read this piece in @bmj_latest by @thackerpd. A really good overview of where the #media, especially mainstream science #journalism, went wrong in its coverage of the Covid-19 origins issue from the very beginning. bmj.com/content/374/bm…
The subtitle, “did the media fall victim to a misinformation campaign?” Captures part of the problem; but the other part is that some reporters have now become part of the misinformation campaign, in the sense that they have become cheerleaders for the natural origins...
Hypothesis despite the clear lack of convincing evidence for either of the two leading hypotheses (natural origins vs. lab leak.) Also, too many reporters are still either overlooking or deliberately ignoring the considerable evidence that China has engaged in a...
Read 12 tweets

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