- Author: Nsikan Akpan
- Full Title: 1 How Science Works
- Type: #snippet✂️
- Document Tags: #sci_comms
- URL: https://academic-oup-com.ezproxy.bu.edu/book/44157/chapter/372344470
Highlights
- In this chapter, New York Public Radio health and science editor Nsikan Akpan discusses what every journalist needs to know about science and the people who practice it. Akpan offers a primer on how to read a science paper; explains why not all scientific papers are trustworthy; espouses the benefits of journal clubs as a way to steep oneself in the science fundamentals; explains why it’s important to understand not only what scientists do but also why they do it; and advises journalists to seek interviews with principal investigators and with junior scientists. This chapter will help readers come to understand science not merely as a method but as a mentality. (View Highlight)
- These overlapping mentalities explain why science and journalism are natural bedfellows. Science writers go a step beyond relaying “what happened” and dig into the “how” and the “why.” Science writing can explain why megafires keep striking California as dutifully as it explains lead contamination in a water supply. If journalism strives to uncover objective facts, what better field to report on than science, which is steeped in repeated observations and empirical data? (View Highlight)
- This industry standard ostensibly adds rigor, so that journals publish higher quality information. Preprints—manuscripts that have yet to undergo peer review—represent the first stage of this process: the assemblage of information into article form. (View Highlight)
- Policy groups and organizations, meanwhile, depend on their long-standing versions of preprints: white papers or summary reports. (View Highlight)
- Academic literature can be intimidating when you’re starting as a scientist or journalist. Reading over the jargon in scientific papers can feel like learning a new language, not to mention all the charts, graphs, and numbers. Each science discipline seems to come with its own rules and terminology, so it’s no surprise that approaching these papers can feel daunting. (View Highlight)
- This news-writing format calls for a punchy, barebones synopsis at the top of the story. That’s typically followed by a little background on what led up to the event. You will next find a “nutgraf”—a brief description of everything else to come in the story, including takeaways. After that, the writer typically unpacks the ins-and-outs of what took place, charting a stepwise descent to supplemental facts. The final lines might also offer a conclusion, such as future expectations (which are immaterial to the news itself) or an overarching point of view that puts the news event into a broader context. (View Highlight)
- Let’s now pivot to a scientific study. You start with a straightforward summary called an abstract. The Introduction section sketches out past studies that influenced this study before ending with what the new research has found. The Methods section walks readers through the ins and outs of how the research was conducted. The Results section offers up the deliverance, the endpoint of the journey. Meanwhile, the Discussion section provides the context for where the study sits in the field and the ever-important limitations of the research. It may also sketch out the broader implications of the findings. (View Highlight)
- The first is engaging with the readers’ or viewers’ perception of relevance and their morality: Why should they care about this story over the millions of pieces of content coursing through Twitter, Apple News, Instagram, Google News, TikTok, YouTube, and all the other media platforms on the internet. The second is tapping into their science identity—connecting with their inner science nerd while avoiding descriptions that might make them feel dumb or ostracized. The third key element is the opening’s aesthetic appeal: catching the media consumer with something enticing they don’t expect to see or hear. (View Highlight)