Today a panel of speakers at the World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) turned its attention to the embargo system. Are embargoes good for science journalists – and science – or not?

For the uninitiated, journals such as Nature and Science routinely give information to journalists about forthcoming academic publications before they are released to the wider world. The information is ‘under embargo’ until a set publication time – at which point newspapers, TV, newswires and the like are free to release their stories. Increasingly, academic institutions do the same sort of deals with the media, too.

The advantage for journalists is that it gives them more time to work on the story, talk to the researchers involved, and get the science right, argued panellist Geoff Watts, a BBC Radio 4 broadcaster.

It also reduces the chances that a poor science hack will miss a good story that their competitors cover, thus incurring the wrath of their news editor.

And it’s great for the journals too. By marshalling the coverage of their science papers, big journals can virtually guarantee that their brand is splashed all over the newspapers and the web at the same time every week. They’re happy; the journalists have an easier life, and arguably produce better stories; and the scientists involved can point to the coverage in their next grant application as evidence of the importance of and public interest in their work. Everyone’s a winner, right?

Wrong, says Vincent Kiernan, associate dean at Georgetown University, journalist, and journalism scholar.

Embargoes have become an addiction for journalists, he said, a set of “velvet handcuffs” that simply eats up time and resources that could be better spent digging up scoops. Not only does it turn journalists into propagandists for scientists and academic journals, it also reduces science to an artificial series of ‘eureka’ moments.

Indeed, there’s no evidence that stories written under embargo are any better than those which are not, he added. And in a time when media companies are struggling, the ones that will survive are those which provide unique content – not those who follow the pack and write the same stories about science that everyone else is writing.

He’s even written a book on the subject – Embargoed Science – and his advice to journalists is: “It’s time to walk away from the embargo. Just walk away.”

So what does Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet – which operates a very strict embargo policy – think? “I’m Richard,” he shouts, “I’m 47 and I’ve been addicted to embargoes for 14 years.”

In a remarkable diatribe, delivered at top volume and with tongue only slightly in cheek, Horton explained that embargoes were all “about power and control – my power to control you, turning journalists into agents of propaganda.”

Eyes abalaze, he continued, almost mocking the open-mouthed hacks in the audience: “Look at this story, don’t you want it? Your rival wants it!” he cried. “But you’ve sold your soul to publicity masquerading as science.”

Ultimately, getting rid of the embargo system would improve the quality of science journalism, he concluded, because it would force editors to employ reporters who actually knew what they were talking about, rather than simply being able to read and regurgitate a weekly press release at leisure.

So, an audience member asked him, if you think embargoes are so damaging to decent journalism, why doesn’t The Lancet get rid of them: “Are you afraid of the journalists?”

“No, I’m afraid of Tony [Kirby, The Lancet’s chief Rottweiler – er, press officer – and a former colleague of mine],” Horton replied. Despite the fact that the embargo system repels Horton, the reality is that his colleagues tell him it’s good for business, he explained.

But Horton has a plan. To test the hypothesis that embargoed journal papers get more, and better-quality, coverage in the popular press, he suggested that all the papers published by The Lancet over, say, a month or two, could be divided into two randomized groups. One set would be press released under embargo; the other merely published by the journal at the usual time.

The audience giggled uncertainly. But talking to Horton after the event, I challenged him to follow through with the plan. After all, it could turn into a fascinating experiment. He promised to discuss it with Tony – so let’s see what happens.

It’s a controversial claim and one that would be easy to dismiss if the man saying it hadn’t been Brian Deer. For those that don’t know Deer’s work at The Sunday Times and elsewhere, check out his articles on the MMR vaccine and Andrew Wakefield here. Deer says it took him months to dig behind the original paper to get the facts and he believes that a number of characteristics of medical research papers make them easy to falsify – such as the fact that patient records have to be anonymiszd to protect privacy. As a result, Deer claims clinical research is “chock full of charlatans”. Such “cheats” are not easy to spot, Deer says, though many eventually give themselves away because they get greedy.

The claim caused some ripples at the World Conference of Science Journalists session with former medics or medical journalists leaping to the defence of the medical profession. I doubt that Deer was suggesting that the majority of doctors are “cheats” – though that was how some attending the session interpreted his comments. Instead, I think he was raising an important point about the nature of clinical papers – that despite peer review, the academic process (particularly in clinical research) depends on trust and is open to abuse. And the extent of that abuse is difficult to gauge.

Has the press played up fears when reporting the swine flu epidemic? An unpublished study, commissioned by the European Centre for Disease prevention and Control, suggests not. Looking at swine flu coverage in 33 European countries between 27 April and 5 May, the analysis found that 94% of articles were either factual or supportive of measures being taken by international organisations such as the WHO or national governments. Just 4% criticized governments or international organisations for not doing enough.

The findings were presented by MIke Granatt, a partner in City of London consultancy Luther Pendragon and a former holder of various communications posts within the UK government at a session on swine flu at the WCSJ 2009.

The morning plenary of the World Conference of Science Journalists was Gearing up for Copenhagen and David KIng was on the panel, together with the Guardian’s Damian Carrington and climate scientist Rajendra Kumar Pachauri of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

So in the run up to Copenhagen what sort of coverage would King – former chief scientific adviser to the UK government and now advising Rwanda’s government – like to see? King says journalists need to focus on the approach being taken by leading nations in the run up to Copenhagen. To what extent, for example, is Canada’s position driven by the country’s desire to extract oil from its tar sands? King’s claim that no-one is covering this seems a bit strong – see the Nature News online special, for example, where we’ll be tracking national positions over the next few months. However, King is right to demand more analysis on this – he points out that both Japan and Canada have both recently got rid of their science advisers. Given their stances in the run up to Copenhagen – are these countries moving away from science and taking a more narrow stance based more simply on economic gain?

Neither journalists nor scientists are renown for sartorial sophistication but the crowd looked particularly dapper at the farewell reception held at the Governor’s house last night.

We arrived in an armada of tour buses, each of us holding fancy little personal invitations as the buses wound their way up the long drive to the impressive estate. The fleet parked in the courtyard but, before we were allowed to disembark, each bus was boarded by a security guard who examined our invitations.

I think we were all impressed with the residence. I certainly wasn’t expecting anything quite so spectacular. As we walked into the grand hall, a room in which you could fit at least a dozen family homes stacked upon each other, one of my colleagues, looking up and taking in the dramatic heights of the ceiling, turned to me and said: “Man, this place is like Versailles.”

The governor, Professor David de Kretser, who is affable and well-spoken (and a scientist himself) congratulated us on a successful conference and Wilson da Silva handed over the reigns to Pallab Ghosh of the BBC, who takes over as the new president of the World Federation of Science Journalists.

Then the crowd dispersed and milled about, exploring the premises. Each room seemed grander than the next but journalists don’t necessarily always meet grandeur with reverence. One of my colleagues was debating trying to take a seat upon the governor’s throne, a rather inviting chair with comfy-looking blue upholstery and lots of gold gilding. In the dining room, there was a very long table that could serve as an aircraft carrier if pressed into service. Along its length was a row of highly-polished candelabras, about a dozen of them. One delegate asked me how far down the table I thought he could slide, if he took a good running start. I sized him up. “About the fourth candelabra,” I told him. “But then, I’ve never been very good at physics. You might go a lot further than that.”

I think we were all a little giddy after such an intense week. There was plenty of laughter and warm camaraderie. Eventually we were called back to the buses and, as we were leaving, there were plenty of last-moment business card exchanges, handshakes and hugs. I’m leaving Melbourne with many new contacts, a lot of ambitious project ideas and a sense of belonging to a crew of committed, hard-working and wonderfully irreverent professionals.

I’ve been looking towards today’s sessions because they focus largely on science in developing countries. I’m particularly interested in these sessions because I’ll be in India this summer, where I’ll be focusing on renewable energy development in rural villages.

So, one of my goals at the conference has been to meet science journalists from developing countries in order to prepare myself for life and work in India.

This morning’s panel was particularly encouraging. It was a plenary session comprised of six journalists from developing countries (including India) discussing some of the challenges of reporting on science. Some of the challenges include a lack of infrastructure, low literacy levels, lack of government support and reticent scientists. There’s no doubt about it – science reporters in Africa, South America and Asia often have to do some slogging in order to get their job done. One journalist, a reporter from Zambia, mentioned that the Zambian government regularly keeps track of science journalists who travel outside the country in order to cover stories.

But does this hinder these journalists, or discourage them? Not a chance. In fact, my favourite remark was by Christina Scott, a South African journalist with SciDev.Net: “Science journalists in developing countries are like extremophile bacteria,” she quipped. “We’ve evolved to thrive in extreme environments.”

Extremophile Journalism. I like that. In fact, I’m thinking of having it printed on my business card.

The best part of conferences is, of course, the socializing. Not just for the free drinks and finger sandwiches (though I certainly appreciate them both), but because you get a chance to have great conversations with fascinating people.

On Tuesday, I attended a networking breakfast for science journalists from developing countries. I sat next to William a journalist in Kampala, Uganda who I caught up with again last night.

William covers environmental issues but, as he put it, environmental issues in Uganda are usually a manifestation of poor governance. So writing about science is a politically charged and, therefore, potentially dangerous endevour.

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Being in Australia, I’ve been keeping my eye out for quintessential Aussie research – and researchers. Today I met Marilyn Renfree, the Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Kangaroo Genomics. She studies developmental biology and uses wallabies as an animal model. This makes a lot of sense since newborn wallabies, being marsupials, are essentially in an embryonic state when they’re born. Unlike humans, they don’t becoming male or female until well after they’ve been born. So, for Marilyn, the wallaby is a perfect model for studying the endocrine pathways controlling sexual differentiation. Interesting, certainly. But what I really appreciated was that, instead of calling herself something unwieldy like a Developmental Endocrinologist, a Mammalian Endocrinologist or a Marsupial Physiologist she simply called herself a Wallaby-ologist. Crickey!

It’s been a morning of science and politics. Today’s opening session focused on the biasing of scientific information. Chris Mooney, Seed Magazine’s Washington correspondent and the author of The Republican War on Science (and the forthcoming Hurricane Wars) spoke about the need for scientists to better “frame” scientific issues so they’re easily digestible and something the public can engage in. Mooney argues this is an effective counter attack – Aussie rules, as he says – on the US Republican stance on issues like stem cell research and climate change.

“Frame”, however, is another word for “spin doctoring” – a term that doesn’t really sit well with me.

But Mooney argues people are “cognitive misers” – that’s to say that we’re willing to base our decisions, including policy decisions, on the cues and opinions we take from other people – people we designate as trusted experts — rather than muddling our way through the finer points of a complex issue. And, as Mooney rightly points out, this becomes a problem when the so-called experts are charismatic and have politically-driven agendas. So, while I balk at the idea of spinning science, I tend to agree with Mooney that scientists (and science journalists) protect the public from politically biased science. “Science,” as Mooney said, “is too important to stay out of politics.”

(As an aside, almost as if to illustrate this point, a few minutes walk from the conference site, the Australian Parliament is debating a bill to allow the use of therapeutic cloning – a bill that in all likelihood will pass, according to Victoria’s Minister for Innovation, John Brumbey, who introduced today’s session.)

Still, I’m not quite sure how I feel about the idea of scientists communicating through talking points, soundbites and buzzwords; about leading so-called information campaigns. Framing, in my opinion, runs the risk of becoming a form of propaganda if its goal is to design digestible opinions.

But, I do agree with Mooney: humans are cognitive misers – I definitely qualify as one much of the time. But I think this means that now, more than ever, the onus falls on science journalists to devote themselves to helping the public understanding complexity. If there’s a place for seducing the public’s senses, it’s in luring them into engaging in complex issues by creating appealing and entertaining ways of presenting science.