[MUSIC] So let's go to the next topic now, the science journalism in the online jungle. There is a huge variety of media out there, that covers science in one way or another for better or for ill. And the result of this of course is what you might call it, crisis of confidence by many readers. Do they believe the tweet from a former president? Do they believe what gets put into their feed on Facebook? Do they believe what they read in their local paper or watch on their cable news? So there's been a lot of research on this. There was a study in 2021 by the Poynter Institute for instance. They found that the most trusting readers in the world are the Finns, 65% of Finns say they believe most of what they read in most media. Okay, so who are the least trusting in the world do you think? >> Conservatives anywhere in the world? [LAUGH] I'm afraid to say Americans. >> How interesting. >> Only 29% of Americans say they trust what they read or hear for good reason perhaps. Now in this project, this Triska project of which this book is a part, there's been some lot of research survey data that's been done in Europe. And they interviewed more than 7000 people in seven countries on this issue of trust and disinformation. And interestingly they found that in all seven countries the press doesn't do too badly as when asked what institutions do you trust? Certainly in almost every country they trust the press more than they do social media. Surprise surprise. According to this, the most trusting of media are the french and Italians. >> Interesting. The least trusting are the Hungarians and Germans. Hungary, good reason I get that, Germany that's an interesting issue. So big variation, but what's really incredible to me in this research is that they asked people quote, do you think that people never really landed on the moon? Everything was recorded in tv studios? That's the question. Do you believe that 25% of Europeans surveyed think that, yeah, that's true, they never landed on the moon. Incredible. >> That is incredible. It's more incredible 35% of young people don't believe it. So I mean the extent it's we're not just talking on this trust issue about the problems of vaccine wars and and and anti-vaxxers and or climate. We're talking about basic facts of science that people don't know whether to believe. So anyway, this is kind of a long set up to the question I'm asking you. So what do you do about this trust issue? What does a science journalist do about it? How do you cope with it? >> Yeah, I mean that's such a big daunting important question. >> Yeah. >> So I think that in the digital age it has gotten a lot easier for people to cherry pick their information, which I think is one I love all kinds of things about the information access of the digital age. But it's undoubtedly true that people get to cherry pick their sources of information. I saw Anthony Fauci, I'm going to mention vaccines for a minute talking about the fact that if we had the amount of disinformation about vaccines that we have today, when they were vaccinated for polio, we would not have eradicated polio, right? >> Yeah. >> And I thought, yeah, that's probably true because I remember people were queuing up for polio vaccine. >> Right. >> No one was ever saying, my God, I'm not a polio vaccine. But I think a lot of that is because, you know, thanks to the corks of the internet, you do get to choose your sources of information for right or for wrong. And this came up early when I would talk to people in newspapers about the digital age because they would say what we're going to lose is the serendipity of information, right? You know, there's three television networks as there was during the polio times of the mid 20th century. >> Yeah. >> And then people read their newspaper. And the same situation applied in the Europe as well. >> That's right. And so you know, what's all around the world, people have these shared sources of information. >> Yeah. And and even if you were conservative, conspiracy minded, whatever, you were still reading all the same things. We don't do that as much now, right? We stay in our weird little Facebook groups. I mean, I don't, but I know people who do. >> All right. We pick our networks and sources of information and just to go further to your point in that regard our Axios which is a political focus news platform. They just published some results from the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania, which was looking at who has faith in public institutions regarding health. And they were able to show a very clear delineation between people who watched the extremely conservative media, like in the United States. This would be something like Newsmax or OAN. >> Or American news. Yes, or American News. 72% of the people who that was their only source of news had no faith in public health institutions. Yeah. >> It got a little better when you went to what they call moderately conservative, like Fox news. And then by if you shifted all the way down to mainstream news, you start seeing almost a complete reversal. And people who read The New York Times or the Washington Post or what we think is the more standard sources, tended to be more like 70% or so more belief in the public institutions, or even 80%. So you see that the news sources themselves, usually first it's going to say something about who you are right. I don't want to, I don't want to read the Washington post. I don't trust the Washington post. I'm going to go over to these sources. And then all these sources are going to tell me not to trust. And so just to quote what I thought was a fairly horrifying number in the United States, 25% of the people surveyed believed that the government was putting little chips into the Covid vaccines to control our minds. There's a part of me as a science journalist that just wants to go bang my head against a wall when I hear that or the 5G. Or you remember. >> [CROSSTALK] The 5G transmission towers >> That's right,that's exactly why they're transmitting COVID-19 or these things have little metal tags in them. And so now we're all magnetized and keys will stick to our forehead, which we can test that out right now. >> That's would be useful actually. Because I would quit losing my keys. [LAUGH] People buy into this and and there's a lot of work by really good social scientists like Dan Kahan at Yale that shows that for for me, I'm a science journalist. I like to look at 8 to 10 sources every day and then try to sift through it and figure out where I think reality approximates it, right? And there used to be a theory among science journalists that all we have to do is make sure these people were better educated. That they obviously had a science deficit. And if they didn't have the science deficit, they would all be rara science. And years of studying that shows that that's not true that tribalism is the first thing that shapes how you're going to receive information right over facts and information themselves. And so that poses for the fact minded science journalists a really big challenge. I can write for and I do write for science for The New York Times, but that's the audience that's already in the ballpark. So when we're talking about misinformation and disinformation, we're talking about that 20 to 25% right of people who really believe that keys will stick to your forehead or the government is mind controlling vaccines. >> Or nobody ever landed on the moon. >> Or nobody ever landed on the moon. And how do we reach that group? >> And what's the answer? >> And that is a law I believe that's a long game answer at this point. >> Did science journalists even have a role in that? I mean, you said education is not sufficient, but I mean it's a particular problem if you're living outside the US. Because these social media channels that you've just described are all owned by Americans. And so you can have debates in Congress about what to do or not to do about it. But people in Britain or Germany they don't have a vote on this. >> You know that's a really good point and then you have a platform like Facebook which certainly in the US we're criticizing today for all the misinformation that it has promoted and that, how do we regulate that? That's a multinational effect from a platform like Facebook. I don't know that journalists per se can change social media, right? I think that has to come from informed regulation, I think our job is to keep making sure that good information gets out there. And I think some of that is on us to not **** it up out the gate every time we get it wrong, going out the gate. We provide I went from grade to people who are going to use that, get it wrong. So there's more pressure on us than I think there used to be, to be really meticulous about getting these facts right. So it's incumbent upon a serious science journalist to get noticed to have what they write. So how in this torrent of media does science journalists get noticed? Get their article read or their video seen. >> Right, how do we make our stuff go viral in essence. Well, I mean in the current news cycle, some of the biggest stories and the stories that are at the front are going to be science stories, Covid 19 being a great example, right? I mean, when the wildfires in the West, the floods in Germany and Belgium right, which were climate change driven. Those guys leapt to the top of the news cycle because they're disrupting people's lives, right? We don't have to do anything but try to think in our case, tell those stories well and make clear the link to climate change right? So some of the news cycle itself, you actually see what's going on in the world around us driving interest in science. The challenge for us is twofold I think, one is not all stories are late lethal floods or destructive wildfires, right? There's a lot of science stories that don't have that natural sense of engagement. So, some of the challenge for us is how do we tell those stories? How do we pull people into stories that are really about basic bench science? How if I'm going to write a story, let's just say that it's about M RNA vaccines, the Moderna and Pfizer's vaccines are M RNA vaccines. And I want to explain ribonucleic acid and why it's such a useful tool in this situation. Well, just saying why ribonucleic acid is to some people is going to make them immediately go get another cup of coffee in another room and leave. So how do I pull them into my RNA story? Right, that's the pressure on me to make that an engaging story, which I may do by finding a quirky scientist or a really fascinating, bizarre experiment that showed this. Or trying to find ways to connect what's happening here at the bench to what's happening in your life, right? I mean all of those sort of storytelling pressures are on me, right. And then sometimes we can actually piggyback off the weird conspiracy theories to get out good information. When I was- >> You mean debanking. >> Yes, that's exactly right. And so early in the Covid pandemic, we were getting this flood of really crazy questions from readers that on dark. We're able in ways that we weren't before the digital age and this works for us, to have those direct conversations, right. And we can use some of the same tools we're talking about social media now, that all of these conspiracy, I'm going to call them wax because I'm completely biased on this point. But all these conspiracy wax are using social media and Tiktok and other Facebook and Twitter and whatever Linkedin tends to be basically boring. But some of these other right where you can do this sort of stuff, we should use them to write, take a clue, learn from the people who are doing that. And the other thing while I'm on this rant that I say to people all the time is, one of the things that works against us is you tend in the news business to think, well I already did that. I already told that story. Didn't we already write about climate change? Haven't we already covered vaccines? And so one of the ways in addition to changing that false balance equation that we have to think about is the fact that we have to repetitively get the information out right. Just keep saying it, because if you get enough information out in enough different ways, so that the facts themselves or the reality itself keeps intruding. Then you can get some people to hear the story that The Washington Post did in which they were looking at the nurses in West Virginia. I've seen nurses, CU nurses in West Virginia, a state that has huge vaccine and mask and even Covid denial. And the question at that story is, here are these nurses who have put their lives on the line to save people. And they had and watch people die on a daily basis and can they ever forgive their neighbors? I mean, so that's taking that whole question of misinformation and what's real and what's not real and putting it in a new way and putting it in a human way. And again, I mean, good journalism is not the cure for all ills, but there are roles we can play and should play and we should feel responsible about them. >> Okay, well so repetition matters, figuring out a way to do it without having your editor tell we already wrote that story. >> That's exactly right. >> Which is the problem. >> Yes. >> And one other point is for reader though brands matter, right? I mean, you were talking about, you may not trust this brand or that brand but, would it be correct to say that you are more likely to be able to trust a big brand than a small brand? Or is there any generalities that you can say for a reader- >> That's a good question, no, I mean, I don't necessarily I myself don't necessarily trust big brands or small small brands right. I mean, I don't trust Fox News and that's a big brand right? But I can look at some small, very smart publications Stat at The Boston Globe in their coverage of Covid 19 right? Or your science business publication or some of I have a friend in Switzerland who has started up as a digital science magazine and he's a very good journalist. So it's not the size, it's partly that you follow them enough that you start recognizing that the information itself is trustworthy. And I will say, journalists today have to vet their sources and journalists always have to vet their sources. But especially now it's on us to, is this a trustworthy sources? Is this publication a trustworthy source even is this journal and trustworthy source? Because out there in the great landscape of science journals, there are a lot of predatory journals, right? Where scientists just pay to get whatever were published, we have to do our homework to vet sources. And there is some probably more weight on readers and viewers and listeners and general consumers of information to do the same. It's not the brand, it's your own evidence telling you that this is trustworthy. [MUSIC]
