So Many Journals,So Few Enshrined
by Jon Turney
© 1997 by Jon Turney
So Many Journals,
So Few Enshrined
by Jon Turney
© 1997 by Jon Turney
(Issue 8 · posted May 16, 1997; archived May 30, 1997)
Superconductivity is more than a merely physical effect. It crops up in the media as well. Some channels for information are ultra-credible because everyone treats them as such, and once this kind of tacit agreement exists it is self-perpetuating. It also tends to exclude comment that does not pass down the charmed pathways laid down by this kind of agreement.
So it is with the blue-chip scientific journals. There are plenty of places to publish if you want your results to reach researchers in your own field. But if you want your science to be noticed in the wider world, then only a handful of titles will do. You already know which ones they are, and so do all your colleagues and competitors.
These journals have an unbeatable advantage over all the others: They are the ones that journalists notice. There are only half a dozen that really matter: the two natural science weeklies Nature and Science and the big four medical weeklies, two on each side of the Atlantic: The Lancet, The British Medical Journal, The New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Of course you might see your results in the newspapers if they appear first in Cell or the Astrophysical Journal, but it would be unwise to bet on it. The big six, or, more to the point, their weekly press releases, are far more likely to garner publicity. Scientists outside the U.S. and the UK even complain that they are rarely noticed in their own countries until they manage to publish a letter to Nature.
In some ways, this makes life very simple. Researchers know when they have really made it. And journalists have a ready source of stories. The newspaper writers assume that they don't need to check up on work in a peer-reviewed journal. Publication provides a suitable news peg. And they don't even have to read the paper. As said British journalist Tom Wilkie, former science editor on The Independent newspaper, there are two fundamental points in determining whether a story makes it or not. Can the journalist understand it? And can it be turned around quickly? "These two questions have a single answer: the press release," he said. "All the main journals now distribute press releases in advance of publication of the journals, drawing attention to the most newsworthy story, rewriting them in laymen's language, and providing telephone numbers for ease of contact to the original scientist. Actually reading the journal itself is becoming redundant."
Wilkie was speaking at a recent University College London open meeting that discussed the role of the major journals in representing science to the wider public. The meeting, organized by the college's Department of Science and Technology Studies, brought together the editors of two of the principal journals, Nature and The Lancet, together with journalists, scientists, and media watchers. All agreed that some aspects of the relationship between scientific and popular media are increasingly difficult to manage.
It may just be because of pressure from scientists and their institutions on the journals. Dr. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, explained how this comes across: "We have two papers under review at the moment about a very common neurological insult; they're not accepted; they're a long way from revision. On Tuesday I went to Oxford, and was given the press release for these papers, with the Lancet's name at the top, already written, already with the date on."
This kind of presumption is relatively easy to deal with. But what about the wider role of the journals when they have decided to publish? The problem is not just that all concerned have signed up to a circular argument: If a piece of research is significant it will be in Nature, or one of the other five; if it is in one of these journals, then it is probably significant. Some circles are virtuous, not vicious. After all, there has to be some way to deal with the extraordinary volume of contemporary scientific publication. But it is not entirely virtuous. It means that the main public media allow the public representation of science to be decided by a remarkably small number of people. But how do they choose?
Dr. Philip Campbell, editor of Nature since the end of 1995, is broadly satisfied with the current regime and denies that his journal's selection of papers is ever swayed by news values. Public policy interest certainly counts: "There's no question that if it's good science, and it's going to play a key role in some public policy issue of the time, we will take that into account," he declared. On the other hand, research about a new genetic linkage to a newsworthy disease would not appear in Nature unless the science was novel - a claim he backed up by admitting that he had just rejected just such a paper.
But even Campbell admitted to some concern about whether there are enough sources granted scientific credibility by the mass media: "Nature is a powerful voice. Are there enough other voices, commenting or offering supplementary information?"
Dr. Horton put the same point rather more forcefully. "What worries me most about the interaction between researchers, journalists, and editors is that we have an absence of criticism," he said. He had in mind not merely negative comment, but anyone licensed to act as a more general "science critic"; "I mean someone who acts as an informer, a mediator, a commentator, or an interpreter, somebody who perhaps judges what's out there in research."
The journals, in his view, don't fill the gaps that this leaves in public discussion of science. Nor, perhaps, should it be up to them to do so. He argues strongly that journal editors have no special authority to comment on science: "There's no doubt that to become an editor of a journal is the one career path in science for which you need no qualifications whatsoever." It is fine for them to write about research ethics or scientific integrity, but when they try to judge science, they are out of field, and should tread very carefully. He is especially critical of Marcia Angell of the New England Journal of Medicine for advancing the view that silicone breast implants pose few risks to women: "This seems to me very dangerous territory for journal editors to enter into."
But this leaves open how such debate can be conducted when authority is widely contested, scientists are trusted less and less, and the media are focused on the results featured in all those press releases, not on how they were arrived at, or whether they are valid.
Scientists don't help much either, according to Horton, when they habitually fuel the expectation that science provides certain knowledge and ignore the tentative findings that research typically delivers. "The reality is that we're dealing with an inherently uncertain enterprise, so there's a gap between the expectation that scientists create themselves and the reality of the science that's reported." This, he reckoned, is almost never reflected in the way research is reported in the media. "We obviously fail in the way we publish our research to get that issue across."
Nor do the media, in Britain at any rate, ask about the questions that determine research funding. Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was a glaring example here, he suggested. "Why is it only now that the efficacy of HRT in preventing heart disease is being examined, despite the fact that 30 percent of eligible women are taking HRT? Why is it only now we're worrying about whether there's any proof whatsoever that the effects on osteoporosis are worthwhile or not?" There always were questions about the motives behind research and who was setting the agenda, but "these are issues that are not played out in the media at all."
Whether they ever will be may depend on new voices breaking into the circuit that links the journals to the popular press. At the moment, their mutual dependence makes this unlikely. It is easy to call for a new cadre of science critics, but it was not clear from this discussion where they are going to come from. Any takers?
Jon Turney is Senior Lecturer in Science Communication at University College London, and the organizer of the University College London meeting on scientific journals and the public.
Andrzej Krauze is an illustrator, poster maker, cartoonist, and painter who illustrates regularly for HMS Beagle, The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, Bookseller and New Statesman.
For a different angle on the American medical journals, see Medical Journals: Deciding What's Newsworthy, What's Not in the Under the Microscope forum of the First Amendment Center.
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