Comparison of popular press and primary literature
Much study has been done on the gap that exists between scientific popular press articles and the primary literature that they are trying to portray to the general public. The role of science journalists is to give the public an update on what scientists are doing to give them an idea of where their tax dollars are going, how the new knowledge might benefit them, and simply keeping the public current on high-profile and pivotal science. To accomplish this, they must keep in mind what the public wants in such an article to be able to understand it and enjoy it, but at the same time they must accurately describe the primary article so as not to give the public misinformation.
Natalie Angier from the New York Times wrote a fair description of the race for discovering the BRCA1 gene that causes familial cases of breast cancer. She discussed the competition research labs felt to achieve this high-profile finding for their own sakes, which is something you cannot learn from reading primary papers. She also gave a brief summary of the gene, the disease associated with it, and how this may benefit families that have an increased risk for breast cancer. What I would have hoped for more of in the article was a more detailed description of the methods utilized by the scientists. Her account only mentioned the use of large families with detailed family trees available to the scientists. For a longer newspaper article describing this pivotal finding, the popular press article described relatively little of the primary article other than the fact that the gene was finally sequenced.
Not only did I wish for more detail on the primary article itself, but I hoped that in its place there would be more of a framing of the article in the context of what the public would already know of the topic. There was no mention of how the competition between the scientists affected how much money was spent on repetitive science, which would reflect the number of tax dollars spent on non-productivity. Also I would have liked to see more mention of the sequencing of this gene in the context of the newly started Human Genome Project. This project was highly publicized in its effort to elucidate novel genes that could contribute to human disease, which certainly pertains to this finding that is closely linked to sequencing the human genome.
Site created by Jessica D. Kueck
Genetics 677 Assignment, Spring 2009
University of Wisconsin-Madison
