FLOTSAM & JETSAM: WHEN SCIENCE, POLITICS, RELIGION & JOURNALISM MEET

Saturday, July 19, 2008

WHEN SCIENCE, POLITICS, RELIGION & JOURNALISM MEET

This is where journalism can help. What Suzan Mazur did is what journalists find themselves doing from time to time: snooping around the lab before they're invited. It is an effort often unappreciated by scientists, who typically feel they should control the amount, character, timing and wording of the knowledge they possess. But the reporter's point is not to provide a final or complete explanation, or to overturn existing ones, but simply to shine some light in the dark, in this case without fear of either funders or fundamentalists.