Part 3: How does math innumeracy affect the news?

Part 1 established the poor math skills common in the media industry.

Part 2 provided background on how this lack of skill came about and examples of mangled numerical reporting.

Part 3 explains how numerical ineptness leads to bad news reporting, and how organizations take advantage of naive reporters by dumbing down and manipulating the news to serve their own purposes.

Q: Journalists never seem to trust what a politician says - why do they trust doctors, scientists or other highly skilled "experts"?
A: As noted by Professor Edward Wasserman in part 1, they view "experts" in "reverential" terms and lack the skill to confidently ask skeptical questions of "experts". The No Train, No Gain folks wrote:

"We're used to the way politicians and bureaucrats hedge their words to make themselves look good. Because we're on guard and savvy to the politics of the language, we usually protect readers from the most self-serving versions of the truth.

But we're much less critical when it comes to quantified information."

The developer of math guidelines for the Poynter organization is quoted, saying

""reporters and editors are suckers for numbers. To them, a number looks solid, factual, more trustworthy than a fallible human source. And being numerically incompetent, they can't find the flaws in statistics and calculations. They can't tell the difference between a meaningless number and a significant one. The result is stories that are misleading and confusing at best and, at worst, flat out wrong."

Here is a simple and very common example: Around election time, we are inundated with polls. One week the poll says X has 51% to 49% for Y. A week later, the poll shows Y has 51% and X has 49%. The headline blares "Y TAKES THE LEAD!" The reporter flips through the Rolodex and grabs quotes from the usual suspects, "This is the turning point in our campaign," said Jay Walrus, Mr. Y's campaign manager. "We expected to see this transition occur as voters became more familiar with the story about Mr. X torturing little puppies when he was younger. Last year."'

Of course, the poll probably had a "margin of error" (at what confidence level is never specified) of +/- 4%. Since the estimates are all within the margin of error, the race remains a dead heat. We cannot pick one as the winner. This is elementary statistics. But poll results will be published weekly in the press during election seasons, and nearly always, will get the story wrong.

This common error is the same type that led to the incorrect news reports about 2006 being the hottest year on record. (I confirmed that by contacting the National Climate Data Center official in charge of compiling the data who agreed that the confidences interval of the estimates meant that we could not distinguish the "hottest" from amongst many different years and that the NCDC press release as misleading (intentionally, it turns out). A scientist at NASA says about a dozen years all qualify as "hottest" and they are spread throughout the 20th century. But do not expect a news reporter to understand this nuance.)

Another common problem for reporters is the inability to see that very technical published reports with a lot of mathematical symbols are often little more than exercises in finding spurious correlations. With our modern computers and data bases, a surprising number of research papers are written by data mining and looking for correlations in large mountains of data (a related problem is the often bogus use of meta-analysis methods to data mine other research reports). Today our computing horse power makes it easy to find correlations and associations galore - yet most are likely to be meaningless - but do make for great headlines. Data mining is so much easier than doing real research that, for some fields, may require getting dirty out in the field. Hence, data mining correlations and meta-analysis have become the preferred quick-and-not-so-dirty way of adding another paper to one's curricula vitae.

When reporters do not understand the simplest of math concepts, they may as well be writing fictional news reports. Or may be science fiction news reports ...

Q: How does the lack of math understanding impact science reporting?
A: Worse than we realize since there is the other side of the story - those who manufacture the press releases know that reporters are not too bright when it comes to numbers. When major research is published, the sponsor organization issues press releases summarizing the major claims but omits the statistics and uncertainty and other qualifiers that go along with the actual report. Journalists then write the story based on the baby-talk press release, add a few "he said, she said" quotes - but rarely read the actual journal article. Like the polar bear story in Part 2 the numbers do not even need to add up and the reporter will not notice.

The Royal Society - this is the U.K's national academy of science - issued guidelines for what scientists should plan to release to the media recommending that scientists dumb everything down so that the journalists can understand their work. The use of actual data is discouraged.

The media abstract should be no more than 100 words and aim to outline, to a lay audience, your research and any relevant findings. If possible try to highlight why the research is important, i.e. does your research discover something new? Does it change perceptions or previous understanding? If possible, try to link your research with to examples or analogies as this enables journalists to understand and relate to your work. Please avoid using excessive jargon or statistics, unless absolutely necessary.

(Source: Journal of the Royal Society, Interface - "J. R. Soc. Interface is a new international journal publishing articles from the interface between the physical sciences, including mathematics, and the life sciences.")

Examples of NASA and European Space Agency guidelines for dumbing down the story, are below.

While the scientists may have specified the details, assumptions, caveats, cautions and uncertainty about their work in the journal article, their employer leaves those out of the press release. And the scientists often fail to assert themselves in the PR loop to insure that their own employers issue accurate press releases.

A related problem is that reporters typically translate probability numbers into English prose (remember - avoid numbers!). A 60% probability becomes "significant" to a reporter or possibly even "strongly significant" even though it is neither. Or it becomes "likely", when its not really likely at all.

A research finding that a result is statistically "significant" or "highly significant" means that the result is "probably true", whereas the English equivalent of "significant" or "highly significant" means "important". Reporters often translate a science press release's "statistically significant" claim into "important breakthrough" even though the usage in stats is fundamentally different than English: they are not the same.

A paper was circulating about ways of conveying uncertainty and risk (to reporters and others) in the context of the International Panel on Climate Change (that paper led to these guidelines.) The first link notes the impreciseness of language used to dumb-down probability estimates, producing inappropriate conclusions by the media or the public regarding probabilities and event magnitudes.

The second link (see point #14) has a table translating probability estimates into reporter-speak: >66% is "likely", 33% to 66% as "About as likely as not" and so on. Stated another way, "likely" means there is a 2 in 3 chance our forecast is correct and a 1 in 3 chance we are wrong. Some in the climate science community have expressed reservations that the public view of climate catastrophe does not match the science and, per the above links, are working to address those short falls. Unfortunately, that is a challenging task when real data must be sanitized into baby-talk for the media, often by PR flaks who measure success by getting their press release noticed by focusing on the hype rather than the most likely outcome.

Q: Are all science press releases written this way?
A: I guess. Here's the European Space Agencies recommendation for writing science press releases:

"6. Simplify: A fundamental rule of written science communication is to make texts as simple as possible. Nowadays people simply do not have time for lengthy explanations.
7. Explain: It is always necessary to match the writing to the level of the target group, but never more so than in science writing. Remember that "the reader knows nothing".

Here is what a NASA representative has to say about this:

"Many observers of the science press have noted an increasing tendency for both press releases and printed stories about science topics to exaggerate the uniqueness and impact of new research. The writer of a press release does this to increase the probability that the media will cover the story, and the media reporter will go along with this hyperbole or perhaps expand it further in order to get the story approved for publication by editors or other gatekeepers."

Q:Who writes dumbed down science press releases on behalf of the scientists?
A: PR staff are often former journalists, people trained as journalists, and people sort of trained as journalists including discredited journalism majors like ex-NASA PR flak George Deutsch. They are trained in "Schools of Journalism and Mass Communications", the latter being a catch-call category for broadcast news and public relations functions. Former journalists know how the system works and are often the best at creating "effective" press releases that get noticed and re-published by the media. Science by press release is used specifically to influence the media into creating fake news reports often about fake results. And a surprising amount of what goes into a press relief is pure "blustery crap".

Q: Is the problem just science and tech reporting?
A: No. Numbers appear everywhere: health care, medicine, social security, the environment, safety topics, government spending, tax policy, economics and on an on. Every large organization knows that most reporters are math phobic and easily manipulated through press releases. Its not just corporations or government or researchers. Non-profits do it. Environmental activists do it. An enormous number of news stories began as a carefully constructed press release designed, typically, to appeal to emotions and devoid of actual data.

Some disguise their true motives by creating fake grassroots organizations to do their lobbying for them. In the PR biz, these are known as "astroturf" organizations doing "astroturf" marketing and lobbying, defined as "instant manufacturing of public support for a point of view in which either uninformed activists are recruited or means of deception are used to recruit them". Possibly founded by well intentioned individuals, the groups are funded by corporate interests, special-interest lobbying groups and the PR-firms they hire. Even some well known "authoritative" science web sites run by "real scientists" were originally started by astroturf PR firms. Many corporate interests lobby for laws that will benefit their own interests and often harm their competitors. They will often choose not to lobby for laws directly to avoid the obvious charge of self interest. Instead, they work through Astroturf organizations to shape public opinion and thence, use them to lobby politicians to create a regulatory environment favorable to their interests. (Contrary to public perception, many corporations love government regulation and effectively manage the regulatory process for their own ends.)

In the spring of 2008, the Alliance for Climate Change will launch a "grassroots" public relations campaign to push for government laws and regulations concerning carbon dioxide (especially). One of the primary beneficiaries of mandated carbon laws will be those who run "carbon-exchanges" and those who fund them and seek to profit from new carbon laws; this is part of the reason the ACC intends to spend a minimum of $300 million (with more likely) to run its public relations astroturf marketing program. The folks behind ACC include quite a cross section of former politicians, current political appointees and the financial firm Goldman Sachs, all of whom stand to profit enormously once carbon-trading is required by law.

Q: How else does this influence how press releases are written?
A: PR writers avoid numbers and substitute emotion, crisis, or calamity. Try to wrap it in to being "for the children" or some how involving "cute animals" that are endangered. Add hyperbole, spice with "breakthroughs!", stir with Astroturf activists.

Issue the press release well in advance of the availability of the data. (I suppose then, that this would not be a surprise at all.). This is known as "science by press release" (some of which make false claims via press release says Wesley Smith, lawyer and bioethicist.) "Science by press release" garners the media exposure without offering an opportunity for anyone to audit, verify and authenticate the work. Once it is on the newswire and distributed around the country in newspapers, television and radio newscasts, even if completely wrong, its now a fact as far as most of the public is concerned. Even if a retraction (say fixing the broken polar bear story described in Part 2) were issued, chances are that very few outlets would print the fix. It may be all wrong, but since it was "Seen on TV" it is now a fact.

Numbers-free and data-free news reports based on over hyped press releases is opinion writing, not news reporting.

Science by press release is very common in health care, industry and more recently it is appearing in the general sciences as well. Journalists turn off their thinking caps and regurgitate marketing hype without questioning any aspect of the message. This is sadly what passes as journalism now days - journalism has become marketing by a different name.

The lack of rigor in reporting is hardly confined to technical subjects either. Instapundit often has examples of of bad political reporting - where lazy reporters could not be bothered to fact check a politician's erroneous claims (fortunately, politicians never lie!) A former professor of journalism notes that reporters like to write - and facts get in the way of writing.

Q: Why don't scientists step up and point out when the media is making gross mistakes in science reporting?
Answer.

Q: This Astroturf marketing is interesting. What other steps do they take?
A: Astroturf marketing can be used as a follow on to the press release to add more spin to the press release hype. Astroturf marketeers can control the "Letters to the Editor" page of your local paper. Astroturf and other special interest groups routinely use phone calls and emails to encourage their followers to simultaneously write "Letters to the Editor" of the local paper. First, this emphasizes the local, "grassroots" nature of the effort. Second, the "Letters" editor typically receives more letters than they can use. They select which letters to publish, in part, by how many letters they receive on a topic. In the past few years, newspapers decided that readers wanted more viewpoints versus fewer viewpoints - and today they typically limit Letters to the Editor to 200 words or less. In effect, quantity of viewpoints is now more important than quality of viewpoints. This makes it easier than ever for Astroturf marketing to Letter-bomb the local paper in conjunction with over hyped press releases.

This "letter bombing" makes it easier to create the semblance of "consensus" and that naysayers are misguided outcasts.

The local news folks know full well they are being manipulated by PR flaks and letter-writing campaigns. Everyone seems to engage in "Wink, wink, nudge, nudge" - its just a big con game. But how many readers or TV viewers were aware of how their news is carefully manufactured? I did not know all this.

Q: What does the public think of all this?
There is an increasing awareness that the media exaggerates and overstates research findings and the confidence in those results and typically leaves out critical details such as study limitations. Read the comments on this NY Times item.

Q: What qualifications are required to be an environmental science journalist for CBS News?
A: None related to science or math. But you should have "great energy" (translation: young and good looking) and "You are wicked smart, funny, irreverent and hip, oozing enthusiasm and creative energy" (translation: young and good looking) and you'll need to travel a LOT (translation: young and good looking and probably unmarried too!). There is no requirement that candidates will have studied science, math, the environment or engineering - what they want is a good "story teller", preferably with a pre-determined point of view.

Fake but Accurate News
Math and statistical interpretation underly nearly every subject that matters today. But reporters not only lack the basic math skills, they are taught to avoid the data. Hard news becomes soft emotional news: lead with the anecdote and then write a bunch of "he said, she said" quotes to create text devoid of actual data that might bog down a good story. Even in a world of bloggers, hardly anyone actually verifies press articles that involve numbers (readers could very well be dumber than reporters when it comes to math).

The result is "fake but accurate" news reports shaping public opinion, leading to public policy set by politicians who generally know less math than the average person on the street.

The term "fake but accurate" news was coined after CBS News ran a poorly sourced story based on photocopies of Microsoft Word documents from about 1970. CBS defended itself with contortions saying that while the documents might be fake, the conclusion derived from the fake documents was accurate. Sort of an Alice-in-Wonderland verdict before the evidence approach to journalism.

Ultimately, public policy is settled by who shouts the loudest or creates the best emotional story about a child losing a puppy. Public policy is set by politicians who far too often appeal to emotions and consensus building. Journalists pride themselves on writing advocacy pieces to shape public policy (whether their thesis is true or not is unimportant). It is is very hard to provide a rational argument for or against a policy that has become devoid of mathematical understanding: Emotion usually wins in the Court of Public Opinion.

Q: Will media math skill deficiencies ever get fixed?
A: I guess not.

"There has been a movement, so far unsuccessful, here at my university to require students to pass a math test similar to the spelling and grammar test that they must pass to receive a degree from the journalism school."

(Source: Univ of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications.)

While some people seem aware of the problem, ultimately their real business is selling eye balls to advertisers. Diverse topics and accuracy are not as big a deal as they would like you to believe. All they need do is be "good enough" and have enough stories about Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears to keep selling eye balls to advertisers. TV News is equally bad, often featuring saturation coverage of "lost cute white chicks" - its good for the ratings, sells more eye balls, and it does not involve math.

Even the National Geographic Society has degraded itself. Their National Geographic Channel routinely passes off recreated events without identifying them as recreations - having the effect of compressing time and over stating the importance or urgency of findings. In some cases, they leave out facts that make their claims lopsided or even wrong - but that's okay because the NGC TV channel's goal is emotional content that sells eye balls to advertisers. The National Geographic today is about entertainment and no longer about stretching your mind.

Q: Knowing all this, why would anyone read the newspaper?
A: Because they are bored? News today is mostly infotainment. It is not about "news". The paper is also handy for starting up the wood stove, lining bird and pet rodent cages or as packing material in shipments. If I actually read the paper anymore, I'm certain I would find several articles every day in which the numbers have been removed, mangled or misinterpreted. (I do occasionally read it and I find mangled numbers each time I try to read it.)

My perspective on this is strongly influenced by some lousy reporting in my local paper. I had no idea I would find that most of the industry is aware of the problems, talks a lot about it, accomplishes little and carries on without change "since we've always done it that way". Of course, my local paper is one the newspapers that President Truman declared in 1948 to be one of the two worst newspapers in the country. Hey, we've always done it that way!

We would be better off reading the press releases ourselves, reading the original source material ourselves and learning to think for ourselves rather than being fed baby-talk, evidence-free reports that tell us "what the reader needs to know".

Which leads to the question, do we even need any of today's soft news reporters? There are a few reporters who do know math and who do know science. But not many. And it may not matter any more: Newspaper readership has been dropping for a very long time now, and may even be dropping more rapidly. My local paper has lost about 6% to 7% of it subscribers in the past couple of years. And the L.A. times announces a huge online/offline re-org calling itself "Web-stupid". None of their proposed measures addresses the issues I've discussed here - they still cannot or will not do the math. Their solution is to put bad reporting online, faster and more often. Whatever. Even when the story does not involve any math they get the headline completely wrong. Geez.

I'll have some additional comments in Part 4 (a lot shorter than this part!).

Afterword: And how should schools improve science knowledge? Would you believe by showing them science fiction TV shows instead of real science? Sigh.

Mister Snitch has a lot of interesting comments on the past and future of the news and the old fashioned command-and-control top-down view of monopoly newspapers. He advocates a Wiki model for news - the community is the news. I like it.'