I’ve been able to find two news stories online that go beyond the press release. Both quote Erik Trinkaus on backgrounding.

One quotes Trinkaus trying to explain how the research shows that genetic drift, not selection, was the important driver of skull evolution, with little success according to the straw poll I just conducted on a roomful of people. Both bury the information about genetic drift behind the craniometry-molecular dating agreement.

I’d have loved for this story to spur 100 good articles, but so far, we’ve only got one article that is sort of OK….

Perhaps I am being a bit tough, but I believe I am not wrong. The central message here is that press releases must offer insights into scientific process and must provide reasons for believing the discoveries the research asserts, and that this is fundamental. I hear you when you say, “you do have to write for the audience, and you do have to make it punchy enough for them to read it in the first place;” I spend a large part of my workday converting research into units interesting to and understandable by lay groups of various demographics, and I fully embrace what you say there!

But you are not hearing me: I say that you cannot have a punchy release if it fails to offer insights into the research. There are two problems: One is that this kind of story is alienating and seems irrelevant to a public audience. As I’m sure you know, the press release the institution writes is usually going to be the story the media outlet prints or broadcasts; it is rare for a reporter to talk to the researcher. The second problem is that a press release like this is insufficiently backgrounded to allow a reporter to write a timely, efficient story even if they do talk to the researcher. I spend some of my workday backgrounding reporters on other peoples’ astrophysics research, so I’m not unaware of how reporters approach their stories.

The institutional model for press releases like this is something along the lines of “let’s get some attention,” with the oft-heard mantra that there is no such thing as bad publicity. There is, and this kind of press release promotes that bad publicity - public annoyance at the arrogance of scientists and the institutions that employ them. I’m advocating reform, I’m saying the model is broken, and I’m not expecting you or Claudia to be happy about what I’m saying.

“Fossils in Kenya Challenge Linear Evolution?” Or “Kenyan archaeologist’s findings challenge Darwinian evolutionary theory?”

I think it would be possible…just maybe to not grab the audience with a cheap, false headline like that. Perhaps this would do better:

“Two species of early man co-existed” or “Kenyan archaeologist’s find supports ‘branching bush’ view of human evolution.”

It’s a matter of respecting the science, but more than that, understanding it. I have very little faith in the journalists who report on paleo finds, anthropological or otherwise. As many of my fellow science bloggers have lamented, the recent tiny pterosaur find from China was called a “dinosaur” by many media outlets.

Unacceptable! It takes only a Google search to understand that pterosaurs are NOT dinosaurs. It would be like calling a lizard a “crocodile.” How hard is it to get a little thing like that right? “Pterosaurs are not dinosaurs.” Revolutionary, I know!

Similarly, it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort to craft a headline that does not insult the science it claims to report on, and it doesn’t take a genius to explain to a lay audience that genetic drift is important in advancing our view of natural selection. It takes very little effort to educate people, but if you dumb something down to the point where it becomes untrue, or misrepresents the finding, then you’re hindering the public’s perception of whatever is being reported on.

Pterosaurs are not dinosaurs, and they’re not related to birds, either. People get that idea from newspapers and news websites, not from me, and not from actual paleontologists, and I can tell you that they don’t get that idea from the press releases, either.

The original point of a press release, after all, is to encourage other people to write about the story — so if a journalist picks up my 250 word tip and then talks to the researcher and writes a longer, more in-depth piece about it, that’s just fine with me.

I do agree that lay audiences can understand the science if you explain it well enough. But you do have to write for the audience, and you do have to make it punchy enough for them to read it in the first place. The most important thing is to tell them why they should care about it enough to read the story in the first place.

Andy Fell
UC Davis News Service

But I agree with you that the press release was botched. I like your “Moses Model” term. I might have to start using that. :-) I’ve stopped reading press releases about paleontology, and I just read about new discoveries on science blogs like yours or Brian’s. They’re much more in-depth. The media has to hire some trained scientists who can also write well. The writer must be able to take a complex idea (it’s actually that complex) and simply reword it, choosing those words carefully, to get the full breadth of the concept to be understandable to the “unwashed” masses.

And those masses are a lot more knowledgable, and eager to learn, than the media seems to think. Every time I’ve given a talk at the museum or a high school or wherever, people GET it, and I’m not dumbing anything down. With the right language, you can get people to understand how revolutionary it is that Velociraptor might be secondarily flightless. It’s not a hard concept, but the media doesn’t give the public any credit.

Also, I’m just appalled that scientific papers are not free access except for a few key places. BioOne is my nemesis.