ABSTRACT

This chapter finds advice on how to ask questions about how scientists come up with their data. There are also a few additional journalistic malpractices that specifically apply to science journalism. The omission of facts to frame other facts in a certain way to support an agenda is another malpractice in science journalism. The chapter explains how some science journalists misinterpreted a journal paper's statistics when writing articles about cancer research. Misrepresenting findings or reporting wrong facts can also result in legal disputes. The misinterpretation went as far as to imply that cancer has nothing to do with environmental factors and people's lifestyles. In fact, the misrepresentation of facts and subsequent distortions of the scientific message also happen when journalists and scientists favour specific statistics to accomplish a goal, such as downplaying a risk. In statistics, several of the previous terms are clearly defined, such as significance, rate, and risk.