Science journalism: Battle of Ideas taster
In this taster, filmed at the Battle of Ideas festival, author and GP, Dr Michael Fitzpatrick explains that the problem for science journalism is a culture that expects science to act as ‘the last man standing’ to legitimate public policy. Policymakers avoid standing up for ideas and look to science to justify everything and journalists, we learn, have been lapping it up. Science, patients and public life are harmed he points out, by scientists who dodged the debate on MMR with Andrew Wakefield and the lily-livered campaigns to take the magazine, What Doctors Don’t Tell You, off supermarket shelves.
