What is behind the fashion for sexy science writers, evidence-based reporting and beautiful data visualisations to fill airtime and column inches? Are science journalists getting a bad rap or do they deserve it? Should we defend the freedom of tabloid magazines such as ‘What Doctors Won’t Tell You’ to sow confusion about mainstream medicine? Or should we protect the public by calling on retailers to take these mad, bad mags off the shelves? Filmed at the Battle of Ideas with a panel of experts in the know, Dr Michael Fitzpatrick establishes the underlying problem, compellingly arguing that the real problem for science journalism is that science has become ‘the last man standing’. Policymakers avoid standing up for ideas and look to science to justify everything and journalists, we learn, have been lapping it up.
