WHEN the BSE crisis deepened in the 1990s, John Gummer, then minister of agriculture, invited the press to , claiming that scientists had advised it was . In fact, they had said there was a low but “theoretical” risk of getting BSE, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a neurological disease of cattle.

But this more nuanced take didn’t reach the UK public at the time because the scientists giving it were hidden from view, just as they were during later crises, such as the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption in Iceland or the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. Gummer was glossing over the scientific uncertainties to deliver a clear “message” that was convenient for the UK beef trade. As a result, the public were misled and trust in science suffered.

To avoid this in the future, there needs to be a clearer separation between science communication and government communication, so the public can hear science directly from those doing it.

One of the few positives in the pandemic was seeing so many leading scientists on our TV screens. While the UK prime minister Boris Johnson used the Downing Street press conferences to deliver key policy decisions and “messaging”, he was flanked by chief scientific advisor Patrick Vallance and chief medical officer Chris Whitty who summarised new data and answered media and public questions on the science. This was science communication at its best when most needed and it was a hit with the public. at times as the pandemic unfolded.

Despite this, when the government spin machine got too involved, things got less sciency and more political. As head of the Science Media Centre, an independent organisation promoting scientific literacy in reporting, I lost count of the times I lined up briefings on pandemic-related findings with a panel of great researchers only to turn on a news broadcast and hear ministers announce those findings early. The result: coverage by political journalists with little science but often with government spin.

That wasn’t the only problem during the pandemic. a from that would impact us all without making scientific data they relied on available for others to assess.

Even more worryingly, in a , Lee Cain, Johnson’s former director of communications, called for a more centralised structure to ensure clear single “messaging” on issues like covid-19. That comms officers are desperate to control the “narrative” in a national crisis is nothing new. But such calls only bolster the case for ensuring science is presented independent of government announcements.

Luckily, we have a precedent. After years of complaints about the way official UK statistics on everything from crime to unemployment were being spun by politicians, campaigners finally convinced the government to address this in the . The result is that figures about our national life are first published as raw data by organisations like the Office for National Statistics. Politicians can comment on these figures like the rest of us, but taking the initial communication away from ministers means we see the numbers without political spin.

Applying this idea more widely would be good for all of us. Critically, the system would also establish the principle that science needs to be impartial and free from politicisation.

The loss of control might be painful for government, but the benefits in terms of public trust in science would be worth it. As the pandemic has shown, that really can be a matter of life and death.

Fiona Fox is head of the Science Media Centre and author of Beyond the Hype

The celebrities lining up to give evidence at the hearings in London have been making the headlines, but the wider goal of the inquiry is to investigate press standards and explore how inaccurate reporting can damage the public interest.

I am not in favour of treating science as a special case, but I think it can be argued that some science stories are of such great public interest that the highest standards of journalism must apply.

The , of which I am the chief executive, was set up in the UK in 2002 to help scientists engage more effectively in the media storms around issues like the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and GM crops. The immediate aim was to persuade them to learn the rules of the media game rather than forever shout from the sidelines. Now that so many scientists have taken to the pitch, however, it’s refreshing to get the opportunity provided by the Leveson inquiry to step back and reflect on the ways that newspapers could cover science better.

When the press gets it wrong on science, the results can be devastating. The furore over MMR, which started in 1998 after a rogue doctor claimed , is the best known example of how poor reporting can cause harm. Vaccination rates dropped to 80 per cent and .

News values

The media was not solely responsible for the MMR scare, but some of the news values that caused the problem are alive and well: the appetite for a great scare story; the desire to overstate a claim made by one expert in a single small study; the reluctance to put one alarming piece of research into its wider, more revealing context; journalistic “balance” – which creates the impression of a significant divide in scientific opinion where there is none; the love of the maverick; and so on.

It’s my view that if you put the best scientists, science communicators and science journalists in a room it wouldn’t take long for them to agree on the basics of good medical science reporting.

A tick list would look something like the following. Every story on new research should include the sample size and highlight where it may be too small to draw general conclusions. Any increase in risk should be reported in absolute terms as well as percentages: for example, a “50 per cent increase” in risk or a “doubling” of risk could merely mean an increase from 1 in 1000 to 1.5 or 2 in 1000. A story about medical research should provide a realistic time frame for the work’s translation into a treatment or cure. It should emphasise what stage findings are at: if it is a small study in mice it is just the beginning; if it’s a huge clinical trial involving thousands of people it is more significant. Stories about shocking findings should include the wider context: the first study to find something unusual is inevitably very preliminary; the 50th study to show the same thing may be justifiably alarming. Articles should mention where the story has come from: a conference lecture, an interview with a scientist or a study in a peer-reviewed journal, for example.

Another concern is the sometimes misguided application of “balance” in science reporting. An obsession with including both sides of a story has often obscured the fact that the weight of scientific evidence lies firmly on one side – witness some coverage of climate change and GM crops.

Previous attempts at drafting guidelines for science reporting failed because they came from the scientific community, looking like tablets of stone handed down from a priesthood of scientists. But these days many science reporters agree that basic guidelines would protect them from the vagaries of their news editors’ preferences. The Science Media Centre has suggested that Leveson recommends this as well as making sure that newspapers include science in the training package for all reporters, editors and subeditors.

Extraordinary evidence

The inquiry invited examples of prominent stories that have turned out to be false. Sadly, science coverage is littered with these. Nine years ago, front-page headlines claimed that the first human clone had been born. The claims came from maverick scientists operating outside the mainstream, and in one case from a US sect called the Raelians. Of course the first human clone had not been born; there was no evidence the claim was true.

If the press were to hold back from reporting extraordinary claims until they found extraordinary evidence we would have a very different media landscape for science. Gone would be spurious stories about finding “the cure for” or “the cause of” our most common diseases. And we would never have had a massive scare over a safe vaccine based on a small single study not replicated anywhere else in the world.

I am not proposing that the media ignore big stories – after all, it’s only a matter of time until someone does clone a human. But the Science Media Centre is proposing that Leveson calls on the press to treat such stories with extra caution and demand strong evidence before printing them. Caution may simply mean putting these stories inside the paper rather than on the front page, ensuring that the voices of top scientists casting doubt on the findings are included, and following up stories with equally significant coverage if claims are refuted.

One suggestion is that all journalists using the word “cure” or “breakthrough” should agree to publish a long-term follow-up – a “batting average” – of how many ‘breakthroughs’ actually panned out. Unrealistic perhaps, but Leveson has given us our chance to dream.