What Every Journalist Should Know About Science - Nieman Reports

It's not just science reporters who need to evaluate research and learn to tell good studies from bad... perhaps the biggest challenge facing today’s science journalists: Evaluating and interpreting complex and sometimes contradictory results at a time when so many news stories... rely on a fairly sophisticated understanding of science. That makes journalism’s role in developing public science literacy more crucial than ever...

science writers... should be as skeptical of scientists as political writers are of politicians.... journalists can no longer rely on peer review to be confident of a study’s legitimacy... reporters shouldn’t accept anything at face value. “Journalists should be covering the problems in science as a matter of routine...