According to today’s Sun newspaper there is now compelling evidence of life on the red planet. I was able to extract the facts from the sensation, something I imagine the average Sun reader will miss entirely. NASA have confirmed that methane is present in the Martian atmosphere in concentrations that require there to be an active source of methane on the planet. The prime candidates for such a source are vulcanism and microbes. End of story. And a great story at that. But in the Sun, the recipe is incomplete. Add in a dollop of sensation and a generous sprinkling of speculation, wild is best. Honestly, it’s on the front page, “Life On Mars“.
Why is it that stories, particularly science stories, must be reported this way? You may say that accessible and exciting science reporting is a good way to get the general public interested in such matters. Yet it is done in such a way that a decidedly wrong impression is often given. In the case of today’s Mars nonsense, the results are little more than harmless fun but given a more serious subject matter, the consequences can be disastrous. I’m thinking of food scares and even worse, medical scares. Following the irresponsible reporting of links between autism and the MMR injection, take up rates plummeted. The doctor whose flawed research was used to ignite that particular fire was stuck off but what happened to the journalists who, with their lazy, dumbed-down, badly researched, sensationalist tripe, fanned its flames into a deadly inferno. Nothing, of course.
Just think for a moment about the size of the problem. The vast majority of what is being told in the newspapers and on television, is edited, twisted and repackaged for the consumption in bite sized pieces, of the majority. And not to inform but to impress and astound.
