Online Journalism Review

Focusing on the future of digital journalism

A journalist's guide to the scientific method

and why it's important
August 23, 2011 by Robert Niles

Why should journalists care about the scientific method? I suggested in my post
last week that journalism students should take a lab science class to learn
Some advice on
about the scientific method. Heres why I think thats so important to journalists
covering
today.
tragedies
The media has had a hard time
The scientific method provides a standard procedure through which scientists
reporting the search for a
gather, test and share information. Obviously, part of that should sound familiar
suspect in the Boston
because gathering and sharing information is what journalists do, too.
Marathon bombing More

But there are substantial differences between the scientific method and
journalism reporting. And while I believe that those differences did not affect Journalists too
journalisms viability when newspapers had an information monopoly in their quick to call
communities, our lack of standards for testing information is hurting us in Boston
todays more competitive information market. explosions a terrorist
attack?
Before I go any further, lets introduce the scientific method, for those readers With the rapid speed of today's
who arent familiar with it. Heres a good overview of the scientific method: media content production,
journalists do not have hours to
1. Find a topic or question worth exploring formulate More

2. Do some initial, background research to learn about your topic or question.

Read whats been written before. Boston
Marathon
3. Come up with a hypothesis. This is your best guess of what happened/is explosions
happening/will happen, based upon what you already know. remind journalists how to
handle social media
4. Test your hypothesis. You do this by collecting data, either through controlled The explosions at the Boston
experimentation or observation. Marathon Monday revealed
once again how new forms of
5. Look at and analyze your data. social media allow More

6. Based on your analysis, either accept or reject your hypothesis.

Journalism
7. Publish your information, including all relevant details on how you collected schools educate
and analyzed your data. more
employable students
The scientific method evolved over centuries as scientists looked for the best With the Columbia Graduate
ways to test their theories about why things are they way they are in nature. School of Journalism recently
Ultimately, science emerged from philosophy as scientists settled upon an hiring a new dean, media
empirical approach toward testing, rather than replying on what made sense critics have been More
to their ideas of logic.

Does Twitter put

But empirical analysis of information is just one part of the scientific method.
limitations on
Publication and open disclosure play essential roles, as well. Ultimately, the
discussions of
scientific method works because it not only provides a way to test data race?
empirically, but to test others tests, as well. That couldnt happen unless Twitter's rapid-fire capabilities
scientists shared their results, and told others how they obtained them. and its character limitations
often make for regrettable
Anyone whos done A/B testing on a website design before has used empirical outbursts More
data. But only when you share your results do they become part of public
knowledge, and not a mere trade secret. More The Repeater

The scientific method should matter to journalists because it represents

humanitys best method to date for observing and describing the world around
us. Frankly, without the scientific method for expanding technical knowledge,
the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution never would have happened.

Journalists are supposed to observe and describe the world around us, too. But
our methods dont begin to approach the rigor of the scientific method. We
simply dont have the same commonly accepted procedures for our work that
the science community uses. We do have a code of ethics, which provides
guidance for those who choose to follow it.

The SPJ codes first two lines strike me as most relevant here:

Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid
inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.

Diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to
respond to allegations of wrongdoing.

Unfortunately, neither the SPJ code nor any other widely accepted procedure in
journalism that I know of provides us any instruction on how to test the accuracy
of information we receive from sources. And the second half of the SPJs
statement suggests that the error we most should seek to avoid is distortion.

Ensuring that someone is quoted accurately is something very different than

ensuring that what they say is true. Looking through the rest of the SPJ code,
one sees a document focused on ensuring that a diversity of sources are
included and that they are portrayed fairly and in appropriate context. Those are
all noble goals, but dont raise journalism much above the level of really good
stenography.

Of course, to test, one must have a hypothesis to test. But we teach our
reporters not to take a point of view in a news story, whether it be our own or
one of our sources. Instead, we are to present multiple points of view, even
contradictory ones, and allow our readers to make whatever judgments they
see fit.

That method worked well when journalists controlled the flow of information in a
community, and we could silence voices by not including them. But thats not
the world we live in today. Communities dont have a single printing press
anymore they have as many printing presses as there are Internet-
connected people in that community. A code of ethics designed to promote the
flow of accurately quoted information no longer serves a society thats drowning
in information and needs a way to separate the important from the trivial, and
the truth from the lies.

Todays journalism ethics are the ethics of a profession serving yesterdays

information-starved communities. Today, we need a journalistic method that
serves communities seeking truth and relevance within the abundance of
information surrounding them.
 Scientists found a method that allowed them to accurately and truthfully
observe and report upon the world. We need to find a method that works for us,
as well. It doesnt need to be the same method that science uses were
reporting to different audiences with different daily needs. But we need
something that works better than the he-said, she-said, you-fall-asleep
stenography too many of us are peddling now.

And peer review will have to play an important role within that, as it does for the
scientific method. Journalists double-checking other journalists, as scientists do,
will help encourage better journalism and ultimately encourage more public trust
in our work. We dont acknowledge, much less test, each others work often
enough, and our reputation suffers for that.

Social networking is replacing journalism as the primary method for many

sources to deliver information to communities. If journalism is to survive, we
must transition from being a medium of information to becoming arbiters of that
information. Thats what the public needs from us now.

But to do that, with the accuracy, honesty and truthfulness to which our
profession should aspire, we need our own version of a scientific method to
guide us in those judgments.

Filed Under: Frontpage Tagged With: journalism education, reporting

About Robert Niles

Robert Niles is the former editor of OJR, and no longer
associated with the site. You may find him now at
http://www.sensibletalk.com.

Comments
91.213.150.1 says:
August 25, 2011 at 2:48 am

Excellent article!
A brief module on the Confirmation Bias and how to avoid it would also go
a long way.
Thanks,
Melissza (scientist)

SEARCH OJR

Search this website

Search

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK!
Follow 437 people are following Online
Journalism Review. Be the first
of your friends.
ABOUT US
View staff and contact information

BROWSE ARCHIVES
Browse Archives
Select Month

TOP TAGS
Entrepreneurial Journalism

grassroots journalism

Blog

journalism education

reporting

newsroom covergence

usability

writing

website design

multimedia

RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE COPYRIGHT 2017 NEWS THEME ON GENESIS FRAMEWORK WORDPRESS LOG IN