The evolution of science reporting
If a scientist makes a discovery and no one is around to report it, did it actually happen?
This could have been the case for Palaeontologist Professor John Long, who made a remarkable discovery from a 380 million year-old fossil in the Kimberley, WA back in 2007.
“It’s one of those discoveries where you have a Eureka moment as a scientist where you’re looking at a fossil and it’s got a cluster of little bones…” he says.
“And the penny dropped, it was an embryo, the oldest embryo of any vertebrate animal on the planet by at least 200 million years.”
In a challenging media landscape gripped by the 24/7 news cycles, taking the time to dissect scientific breakthroughs is becoming a pipe dream for journalists.
Palaeontologist Professor John Long talks about his scientific Eureka moment.
Luckily for Professor Long, the Australian Science Media Centre (AusSMC) managed the launch of the story – and it skyrocketed.
The release in Adelaide, coinciding with the reopening of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, was linked through a satellite to London before the Queen, David Attenborough and other dignitaries, as well as hundreds of journalists
By the next day almost every media outlet had covered Professor Long’s discovery.
“If you’ve got something big like a dinosaur with huge ferocious teeth it’s easy to get the media involved,” he says.
“If you’ve got a fossil where you need to look under a microscope to see the significant parts of it you’ve got to give that little bit extra to get the media’s attention.”
According to Professor Long, he was one of the first scientists to benefit from the work of AusSMC.
For the past 10 years, the independent, not-for-profit service, based in Adelaide, has linked journalists and scientists to ensure important advancements reach the community.
Their latest project, Scimex – the Science Media Exchange – was launched today and is the breaking science news portal for Australia and New Zealand.
The face of Scimex
“What we’ve found is journalists are now more time poor than they ever have been before and they need support to cover science,” AusSMC CEO, Dr Susannah Elliott says.
“And on the other hand, scientists often find it quite hard to find avenues through to the media in amongst all the noise.
“So we knew we needed to create a meeting place where scientists and journalists come together.”
From bushfires to floods and coal seam gas to wind turbines, Scimex is a central hub providing journalists with embargoed research, media savvy experts, a multimedia library and new story pitches.
For scientists, the service is a shopfront where they can display their latest research.
Already 1,400 journalists and 3,000 scientists are registered for Scimex and are able to rapidly exchange information.
Minister Gail Gago MLC, who is also a Registered Nurse and holds a Bachelor of Science, spoke of the importance of science education at the Scimex launch.
Minister Gail Gago MLC
“Science is amongst humanities deepest and richest forms of knowledge,” she says.
“And communicating science doesn’t always sit comfortably with a five-second media grab or a snappy headline.
“The challenge for Scimex and our journalists is to find and spread those deeper messages.
“You never know which story will inspire the next Howard Florey who discovered penicillin and has saved 10’s of millions of peoples lives.”
Professor Long recalls the turn of the century when newspapers had weekly science liftouts.
Now, when scientific knowledge is more vital than ever, most major papers have cut science journalists.
“The biggest problem facing the world today – what is it? Is it climate change? Is it war? Is it poverty?” Professor Long asks.
“I don’t think so, these are all symptoms of one thing and that is irrationalism, it is lack of knowledge, when the answers are on a plate.
“We know what to do to solve most of these things but we just can’t.
“There’s either political barriers in the way or there’s a lack of will to take the science and run with it.”
In order to inform and empower the community, enabling science communication through platforms like Scimex is essential.