It Ain't Necessarily So: How Media Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality [Hardcover]

David Murray (Author), Joel Schwartz (Author), Robert S. Lichter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 2001

Airplane crashes. The AIDS epidemic. Presidential election polls and voting results. Global warming. The latest cancer scare. All these news stories require scientific savvy first, to report, and then--for news consumers--to understand. It Ain't Necessarily So cuts through the miasma surrounding media reporting of scientific studies, surveys, and statistics. Whether the problem is bad science, media politics, or a simple lack of information or knowledge, this book gives news consumers the tools to penetrate the hype and dig out the facts. Don't stop flying, run to the doctor, or change your diet before reading It Ain't Necessarily So.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What should readers make of the news report stating that minority mortgage applications are refused twice as often as those of white applicants, when another one claims that their applications are approved 89% as often? How are we to evaluate the various scientific reports we come across every day? Washington, D.C.-based social scientists Murray, Schwartz and Lichter (Lichter is the co-author of Peepshow and other books) demonstrate how journalists can put a spin on research results to make them conform to preexisting beliefs, and, alternatively, how complicated findings can be easily and innocently misinterpreted. When politicians get hold of the news reports, the qualifiers found in the original research too often disappear as the pols seize upon a potentially troublesome finding and attempt to "do something about" it. Yet, as the authors fairly point out, the fault doesn't always lie with the messenger. Sometimes researchers use proxies instead of direct measurements, using income as a proxy for poverty, for example. And often, seemingly paradoxical results confuse everyone: a decline in the number of cases of a disease can still result in an increase in the percentage of total illnesses if other ailments have declined even more. The authors do a thorough job of pointing out the fallacies and errors that underlie much reporting on science such as widespread reports that male sperm counts have decreased over the decades (a good look at the evidence, they claim, shows the conclusion was based on insufficient figures). Readers from all walks of life will acquire a more critical eye from this thought-provoking examination of how science gets served up for our early-morning reading and postprandial evening news.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The intersection of media culture with scientific research does not often result in a better-informed public, according to Murray and coauthors Joel Schwarz and S. Robert Lichter. In a series of case studies, the three authors affiliated, respectively, with the Statistical Assessment Service, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for Media and Public Affairs illustrate what happens to scientific research as it becomes news. Scientists publish the results of their work as the first step in a process that includes dialog and further studies. Journalists seek stories that are exciting, controversial, and novel. All too often the resulting news articles are not good science. Sometimes, stories are reported prematurely, such as the 1989 coverage of nuclear cold fusion. Other times, startling statistics are offered without context, such as reporting the number of abductions of children without explaining the various categories of abduction used by the researchers. After reading this suggestive analysis, readers will come away wondering if it is possible to understand the world around us through the news media. Recommended for aspiring journalists and consumers of news. Judy Solberg, George Washington Univ. Lib., Washington, DC
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (March 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0742510956
• ISBN-13: 978-0742510951
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #901,154 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #73 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Current Events > Mass Media

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Facinating information, May 7, 2001

By 

D. Wolf "wolfd" (Fairfax, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: It Ain't Necessarily So: How Media Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality (Hardcover)

Murray and co. do an excellent job of explaining how the results of scientic inquiry are reported in the mass media. The authors avoid the easy out of blaming things on politically motivated journalists, and take a more interesting path. Sometimes what we read in the press is the result of poor reporting; sometimes it's poor science; and, on occasion it may be the reflection of a writer's personal agenda. The book tells the kinds of errors that occur (confusing correlation with causation, poor sampling, etc.)

What makes the book compelling is the anecdotes used to make the points. The stories of contradictory reporting of scientific make for peculiarly amusing reading.

By understanding the types of reporting problems and their causes, people can be more intelligently skeptical about what they read or hear.

27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Your Check Is In the Mail, August 8, 2001

By 

Allan from San Francisco (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: It Ain't Necessarily So: How Media Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality (Hardcover)

This is one of the most-used lies in the English language, and these authors demonstrate that another often-used whopper is "Studies Show That..." This book is a well-balanced and sensible expose of junk science and the misuse of "facts," especially by researchers and the mass media. But the authors do not claim anti-corporate bias as the only possible explanation. They show how the demands of journalists' jobs give them incentives to be lazy, careless, and all too quick to hype dramatic bad news in place of good news that isn't so interesting. Many actual facts are cited to prove the authors' points. One of the points they make by logical argument rather than factual proof, however, may be the most important of all: the intolerable smear that a researcher's "corporate funding" (which is often very tenuous, exercising little or no actual control over the researcher's activities) automatically invalidates his research! This tactic is often used today (as can be seen in one of the reviews below), but the only honest approach is to question a researcher's FINDINGS, not his MOTIVES. After all, as the authors point out, journalists (and certainly political activists) have their own agendas that give them strong incentives to fudge the truth; and the fact that their motivation is not pecuniary matters little to the only important question: how much truth is in what they say. Also, many researchers DO have a sort of vested interest of their own: they know that if their studies "prove" that a pressing problem exists, they'll get more funding to do further studies, so they won't actually have to go out and WORK for a living! Not surprisingly, their "studies" tend to find terrible problems everywhere. One gets the impression that there are so many new, horrendous health hazards now that a person would have to be lucky to reach old age. So why are people living longer and longer, if there are so many health dangers lurking everywhere? Read this excellent book and you won't be so quick to believe that all the junk science hype that's being quoted everywhere actually proves what it claims to prove.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Informative and instructional, September 10, 2002

By 

J Lee Harshbarger (Ypsilanti, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: It Ain't Necessarily So: How Media Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality (Hardcover)

There have been several books out lately about bias in the news, but they tend to focus on political bias. This book instead looks at the same concept--how news media have unwritten scripts that determine what is and what is not news, and how it is covered--but instead focuses on the reporting of research, both scientific and sociological. That's what makes this book worth reading even if you've read some others on media bias.

It was interesting to read about various reports on research, how seemingly conflicting reports came into being, how reports that are on the same topic would seem to get equal coverage but don't, how research with barely detectable results ends up being reported as earth-shattering discovery, and other such topics. The examples were informative, and the authors gave some tips on how to decipher what you read in the news...how to read between the lines, so to speak.

Some reviewers have dissed this book because the examples used are those which conservatives would find most satisfying to learn how media distorted research. Fortunately, most such reviewers have also acknowledged that the book is still worthy of reading due to the way it points out general methods for discerning accuracy in reporting. Still, I feel the "conservative bias" charge is unwarranted. Other books have documented well the powerful politically liberal scripts of mainstream news media; is it any surprise that there are so many examples of such bias in scientific reporting too? If news media carefully filter societal issues to only make their side look good, why would this not be done in reporting on research too? What I'm trying to say is, I am certain there are much more plentiful examples of this kind of thing for the conservative side. I would gladly welcome a book, though, that would reveal such shortcomings that would similarly satisfy liberals, for I simply want to know how things get distorted, whichever direction they get distorted.

My ranking of this book is a 3, which is "good" (see About Me for a complete description of my rating policy), meaning this is a book worth reading. Its weakness is that the authors' writing style is a bit dry and sometimes they repeat their point too much, making me mutter, "Okay, I get it already!" But these are minor drawbacks; the book is something consumers of news should definitely read.