Science is a major enterprise in this society, involving big money ($30 billion a year on biomedical research alone) and partisan politics (e.g., the ongoing debate over federally funded fetal tissue research). Power struggles over the scientific agenda are part of the story, too -- scientists have long argued with one another, and, more recently, patients and animal rights activists have challenged medical researchers. If the battles over research dollars and scientific priorities seemed pitched during the '80s and early '90s, the meteoric rise of the new Speaker of the House and his philosophy of "less government and more freedom" promise to spark even fiercer fights. On the cusp of the twenty-first century, some in Washington are seriously considering cutting one of every four public dollars now earmarked for science.

In this potentially contentious environment, the need for a well-funded and hard-hitting science beat is more urgent than ever. Yet the beat may be suffering a declining degree of support from the news industry, according to a 1992 report by the Scientists' Institute for Public Information (recently renamed the Media Resource Service). Half of all weekly science sections, it suggests, fell victim to the most recent recession -- dropping from a high of ninety-five in 1989 to forty-seven in 1992.

Funding and formats aside, science journalism, like science itself, is of several minds when it comes to the world of politics. Essayists who explore the plant, insect, and animal kingdoms, the cosmos and other natural wonders tend to eschew politics. Writers who focus on portraying the "scientist-as-genius" are more intrigued by the exceptional individual than they are by the impact of science on society. However, a growing number of journalists cover science as hard news. Like their colleagues on the politics and business desks, these science reporters relish the opportunity to sort through the political, economic, institutional, and social agendas influencing science and science policy. If there is truly a "new science journalism," it is this last group that deserves the mantle, since they are pushing the field well beyond its traditional boundaries.

A sampling of each of these approaches is found in the pages of The New Science Journalists -- an anthology of previously published newspaper and magazine articles and excerpts from books by an impressive roster of science writers. Almost without exception, the anthology's offerings make for reading of the most engaging sort.

One selection is a delightfully written essay by Natalie Angier of The New York Times that places human laziness in context by surveying the insect and animal kingdoms. Author Diane Ackerman artfully explains why leaves change colors. Paul Hoffman, the editor of Discover, explores the eccentricities of mathematician Paul Erdos in an article for The Atlantic Monthly. Similarly, John Seabrook of The New Yorker traverses the odd mind of Microsoft's Bill Gates in "E-Mail From Bill." A hard-hitting story by John Crewdson of the Chicago Tribune reveals fraud in one of the nation's most significant research studies on the treatment of breast cancer. Two reporters for The Hartford Courant, Robert S. Capers and Eric Lipton, retrace the series of human errors and the political and budgetary pressures that led a team of technicians to misshape the mirror for the Hubble telescope.

The book's editors are two professors at Chicago's DePaul University: Ted Anton, who teaches nonfiction writing, and Rick McCourt, a biologist. Both are accomplished science writers with an array of publishing and broadcast credits. Despite their considerable experience, the editors did not seize the challenge of making the anthology more than a collection of other people's work. Their introductory essay -- the book's only original contribution besides biographical sketches of the contributors -- is a missed opportunity. It fails to offer either a comprehensive overview of the field or to make a forthright statement about where the editors think it is headed. At times, it makes careless use of comments by various writers who have been interviewed by the editors.

One such quote comes from Jon Franklin, who has won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work at the Baltimore Evening Sun. "Science," he says, "has become far too capable of jumping onto political or social fads, like AIDS, or the greenhouse effect, or the ozone hole." The editors included this quote without critique or comment, and the reader can only assume that they believe that some of the attention paid to AIDS has been driven by a "social fad." Indeed, Anton and McCourt did not include one article on the biology of HIV or its brutal effects -- a surprising and unexplainable lapse for an anthology on the "new science journalism," a field that has come of age in tandem with this pandemic.

Most likely the absence of entries on HIV and AIDS can be explained by the editors' overall aversion to stories that get into the nitty-gritty of public health. In all fairness, Anton and McCourt are not alone in making this judgment. Even though most people come into direct contact with the world of science through medicine, many science journalists do not believe that serious medical writing falls within the purview of science journalism. Moreover, preeminent organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Association of Science Writers (NASW) are reluctant to consider science-based medical stories for their science writing awards, if the entries edge too close to the topic of human health. A number of influential journalists disagree, including Newsday's Laurie Garrett, who is now president of the NASW. She and like-minded journalists have pressed these organizations to acknowledge what is happening on the beat. At the core of this dispute is a fundamental disagreement over what constitutes science journalism. The central question: Should the traditional parameters set down by the "hard sciences" stand, or should a more expansive and more journalistic approach prevail?

 To its credit, The New Science Journalists recognizes the gutsy investigative reporting of the Chicago Tribune's Crewdson on scientific fraud, but it misses a number of other big stories in the controversial zone of the health sciences. The dramatic reemergence of tuberculosis -- a great scientific and social detective story -- is only touched on tangentially in an excellent story on antibiotics. Completely ignored are the biological underpinnings of psychiatric illness and neurological disorders, which have been written about by no less a literary master than Oliver Sacks and by the aforementioned Jon Franklin in a Pulitzer Prize-winning series in 1985. Bioethics also gets short shrift; the study of human sexuality and the causation of sexual orientation are likewise never mentioned. Stories about the impact of science policy on the poor, non-whites, and non-Americans are nowhere to be found, save one essay on global warming. From this list of excluded topics, one gets the sense that the editors are simply unfamiliar or uncomfortable with stories about how a variety of humans are affected by science. Remarkably, theris more to be found here on biodiversity than human diversity. Ants, bees, monkeys, chimps, and bats are fascinating and important scientific subjects, but so are ordinary human beings.

 In the end, The New Science Journalists suffers from an editorial myopia that limits its vision of science journalism. As Elissa Ely, a young doctor, explains in her Boston Globe essay, "Dreaming of Disconnecting a Respirator," "No action in the ICU is neutral." Clearly, Ely's insight pertains to actions taken in newsrooms and publishing houses, too.

cjr  |  archive  |  resources  |  contact  |  search  |  subscribe