Journalism, Science and the MMR panic

Looking at the health panics sparked by media coverage of medical issues could make for a good subject for a dissertation. Journalists are often accused of simplifying complex issues when it comes to science. Journalism's habitual suspicion of authorities can also lead to a kneejerk rejection of what scientists and doctors say and a rather over-eager desire to unearth conspiracies and embrace maverick outsiders.

Case in point: the panic a few years back over whether the MMR vaccine (the jab to protect children against Measles, Mumps and Rubella) in some way caused autism. This story has been back in the news recently because the General Medical Council is currently hearing the defence of three doctors accused of serious professional misconduct in allegations made against the safety of the MMR vaccine. The best known of these doctors is Andrew Wakefield, whose claims about MMR and autism in the medical magazine The Lancet led to massive media attention and a major ongoing panic.

These days, the prevailing media opinion is that the vaccine is safe and that Wakefield has been discredited (though he still has his supporters). But a few years back the media took the opposite view, which led to lots of parents refusing to vaccinate their kids, which led to a resurgence of measles in particular (and measles can be a very dangerous disease).

Last Thursday (March 27th), Radio 4's Today Programme did a good follow-up on all this, interviewing Neil Dixon (chief exec of the medicial charity The King's Fund) and Fiona Fox (direct of the Science Media Centre, a group set up to press for better coverage of scientific issues in the media). You can listen to it again (until Thursday 3rd April) - the report's about six minutes long.

The basic angle of the report was - what have we (i.e. the media) learned from the whole MMR fuss. Dixon made the key point first - that prior to the panic we were getting to the point where measles in particular might have been eradicated in Britain, but because so many people stopped vaccinating, the disease was able to regain ground...

Fox has an interesting take on the whole thing. She criticises the media for simplifying issues but she also says scientists should have made more effort to engage with the media and correct mistakes and misapprehensions. She says that many avoided the media because they 'didn't like the way they framed the issue'. Her organisation sets out to get scientists in the media and to brief journalists on key scientific issues.

She makes one other interesting point which is very relevant to some of the issues you've been looking at with Rod. She criticises the journalistic approach of balance, suggesting that it mispresents things. For example, covering MMR and autism, journalists would give equal space to Andrew Wakefield and a scientist who disagreed with his conclusions.

Fox says that given that 99% of scientists thought the MMR vaccine was safe, balancing reports 50/50 is not appropriate. Instead, she says, out of 100 reports, one should feature Andew Wakefield and the other 99 should feature the more accepted view. That would be more representative.

If you want to look into all this further, the Science Media Centre is a good place to start. Six years ago now, they published a report (PDF) on the whole MMR panic, which is worth a look. There's a book length analysis of the whole affair, 'Health, Risk and The News: The MMR Vaccine and the Media' by Tammy Boyce, which is definitely worth reading if you're interested in this area.

(BTW - the pic is of Andrew Wakefield and is from the BBC site)