Who will protect scientists?

In one of the issues of TrV-Nauka there was a small discussion about whether press services are needed in scientific institutes. The conversation was mainly about what good press services can do for journalists. However, few people remembered why scientists need press services. The conflict with the film on the Kultura TV channel, which is being actively discussed today, is in its own way a “negative” example of what a good press service could theoretically do for Maria Mednikova.

Let me start with the fact that there is very little popular science cinema in Russia. I’ll make a reservation: in this case, I mean a film that would consistently and logically present scientific information about the world around us, concepts and even hypotheses. The key words are “consistently” and “logical”. Those films that I saw tried to “capture” the viewer with bright pictures flashing in clip mode, a menacing voice of the presenter and loud words like “unique discovery” and “terrible disaster”. But none of them (almost) had the goal of explaining something to a person in front of the TV, showing the interconnections of phenomena and explaining why scientists think this way and not otherwise.

The reason is probably that the creators of these films are accustomed to thinking not in concepts, but in images, and these images mostly come from popular culture and partly from almost mythological ideas about reality. Within the framework of such thinking, there really is no criterion of “proven” or “unproven,” but only different “opinions” about a phenomenon.

This, unfortunately, is our reality, and we have to reckon with it. This means that when agreeing to participate in the filming of a popular science film, a scientist must understand that the film he sees at the end of the process may not at all reflect his understanding of the phenomenon. At best, she will only include his words as one of the possible points of view. At worst, from the entire interview only those fragments that fit well into the plot of the film will be selected.

In this situation, situations like the one that happened with Maria Mednikova are inevitable. To combat them, they offer different methods - from a complete refusal to give interviews on television to the requirement to agree on the script before releasing the film on the air and providing written guarantees. It is also proposed to create a “black list” of media outlets found to be yellowish and distorted, which scientists can use as a guide.

All of these options (except for the first) have one drawback - they all require a lot of time and effort. The script must be read and corrected (and this is provided that the director agrees to present it), and “black lists” must be created and maintained by someone. And it is here that the press services have a small but very important function, which hardly anyone can perform better and more effectively - to guide the scientists of their organization in the world of media and at the same time serve as a “barrier” for unscrupulous journalists.

The scheme is simple. After a request for an interview, the press secretary makes inquiries about the company, program and channel for which the film will be made. It is quite rare that information cannot be found at all: even if the channel does not publish films in the public domain, they are probably available on file sharing services. Further, the director and the TV channel can be recommended or not recommended for cooperation, leaving the choice to the scientist in controversial cases. If a decision is made to refuse an interview, the press secretary will also do so. The obvious advantage of the scheme is that the scientist himself does not need to waste his time (and sometimes nerves) on determining whether he can or cannot cooperate with the TV channel.

True, in a case similar to what happened with Maria Mednikova, even such a scheme might not have worked - the authority of the Kultura TV channel is great enough that any press secretary’s internal “level of alertness” would decrease. But they learn from mistakes.

Olga Zakutnyaya,
press secretary IKI RAN