On Monday, biotech company Moderna’s claim of positive results in COVID-19 vaccine trials was covered in various degrees of breathlessness on Fox News, NBC, CNN and PBS.
In Australia, there were stories in the ABC and The Sydney Morning Herald (and a mention in Crikey).
Billions of dollars were added to the value of the company almost instantly. Its shares jumped almost 20%.
However, the initial announcement came without revealing any of the underlying data. By Tuesday, vaccine experts were questioning the validity of the trial results.
As Professor William Haseltine, founder of cancer and HIV/AIDS research departments at Harvard Medical School, wrote in The Washington Post.
The Moderna announcement described a safety trial of its vaccine based on eight healthy participants. The claim was that in all eight people, the vaccine raised the levels of neutralising antibodies equivalent to those found in convalescent serum of those who recovered from COVID-19. What to make of that claim? Hard to say, because we have no sense of what those levels were.
He described the study as “publication by press release”.
Swiftly reporting each step on the journey toward the vaccine has been a staple for Australian outlets — this one included — since the crisis began, and not always with a healthy degree of skepticism.
So far in May, the ABC alone has featured the Moderna story; China’s search for “redemption” through a vaccine; the claims that companies Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE have begun “delivering doses of their experimental coronavirus vaccines for initial human testing” in the US; vaccine lessons taken from the swine flu; and the possibility that COVID-19 is already mutating and how that will affect the development of a vaccine.
“Of course, it’s understandable — people want coronavirus content, and more than that they want a sense of hope,” Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science’s Dr Rod Lamberts told Crikey.
“But increasingly we’re relying on the media to do some of that high-level sifting for us — sifting through what the research means, what stage it is at.”
The Australian Science Media Centre’s Dr Joseph Milton says there was more at stake than the noise of cluttered, over-hyped science reporting.
“The worst case scenario is that you can give false hope to people who are suffering,” he said. “And of course you can further erode public trust in science and journalism at a time when we need it most.”
As Crikey has previously reported, specialist reporting — like science and health — has been one of the biggest casualties in shrinking newsrooms.
“We now see so few journalists now with any kind of science background, so it’s very hard for them to do the necessary assessing of credibility or red flags of an announcement,” Milton said.
The COVID-19 crisis has continued and possibly accelerated the expansion of denialism and conspiracy theories as faith in institutions and experts continues to crumble.
However, Lamberts says useful and meaningful science reporting relied just as much on basic journalistic rigour as it does on expertise.
“You don’t necessarily need that kind of scientific background to properly interrogate people’s claims,” he said.
“Of course journalists are under great time pressure, answering to their editor, but we would just urge journalists to ask the follow-up question; ‘compared to what? Based on what data?’ That’s as important as a science degree.”
One feels that life has betrayed us as the worst of human stipidity and greed dominates motives and attitudes. We learned of ancient times, read of sages, saints, servants of civilised progress. The Hunnish types, not merely Attila, but murdering, thieving, occupying opressing ones everywhere, actually dominated, and the good ones were often martyred, murdered, exiled, marginalised, forgetten, unknowns as surely as the inventors of fire, wheels, glass, metal tools, writing, calculation. The world has not become very decent or honest or fair, but there is hope yet (is there? ) for some improvement. Unfortnately the power of greed, excess money, ambition, egofixation, inner needs for control and domination, all cancers by superstition and fantasy yet, are making truth hard to find. But journalists, the logical source of quick absorbable news and views are only paid serfs, under control, threat, surveillance, coercive restriction.., unless the are the keen and willing bumboys and joygirls of, say , Murdoch, employed specifically to thrust out a story to suit, filleted of fact.
185 (1) legislation.wa.gov.au – Western Australian legislation permits
enforcement of mandatory vaccinations.
Enforcement of requirement to undergo medical observation
or medical or other procedure.
(1) If an emergency officer gives a direction to a person under section
184 (1) (c) to undergo medical observation or medical examination or medical treatment or to be vaccinated, an emergency officer or police
officer may use reasonable force to ensure that the direction is complied
with including if necessary -…..
(A)…..to apprehend and detain person to whom direction applies. To undergo medical treatment or to be vaccinated in accordance with the direction…….
(B) to detain relevant person…..to undergo medical observation, medical
examination or medical treatment or to be vaccinated in accordance
with the direction
(C) to restrain the relevant person
The Future, if any.
We had compulsory chest x-rays in the 1950/60s purely as a result of an influx of Euroid refugees.
As far as compulsory medication goes, I won’t even mention fluoride or folic aid to flour.
And, if we won’t to consider additives in general, E numbers anyone?
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Thank you for this report, Charlie.
Emotions by themselves accomplish nothing. It’s how people respond to emotions that introduces the risks.
Governments have already incautiously spent money on inadequate tests for infection and antibodies, and some may buy or — worse — administer dangerous and under-tested vaccines candidates.
If that happens we may still be able to detect and recall a dangerous product before widespread harm is done. But the biggest risk may be in the social and economic actions we might take (or fail to take) while believing that a safe, effective vaccine will be released ‘real soon now’, when there is assurance of that at all.
I understand that journalists are time poor and under pressure etc, who isn’t.
A better explanation is that, as a profession, they just aren’t very smart.
Lambert’s last point goes to that. They don’t have to be scientists to understand a double blind experiment. I’m not, but I do. They just aren’t that smart.
DB wrote: A better explanation is that, as a profession, they just aren’t very smart.
They’re generally not science- or math-literate, DB, (‘data’ are quantitative facts, and no more a form of journalism than they are a field of science), their critical self-reflection is not well-rewarded but perversely their profession is better rewarded for wild conjectures and emotional reactions than for an honest report of ‘we don’t know yet’.
The limitations to science-savvy and critical thought of our journalistic profession place a cap on the science-literacy and critical thought on our public conversations.
While so many journalists are crying for defended freedoms and some are even defending in solidarity egregious non-journalists like Julian Assange, I’m not seeing nearly enough acknowledge how democracy and civic culture urgently need them to lift the intellectual and ethical bars of their own profession.