3/30/2015
Integrity
Jennifer Zurko
Lately, I’ve been a bit disappointed in my journalist brethren. It seems all I’ve been hearing is news of shoddy reporting and sensationalism to sell a story.
Case-in-point #1—The article in
Rolling Stone about an alleged sexual assault that took place at a fraternity at the University of Virginia. Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the writer of the story, only had one source, the accuser. She didn’t check out her story and didn’t interview anyone else. It turned out the girl’s story didn’t hold up and instead of taking responsibility for breaking one of the rules of Journalism 101, the magazine and reporter blamed the girl.
Case-in-point #2—Sportsmockery.com, TMZ for the sports world, reported that Patrick Sharp, left winger for the Chicago Blackhawks (GO HAWKS!), has indulged in some scandalous behavior—which also allegedly includes teammate Duncan Keith’s wife. So far, there has been no evidence that poor Pat has been a bit of a pig and that Sports Mockery is just stirring the pot for some extra website views. My favorite line from the report: “Here’s a list of rumors currently being circulated, which on the surface may appear to be untrue.” May appear? And why are you publishing rumors? Any real reporter worth his/her salt would never do that.
Case-in-point #3—Mother Jones and others in the mainstream media, including
Forbes, have been taking data from a study by a Harvard professor as fact without checking if it was peer reviewed. Dr. Alex Lu (an activist scientist—Red Flag #1) published two whitepapers based on his recent studies in the
Bulletin of Insectology, which is a pay-for-play publication often rejected by mainstream peer-reviewed journals (Red Flag #2), pointing the finger at neonicotinoids, alleging they are “highly responsible for triggering Colony Collapse Disorder.”
Dr. Lu’s experiments were simple: He force fed (Red Flag #3) honey bees high fructose corn syrup laced with imidacloprid for 13 weeks, then he noted the mortality rate. All of the scientists I spoke with for this month’s cover story had a lot to say about Dr. Lu’s study. Dr. JC Chong called it “sloppy.” Dr. Dave Smitley said the concentration was “not a field-relevant rate.” Dr. Vicki Wojcik said it had “questionable methodology.” Dr. Rich Cowles said Dr. Lu is a “charlatan” and that the study “was built upon a house of cards of assumptions, all of which were wrong.”
First, Dr. Lu’s concentration was off the charts—135 ppb. The typical concentration is 1 to 3 ppb. Second, he fed them over a period of 13 weeks, when in reality, honey bees only forage about 14 days. So all it proved was that if you stuff bees with toxic levels of imidacloprid for a long period of time, they die. Duh.
The problem is the amount of publicity Dr. Lu is getting, especially from the media and environmental groups who are using the reports to strengthen their causes. It’s this type of false narrative that has made it more difficult for entomologists and apiarists to have their studies taken seriously. Thankfully, AmericanHort and the Society of American Florists have collected research grant money to help the scientists I mentioned above and others conduct true experiments on ornamental plants, neonics and pollinators. The results may indeed show that growers may not be using best practices when using neonics, but at least we’ll know for sure, with science instead of sentiment leading the way.
During our conversation, Dr. Cowles said, “Proper journalism requires setting yourself at a distance from your sources and really digging through and evaluating. That’s my job as a scientist to evaluate the evidence all the time. So a scientist and a journalist really should be doing the same kind of process in terms of evaluating evidence.”
As a journalist, it’s all about integrity. If you don’t have that, you might as well be writing about the Kardashians.
Visit www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/post_8761_b_6323626.html
to read an article by Jon Entine, titled “Bee Experts Dismantle Touted ‘Harvard’ Neonics-Colony Collapse Disorder Study As ‘Activist Science”’ that discusses the issues with Dr. Lu's study.