Joe Palca, PhD, gets it. As an experimental psychologist by training, he understands why scientists criticize media coverage of their work. But as a science correspondent at National Public Radio, he also appreciates the media's bind when reporting it.
"News organizations like science news. People like it. It's good stuff," says Palca, who is speaking at APA's 2014 Annual Convention in Washington, D.C., Aug. 7–10. "But we wind up saying things in headlines that would make us cringe as scientists because we know we're overstating it."
In his talk "Science and News: A Marriage of Convenience," Palca will explore how researchers and journalists find common ground to turn complex research into accurate stories. The challenge? "Science goes in increments, and the media goes in leaps and bounds," Palca says.
One example is sleep research, which Palca studied as a graduate student at the University of California at Santa Cruz. While editors love stories on sleep because "everyone has sleep problems," he says, coverage of sleep research can seek to find news where there is none because the field has moved slowly.
Palca made the transition to journalism in 1981, when his American Association for the Advancement of Science Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship (AAAS) placed him in a local television newsroom for 10 weeks. "I was quite smitten with the news operation," he says. But his current role hosting a series on how ideas become innovations and inventions still allows him to do a version of what he liked best about graduate school: teaching. "I like communicating complicated ideas to people," Palca says.
Palca has won many science writing awards, including the National Academies Communications Award and the AAAS Journalism Prize. He is co-author of the 2011 book "Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us" (see the November 2011 issue of the Monitor).
Palca's talk, hosted by Div. 3 (Experimental), will take place at 11 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 7, at the Washington, D.C., Convention Center. For more details on the convention, visit APA.
— Anna Miller
