Duncan Watts is a colleague of mine in the sociology department at Columbia. He is a very active researcher in the area of social networks and runs a fascinating seminar. Anyway, he and his student, Gueorgi Kossinets, recently published a paper in Science, entitled “Empirical analysis of an evolving social network.” He then had an annoying interaction with Helen Pearson, a science reporter who writes a column for Nature online. Duncan writes:

I [Duncan Watts] was particularly pleased when Ms. Pearson called me last week, expressing her interest in writing a story for Nature’s online news site. Having read Philip Ball’s careful and insightful reports for years, I imagined that Nature News would be a great opportunity for us to have a substantive but accessible news story written about our work. And after speaking with Ms. Pearson for about two hours on the phone, over two consecutive days, sending her some additional reading material, and recommending (at her request) a number of other social network researchers she could talk to, I felt pretty confident that we would have exactly that. She asked lots of questions, seemed intent on understanding my responses, and generally acted like a real science journalist.

So imagine my surprise when monday morning I saw that our work had been characterized as “bizarre” and “pointless” in a derisive fluff piece by a fictional columnist.

Well, any publicity is good publicity, and all that. As I told Duncan, having a paper in Science is much much more of a plus than this silly article is a minus. If anything, it might get people to read the article and see that it has some cool stuff inside. I think the people who we respect will have much more respect for a peer-reviewed article in a top journal than for a silly pseudo-populist column.

On the other hand, what a waste of space–well, it’s an online publication, so there are no real space restrictions. But what a waste of Duncan’s time and energy. Basically, Pearson is trading on the reputation of Nature, and her own reputation as a science journalist. To pretend to be writing a serious story and then to mock, is simply unethical. Why not simply be honest–if she wants to mock, just say so upfront, or just write the article without wasting Duncan’s time?

What about my own experiences in this area? I generally want my work to be publicized–why do the work if nobody will hear about it?–and so I’m happy to talk to reporters. I’ve tried to avoid the mockers, however. When Seth and I taught our freshman seminar on left-handedness several years ago at Berkeley, we were contacted by various news organizations in the San Francisco area. At one point a TV station wanted to send a crew into the class, but they decided not to after I explained that the class mostly involved readings from the scientific literature, not original research. Also, one publication that contacted us talked with Seth first, and he got the sense that they were just fishing for quotes for a story they wanted to write on stupid college classes, or something like that. So I avoided talking with them.

Also, I was mocked in the House of Commons once! Well, not by name, but in 1994, I think it was, I spoke at a conference in England on redistricting, to tell them of our findings about U.S. redistricting. Someone told me that a parliamentarian with the Dickensian name of Jack Straw had mocked our paper, which was called Enhancing Democracy Through Legislative Redistricting. But then someone else told me that being mocked by Jack Straw was kind of a badge of honor, so I don’t know.

Anyway, it’s too bad to see the reputation of Nature Online diminished in this way, and I hope Duncan has better luck in his future dealings with the press.

P.S.

See here for a funnier version of Pearson’s article with bits such as “needed to hammer home the ‘duh’ point a bit here I think. Ok?”. I also like that in this version she describes the journal Science as “one of my very favourite reads.” I mean, I like research papers as much as the next guy, but I have to admit that I would’t usually curl up in my favorite (whoops, I mean “favourite”) chair with a science journal.