Great post yesterday by fellow Discover denizen Ed Yong, asking "Should science journalists take sides?" Honestly, it shouldn't be a hard question, although the answer depends on how you visualize the sides. If you have in mind
He said vs. She said,
then the job of a journalist is not to take sides. But there's another possible dichotomy that is much more crucial:
Truth vs. Falsity.
In this case, it's equally clear that journalists should take sides: they should be in favor of the truth. Not just passively, by trying not to make things up, but actively, by trying to figure out whether something is false before reporting it, even if it's been said by someone. All sounds kind of trivial, but it's easy to lose sight of this principle by hewing to a misguided definition of "objectivity." Ed pulls an extremely damning quote from medical journalist Jeremy Laurance:
Reporters ...
