What Do Toxicologists Think Of Press Coverage Of Chemical Risks?
Not much. The disdain that toxicologists apparently feel toward traditional journalism is evidenced by their unwillingness to credit the media with getting almost anything right in covering chemical risk. Table 4 shows that nine out of 10 fault the media for not seeking out diverse scientific views to balance stories, and it only gets worse from there. At least 95 percent describe the media’s performance as “poor” in distinguishing good from bad studies, distinguishing correlation from causation, explaining the trade-off between risks and benefits, distinguishing absolute from relative risk, explaining the odds ratios, and explaining that “the dose makes the poison” — a fundamental tenet of toxicology. With good reason, in my experience. “Mainstream’ journalists are often wrong on these risks because few can think statistically, and because most put too much trust in “environmental” organizations. Unlike toxicologists. Among respondents who rate these organizations, large majorities vi
