This study – which was qualitative and therefore not intended to be representative - is pretty interesting, but it also raises as many questions as it answers. How should we use these findings? Of course a story is really important to engage an audience. But if we capitalise on things that we know people are interested in, are we compromising the reporting of science? A lot of science is relevant to people’s experiences, but if we try and shoehorn human interest into every story, could this be damaging?
As a psychologist turned epidemiologist, I find it heartening (and not really surprising) that people are interested in hearing about topics related to human bodies and behaviours. But I’ve seen some brilliant science communication about the more ‘hard’ sciences – fantastic chemistry demonstrations by Andrea Sella or Suze Kundu, for example.
I worked for six weeks this summer with the BBC, on a British Science Association Media Fellowship. A lot of the stories I wrote were quite “human interest”, or about cute animals like sea otters or penguins, but a particularly popular one I wrote was about ball lightning. Yes it had a beautiful video, but it was a fascinating story nonetheless, and much more distally related to humans.
But it’s hard to know causation here. Maybe programmes about health, or about the Universe, are made more often because that’s what people like. But perhaps people are interested in human-related stories or space exploration because this is what is presented to them most frequently. Maybe the broader the range of science on TV and radio, the broader people’s scientific interests would be too? Programmes like Radio 4’s Inside Science try and cover all sorts of science stories – this is a great way to increase the public’s appetite for the slightly less human-centric stories, as well as the more human-centric ones, which are unlikely to stop being fascinating any time soon.
*In all seriousness though, I would love to write for the Daily Mail, and would jump at the chance to!