There's been an ongoing debate about framing in the blogosphere. You can see the latest manifestation on Pharngula [When did ‘framing’ become a synonym for religiosity?]. The idea behind framing is to present your science in a way that appeals to and engages the public. The opposition to framing comes from those—I am one—who fear that framing is another word for spin and that in attempting to appeal to the public you often distort or misrepresent the science.Let's look at how press release writers use framing. This press release is from Ohio State Medical Center. It reports on a paper by Calin et al. (2007) that has just been published in Cancer Cell. The paper looks at the expression of RNA's from highly conserved sequences that do not encode proteins. These are similar to the conserved noncoding elements that we discussed before [Adaptive Evolution of Conserved Noncoding Elements in Mammals] except that they are transcribed.
The first two lines of the press release say,
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Research here shows that an obscure form of RNA, part of the protein-making machinery in all cells, might play an important role in human cancer.This is quite ridiculous. I don't know of any researcher who would declare that ultraconserved sequences are junk. This just seems like a distortion of the paper in order to frame the work in a way that's more appealing to the public. The idea is to make it look like this paper overturns the current dogma about junk DNA.
These ultraconserved non-coding RNAs (UCRs) have been considered “junk” by some researchers, but a new report in the September issue of the journal Cancer Cell indicates that this may not be the case.
But maybe that's unfair. Maybe the authors themselves make such a claim in their paper and the press release isn't engaging in spin.
Here's part of a paragraph from the introduction to the paper.
A large portion of transcription products of the noncoding functional genomic regions have significant RNA secondary structures and are components of clusters containing other sequences with functional noncoding significance (Bejerano et al., 2004a). The UCRs represent a small fraction of the human genome that are likely to be functional but not encoding proteins and have been called the “dark matter” of the human genome (Bejerano et al., 2004a). Because of the high degree of conservation, the UCRs may have fundamental functional importance for the ontogeny and phylogeny of mammals and other vertebrates.Oops! The authors themselves admit that these sequences are thought to be functional. There's nothing in the paper about junk DNA and there's certainly nothing about researchers who think these sequences might be junk.
The more I see examples of framing the more I dislike it. It's bad enough that the practice exists but the attempts by Mooney and Nisbet [Framing Framing] to justify it are not going to help us clean up science writing. If Mooney and Nisbet would take on the worst abusers of framing then I would have a lot more respect for their position.
Calin, G.A. et al. (2007) Ultraconserved Regions Encoding ncRNAs Are Altered in Human Leukemias and Carcinomas. Cancer Cell 12:215-229. [Summary][PDF]
7 comments :
From the guide to writing bad science stories:
3. Overstate the significance and novelty of the work.
4. Distort the history of the field and oversimplify the views of scientists.
While "framing" began with an attempt to explain to - or rather, instruct - the public of science-related public policy issues like global warming, stem cells etc. using simplification, emotion-manipulating symbolism, and assertions of complete scientific certainty - there is no guarantee it will remain in that public policy box.
Once it becomes acceptable for scientists to present findings to the public in that manner in the service of public policy, then may well lower the inhibitions of scientists about using the same techniques when discussing purely scientific findings with their peers.
Framing has the potential to politicize science - not in terms of a particular political ideology; rather, the conversion of science into yet another propaganda-saturated forum.
Tupaia
Larry,
I am not a biologist by either training or profession but my understanding is that "junk" DNA undergoes more rapid mutations than functional DNA for the reason that there are no selective pressures on the "junk" DNA, and that in many respects selective pressures conserve DNA sequences rather than change them.
Is my understanding totally screwed ?
As someone who reads scientific papers and creates press releases about them for my job, I'm always grateful to those scientists who are clear about the implications and importance of their research. In my experience, the best-written papers make the best press releases, because the author isn't struggling to try to figure out why something is important. I wonder how much framing is the result of articles which are not descriptive enough and leave the press release author reaching for something to say.
I realize that it's not always the original paper author's fault. These papers are often designed for readers who already know why the research is necessary and important. But some papers definitely translate better than others, and I'm always grateful to the scientists who are able to work in the relevance of their research.
Perhaps we should consider the possiblity that the PR person simply did a bad job. As I understand it framing is a term for the notion of presenting complicated technical material in a way that an individual without the appropriate technical background can still grasp. A "framing error", as we seem to have here in a statement about junk DNA that isn't backed by facts, doesn't necessarily invalidate the concept.
It's quite a non sequitur to blame framing for misinformation. I have yet to hear proponents of framing espouse a twisting of the facts such as this example illustrates.
I guess next time we should let Larry make the PR by simply pasting in the abstract and conclusion of the paper. Perhaps we could even do a double blind study to see which method is better absorbed by laypeople?
Criticism of this new approach to public relations is definitely needed right now.. but this blogpost is a failed attempt to convince me of any cons beyond making sure that press releases are reviewed and edited by scientists in the field just prior to publication to catch such obvious errors.
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