Dr Richard Holliman, lecturer in Science Communication and the Public Understanding of Science at the Centre for Science Education at the Open University, discusses how the media influences the public's perception of scientific research.

Why do people only think of Dolly the sheep when cloning is talked about?

It is interesting to note that Dolly has become such a powerful image when the issue of cloning is discussed. I would argue that this situation has developed for several reasons.

First, and most obviously, the announcement in February 1997 took many in the scientific community by surprise as well as the news media and wider society. What had been achieved was beyond most people’s expectations.

However, we should remember that the Roslin Institute had published work a year before which announced they had produced two cloned sheep called Megan and Morag. Although this work involved a slightly different technique, it did receive media coverage.

The difference with Dolly was that she had been cloned from a somatic cell i.e. one that had already differentiated. In effect, Dolly proved that cloning could take place at any point during the donor’s lifetime. In addition to this, the announcement was published prior to the pre-arranged press embargo, creating an even greater sense of media event.

By the time President Clinton became involved by banning the use of US federal funds for cloning research and religious figures such as the Pope had made comments, the story had a momentum that was much greater than that created by the Roslin Institute scientists and the PR company they were working with. Subsequently, the coverage was extensive and people are more likely to remember coverage such as this.

However, I don’t think that Dolly has become the only image which comes to mind when people think about cloning. For example, I would argue that scientists and non-scientists also regularly use science fiction references such as Aldous Huxley’s dystopian vision Brave New World, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or Ira Levin’s The Boys from Brazil when discussing the issue of cloning. It is also interesting to note that the latter of these books also raises the link between the political extremism of the Nazi regime in the 1930s-40s and eugenics, which is another feature of discussions of cloning.

A further influence is the use of images in advertising and announcements about cloning which refer back to the work that produced Dolly. All these aspects reinforce people’s perceptions about cloning, but also feedback into further coverage of these issues.

Why hasn't the issue of therapeutic cloning been raised in the media?

Certainly the news media coverage that followed the announcement of Dolly emphasised the ethical implications of the work and the prospect of human cloning. I think this was partly because Dolly did not have immediate therapeutic implications. The debate did move on though.

For example, the announcement of Polly the sheep in December 1997 raised the issue of therapeutic cloning. Polly was a sheep that had been genetically modified to carry human protein in her milk. She was then cloned to produce several sheep who would produce the human blood clotting agent factor IX in their milk.

This clotting agent is used in the treatment of haemophilia B. The media reported this story largely in terms of the scientific details and therapeutic benefits. However, the issue generated much less coverage and is not widely remembered.

Is it a problem for the scientific community that the press are only interested in the big headline discoveries and ignore other parts of the research?

I think we have to be careful not to treat the media as homogeneous. If we are discussing the news media then they have specific reasons for publishing a particular issue or story, notably whether something is newsworthy or not. In essence though, I think the news media are interested in the big stories – that is the nature of news and the audience would expect no less.

But it works both ways. The scientific community wants media coverage when it has a big announcement, such as the completion of the working draft of the human genome sequence and they expend resource to achieve this end. So you can be sure that if someone announced that they had discovered a cure for breast or lung cancer which involved cloning technology for example, this would involve a large PR exercise to promote the work and it would be likely to generate media coverage.

How can you inform the public of the other aspects of cloning research?

Again, I think this depends on a number of factors, not least the media under consideration. To inform the public of the huge variety of advances in science is unrealistic, not least because we live in a society where information is so freely available in so many formats that issues of biotechnology have to compete with many other issues. As such, it could be argued that cloning already gets a disproportionate amount of coverage when compared to other scientific issues.

As for other ways of informing the public, there have been various initiatives to raise the profile of science including Science Year, which began in September 2001, and the regular Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) Week and a number of public consultation exercises. In addition specialist science programming, web sites such as this, museums and science centres and courses produced by institutions such as the Open University all go some way to achieving this aim. It is important to acknowledge though that these require active consumption by the audience and not everyone will be interested in science, or even if they are, in this particular area of science.

Is there the chance that the media could interfere with the progress of scientific advancement?

I think I would turn this question around and ask, if there is no possibility that the media could interfere with the progress of science then why bother to promote your work in this way? I think the scientific community are increasingly aware of the instrumental effects of generating media coverage, both in terms of informing the public, raising its public profile and potentially generating funding opportunities. So I would argue that scientists and scientific institutions are increasingly seeking to influence the progress of their work through these promotional strategies. As the links between industry and biotechnology research continue to be actively encouraged by government policy, and the benefits of biotechnology research become ever more intertwined with financial benefits, this is unlikely to diminish.

Is there a danger that research could be misrepresented in the press and inaccuracies creep in?

Yes, I think there is always a danger of this and there are many examples where this may have been the case. However, I also think we should acknowledge that the vast majority of science coverage in the media aims to be fair and accurate. Just as scientists do not like mistakes in their work, neither do journalists and they work hard to avoid this.

It should also be acknowledged that there is a small community of science journalists in the UK who regularly work on science stories, therefore reducing the possibility of inaccuracies which are more likely to be made by general reporters. In effect, science journalists are involved in a mutually beneficial relationship with the scientific community; one relies on the other for stories, the other desires publicity. That is not to say the relationship is always a smooth one, or that mistakes are not made but it is simplistic to suggest that the media simply misinterpret science on a regular basis.

What other methods do scientists use to raise public awareness - are they reliant on the press getting it right?

I think the role of scientists in raising public awareness has developed since the release of the Bodmer Report in the mid-1980s. As a result of this and further reports and initiatives, which have been funded by the UK government, funding councils and scientific institutions, scientists are very aware of the range of possibilities for getting their message across. I’ve already mentioned the ongoing Science Year and SET week as examples.

Should the public be allowed to have a say on what direction this sort of controversial research should be heading? Would a public referendum be a good idea?

This is a very interesting question, particularly as I am currently involved in research with colleagues in the Centre for Science Education here at the Open University which examines how science was represented in the recent UK general election. Our initial impression of the coverage is that there was little discussion of biotechnology issues during the campaign. I think this is partly because of the sheer complexity of these issues. So in that respect a referendum on a single issue seems to make sense. There are several obvious difficulties in holding a referendum though.

The first is deciding on the subject. For example, various techniques have been described as cloning. How would you decide on which technique to vote on? The second is deciding on when would you hold any debate of the issues and then the vote. The difficulty here is that you would have to have decided on the issues to discuss before the debate in what is a rapidly developing area of science with researchers working in many different countries. There is every possibility that by the time that debate had taken place the science would have developed to a point when others could take the research forward. These are just a couple of examples, but they do illustrate the problems such an exercise would face.

The picture is not all gloom though for those who wish to discuss these matters. There have been initiatives to include the public in discussions about scientific advancements and this reflects a wider discussion over whether and how to develop more dialogue between science and society. These include: consensus conferences and citizen’s juries.

I do think though that the public, which includes all scientists, has a right to discuss issues such as these and there should be careful regulation of these developments. These are often difficult issues with no clear solution. However, by increasing the levels of debate on scientific research and the wider social implications we will have a better chance of developing a more sophisticated and thoughtful relationship between science and society.