The day Anthony Fauci told journalists they could lose their access to scientists.

The AAAS Observer, September 1989

From the September 1, 1989 AAAS Observer

Writing for My Sister Denise

    AIDS has created a whole new interaction between scientists and the press. When I first got involved in AIDS research, I was reluctant to deal with the press. I thought it was not dignified. But there was a lot of distortion by people who were speaking to the press, so I changed my mind.

     What is the media’s responsibility in recording science? My interpretation frequently does not jibe with what even competent journalists think. Is it to report what is important, or what is newsworthy? Sometimes those two are not the same.

     One crucial area of AIDS research is our attempts to understand the regulatory genes of HIV. It is magnificent science, and it is not only going to tell us things about HIV, but also how the cell is controlled by viral genes and how the virus is controlled by cellular genes. Yet rarely does it get coverage. By contrast, everyone knows about compound Q, the Chinese root that is supposed to “cure” AIDS. I have been asked far more often about compound Q than about work on determining the pathogenic mechanisms of HIV infection.

     Scientists tend to lump all the media together. But just as there is a spectrum of scientists, there is a spectrum of publications, networks, and radio stations. Scientists regard Science as the gold standard.  But there are also major newspapers like the Washington Post, and the New York Times, which have experienced science staffs. The next level is the news magazines, which usually are quite accurate but rely a bit more on sensationalism. And then there are other publications that are incompetent, or care only about sales, or have axes to grind.

     The media are no place for amateurs, particularly when talking about a public health problem of the magnitude of AIDS. I remember the sinking feeling I got when a writer asked me how to spell “retrovirus”. Someone who does not know that has not read anything significant on AIDS, and should automatically be disqualified from doing an AIDS story.

     There is also heterogeneity among television shows. It is disconcerting when interviewers ask you questions, and you look into their eyes, and it is very clear they are not listening to the answers. But there are some real pros—for example, those on the McNeil-Lehrer show and David Brinkley’s.

     The media are great equalizers in science, which is most disturbing to us scientists. Any scientist questioned in the media becomes an “expert.” We know reporters must consult more than one source and make room for dissenting opinions. But many people consider what is in the media to be true by definition.

     One striking example is Peter Duesberg’s theory that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. I laughed at that for a while, but it led to a lot of public concern that maybe HIV was a hoax. The theory has enormous credibility just on the basis of news coverage.

     My barometer of what the general public is really thinking is my sister Denise. My sister Denise is an intelligent woman who reads avidly, listens to the radio, and watches television, but she is not a scientist. When she calls me and questions my integrity as a scientist, there really is a problem. Denise has called me at least ten times about Peter Duesberg. She says, “Anthony”—she is the only one who calls me Anthony—“are you sure he’s wrong?” That’s the power of putting someone on television or in the press, although there is virtually nothing in his argument that makes scientific sense.

     People are especially concerned when they see divergent reports about the same thing. They do not understand that the beauty of science is that it is intrinsically self-corroborating and self-correcting, that it is important for scientists to be wrong. The lack of clear-cut black-or-white answers plagues the biomedical scientists compared with the physical sciences. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann said they achieved nuclear fusion at room temperature. Other scientists tried, but could not reproduce it. Bingo, it’s over. But because we cannot ethically do clinical trials to establish that he is wrong, I am probably going to be answering Peter Duesberg for the rest of my life.

     Scientists need to get more sophisticated about expressing themselves. But the media have to do their homework. They have got to learn the issues and the background. And they should realize that their accuracy is noted by the scientific community. Journalists who have made too many mistakes, or who are sloppy, are going to find that their access to scientists may diminish.