Ethical considerations for science bloggers

Science blogging: The essential guide - Christie Wilcox, Bethany Brookshire, Jason G. Goldman 2016

Ethical considerations for science bloggers

Janet D. Stemwedel

Scientists and science writers want to communicate about the latest scientific findings, the process of knowledge-building, and the experience of being a member of a scientific community. But ethical pitfalls can occur as bloggers develop relationships with readers and experts. Scientist, philosopher, and blogger Janet D. Stemwedel considers the responsibilities that should accompany those relationships, offering practical advice on ethics for those delivering scientific content online.

Blogging brings responsibilities

Science blogging is an activity that takes many forms. Sometimes it resembles journalism, sometimes punditry, sometimes pedagogy. At times science blogging is a first-person account of engaging with a scientific finding or building a piece of scientific knowledge, or of being part of a scientific community more generally. But whatever the style of the blogger, writing a blog differs fundamentally from writing a notebook because it assumes an audience.

Blogging about science, therefore, puts the blogger in a relationship with readers—and so, like any situation that puts human beings in relationships with each other, involves ethics. I’ve spent almost a decade blogging about ethics in science (and longer than that teaching ethics as a philosophy professor at San José State University), so I’ve had occasion to think hard about some of the ethical dimensions of human interactions both within science and across the Internet.

Luckily, being an ethical science blogger doesn’t require that you decide whether Kant or Mill or Mencius knows what really constitutes “the good.” Rather it’s a matter of thinking seriously about your responsibilities to your craft and to your audience and then conducting yourself in a way that balances those responsibilities with good writing.

All blogging creates relationships with readers. Blogging about science means you’re also engaging (whether deeply or superficially) with a body of knowledge, a process for building that knowledge, and communities of practitioners engaged in that process. Arguably, this engagement imposes a kind of duty to be accountable to the world that this science is describing—to attend to the empirical facts and be honest about what is known for sure, what is probable, or what is possible. Not being accountable in this way means departing from the ethical commitments central to the scientific enterprise, a step that would put you dangerously close to the positions taken by purveyors of pseudo-science. Blogging about science may also make you responsible to scientific practitioners, since what you blog about can influence how the public understands what they do and who they are.

Before you “Publish”: Questions for ethical reflection

Consider this before you step onto your virtual soapbox: your blogging (or tweeting, or viral video creation and distribution, or what have you) has the potential to influence lots of people, and that influence may not always be in line with your goals. Thinking about those relationships and those goals before you put a post online for the world to see can help you do better by both, so before you publish a post, pause to ask yourself:

• What am I hoping to accomplish with this post?

• Whom will this post help? Whom could it hurt? What’s the likely balance of good and bad consequences if I publish the post this way?

• To whom do I have duties that are relevant to whether I publish the post this way? Are my duties such that I must publish it? That I should significantly change the post? That I shouldn’t publish it at all?

• Would a good science blogger (someone I’d respect—someone I’d want to be) publish this? Or could publishing this post undermine my ability to blog about science in the future?

The next step is to look beyond your goals and intentions, to the responsibilities that you have to your audience and the world beyond. What kinds of duties could you possibly have to legions of people whom you may never meet in a non-virtual space? Two duties that should be uncontroversial—because they are ways we expect our fellow human beings should treat us—are be honest and be fair.1 Particular situations and relationships can give rise to more precise obligations, but they’re usually some variant of these two.

Be responsible to your story

The type of story you’re trying to get right in many ways determines what steps you will take to be responsible to your audience. If you’re describing a scientific finding or theory, you still want to get the factual details right. Does this mean you have a duty to read the primary literature presenting the finding or theory? If you can access and read it, you probably should, since this is where the details are described.

You may find you need help with this step, however, especially when the journal articles you are reviewing are terse or jargon-laden. Maybe you can ask the researchers themselves for a more accessible explanation of what they did, or rehearse your explanation for them to see if it correctly captures what they found and how they found it. Possibly other researchers in the field could help you work through the journal article or give feedback on your post; even if it’s not their research, they are part of the intended audience for the primary literature.

Getting the story right may also involve shedding light on the larger context of a scientific finding—the environment in which the research is done, the practical questions motivating seemingly esoteric research projects, what scientists already know in this area, and how the new finding builds on that understanding or challenges it. In addition, you should accurately convey the level of certainty or uncertainty that accompanies the finding.

Sometimes the subject of your story is a person within the scientific community. Getting the story right might then require giving your subject a say, whether within the story itself or as a rebuttal after the fact. It also means being careful not to make claims that go beyond your evidence—say, about their motives or their emotional states. There is controversy about whether it’s appropriate to let your subject see your post and require changes before you publish it (which is something that traditional journalistic ethics frown upon), or whether you have a duty to seek comments from people you write about before you publish that writing on your blog. Your best course is to consider what, if any, kind of interaction with your subject will strike the optimal balance of fairness to the subject and honesty in the story. And if you’re writing online in a professional capacity, you should check with your editor.

Be responsible to your readers

Getting the story right, whatever that story is, is part of the honesty you owe your readers. You also owe it to them to be clear about your level of certainty in the claims you’re making—what you know on the basis of evidence, what you believe based on a hunch, and which parts of the story you really don’t have any confidence about. Don’t convey the impression that your conclusions are more certain, better evidenced, or less ambiguous than they actually are. Link your sources so your readers can evaluate them on their own if they want to.

Tell your readers where you’re coming from—your background, your expertise, and the goals you hope to accomplish by blogging. Don’t use your expertise as a cudgel, but instead explain how it informs your take on things.

Expose your biases (at least the ones you know about), and ask for help in noticing where your biases may be driving the story you’re telling. When you make mistakes, be transparent about admitting and fixing them. Editing your post without comment (for anything more significant than grammar, spelling, punctuation, or other typos) may give the appearance of erasing your mistakes rather than acknowledging them. Moreover, it can shift the focus from the story you’re trying to get right to the subject of your credibility. Demonstrating a commitment to accuracy and fairness does a lot more for your credibility than defensiveness or deflection.

If blogging is writing that assumes an audience, commenting makes blogging a two-way mode of communication. This means you don’t need to imagine whether you’re succeeding in reaching that audience; you can find out by asking. Take advantage of the comments function to engage with your readers and find out where they’re coming from. Comments can help you learn what they want to know, what questions they think are interesting or important, and what kinds of explanations reach them. Listen to this feedback and use it to make sure you’re neither pitching your posts over their heads nor insulting their intelligence with overly simplistic explanations.

Be honest about the kinds of conversations you’re willing to host on your blog and do your fair share to cultivate an environment that supports them. Some research suggests that hostile comment threads may influence readers’ judgments about the factual content of the post that precedes the comments—so you should consider setting clear boundaries for how commenters may engage with you, and each other, in an explicit commenting policy (tips for creating such a policy are given in Chapter 24).2 Then enforce that policy to provide your readers (even the ones who don’t comment) the environment that you promised them.

Be responsible to the larger community

If you’re blogging about science—especially if you’re also a scientist yourself—your blogging may influence people’s understanding not just of science but also of scientists. Visibly striving to be accurate and precise, to convey context and uncertainty, and to correct mistakes when you make them is a way to display values that are supposed to be part of the scientific enterprise, too. By contrast, being dismissive of questions and concerns of nonexperts, acting defensive when you err, pulling rank, or being a jerk can feed a negative impression of scientists or science communicators. Behave the way you think a good blogger (or scientist, or employee of your organization, or human being more generally) should behave. When others in your blogging community or scientific community behave badly, communicate that you expect better.

Holding others in your community to high standards is complicated by the fact that science bloggers don’t all have the same goals and interests. It’s important, then, to recognize that it’s not a moral failing if another blogger doesn’t have the same agenda that you do—for example, if that person chooses to blog about personal experiences in science while you prefer to blog about peer-reviewed scientific research. If another blogger misrepresents a finding, leaves out crucial context, draws an unwarranted conclusion, or heaps abuse on a subject or the readers, it is fair to explain the problem and express your disapproval. If you simply don’t like a blogging style, however, realize that this may be a matter of taste and let it go. There is no single “correct” way to be a science blogger (although there are many opportunities to mess up), and the science blogosphere undoubtedly serves more people when it contains a diverse assortment of blogs and bloggers.

Be part of that blogging ecosystem. Engage with other relevant conversations, recommend them to your readers, and cite them, especially when they’ve influenced your own thinking. A link costs you next to nothing.

When making your recommendations, try to become aware of your biases. Which blogospheric voices do you reflexively treat as authoritative? Which do you ignore, perhaps without noticing that you’re doing so? It is surprisingly easy to create and sustain patterns of inclusion and exclusion in your blogging and in your engagement with others. Recognize that challenging your own biases will help you to boost enthusiasm for and engagement with science.

Blogs are part of the media landscape; in fact, recent court rulings assert that bloggers count as journalists.3 This means that your conduct could be taken as reflective of the media as a whole. You may be sent press releases with embargoed information, or offered access to researchers or free books to review. Try to behave as you expect a responsible journalist would—or to clearly distinguish what you are doing from journalism to avoid confusion. Existing codes of journalistic ethics can be an important source of guidance.4

Be responsible to yourself

While you’re noticing your duties to others and the potential impacts, positive and negative, of your blogging on your readers, don’t forget that your needs and interests matter in your ethical calculations. Don’t let what you owe your readers and the wider community overwhelm your ability to take appropriate care of yourself.

Make sustainable choices about how frequently you post and how much time you allow for researching a topic and fine-tuning the writing. Don’t agree to deadlines (or set deadlines for yourself) that will require you to sacrifice accuracy or clarity. If you invite your readers into a conversation with you, think hard about how much time you can really devote to the conversation you’ve promised, and about how much emotional energy you can spend moderating inflammatory or infuriating comments. If you need some breaks to keep up your energy and enthusiasm, find a way to take them.

Whether you’re blogging under your real name or a pseudonym, draw sensible boundaries about how much personal information you want to share. Readers may feel more connected to you if you write about your family background, your geographical region, or experiences connected to your race or gender or disability—but you can also decide that some personal details are private. As long as you’re not misleading your readers, you get to choose which parts of yourself they are allowed to see.

Decide what kinds of risks you’re willing to undertake. Blogging about some topics may expose you to campaigns from paid commenters from corporate lobbying groups, targeting by animal rights groups, or personal threats to your safety. Getting help from an unnamed source may expose you to legal action if you try to protect his or her anonymity. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write about these topics or get help from unnamed sources, but be aware of the risks and find support and guidance from others who face them.

Finally, unless your blog is just paid work for someone else, regularly revisit the question of why it is you blog. Are you getting what you want from the experience? If not, what can you change to bring the fun back? Especially in the blogosphere, there is no reason that being ethical shouldn’t also be fun.

Ethics, fundamentally, is a matter of sharing a world. Being an ethical science blogger (or videographer, or tweeter) means sharing that world not only with scientists who are trying to build an accurate picture of that world’s features, but also with online audiences that read scientific posts with varying degrees of understanding, interest, and trust. It also means finding a place in that world for yourself, so you can communicate the things that matter to you, and become the kind of communicator you want to be.

Janet D. Stemwedel is a nonpracticing chemist and professor of philosophy at San José State University. Her work focuses on scientific knowledge-building and ethics. She also writes the blog Adventures in Ethics and Science and has written for the Scientific American Blog Network.

Janet is based in San Jose. Find her at her website, http://www.stemwedel.org, or follow her on Twitter, @docfreeride.

Notes

1. Kenneth D. Pimple, “Six Domains of Research Ethics,” Science and Engineering Ethics 8, no. 2 (2002): 191—205.

2. Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele, “Science, New Media, and the Public,” Science, January 4, 2013, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6115/40.

3. Mathew Ingram, “Appeals Court Says Blogs Are Not Only Media, They’re an Important Source of News and Commentary,” Gigoam, April 17, 2014, https://gigaom.com/2014/04/17/appeals-court-says-blogs-are-not-only-media-theyre-an-important-source-of-news-and-public-commentary.

4. “SPJ Code of Ethics,” Society of Professional Journalists, last modified September 6, 2014, http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp.