Sense About Science is in the news again. The pressure group describes itself as an “independent charitable trust” that responds to the “misrepresentation of science and scientific evidence”. The story they’re promoting at the moment, about how celebrities should check their facts with Sense About Science before supporting campaigns that do “more harm than good”, even managed to get their spokeswoman Tracey Brown onto the Today programme. Her previous job was at the London-based PR company Regester Larkin. They are “a specialist reputation management consultancy”, which sounds so like the fictional Prentiss McCabe of Absolute Power that I can’t help wondering whether there’s a connection. Their clients have included many of the bad boys of industry, all big employers of scientists: ExxonMobil, Aventis CropScience, Aventis Pharma, Bayer Inc, Pfizer and Shell Chemicals. I don’t think they mentioned that in the introduction to her interview.
The board of Sense About Science also includes Dr Peter Marsh, a Scientist/PR man par excellence. He runs a PR firm which calls itself MCM Research. GMWatch, who really hate MCM, have this to say about them.
On its website MCM says that it is ‘well-known for its research aimed at positive communication and PR initiatives’. Its website used to be more explicit about what it had to offer: ‘Do your PR initiatives sometimes look too much like PR initiatives? MCM conducts social/psychological research on the positive aspects of your business… The results do not read like PR literature… Our reports are credible, interesting and entertaining in their own right. This is why they capture the imagination of the media and your customers.’
If you have a look at the SIRC site, also run by Peter Marsh, you’ll see that they are very good at coming up with titillating stories that journalists often pick up without asking themselves who paid for the research and why. In fact you may be surprised at how many of the science stories that you thought journalists had come up with were actually rewrites of the handy “free bulletins and news updates” e-mails that the SIRC sends out.
Is it any wonder that many people prefer to believe what celebrities say rather than scientists? At least the celebs don’t claim to be impartial, they may be wrong but they aren’t crooked. These quasi-scientific PR companies are bad news for science and bad news for journalism. After all, who would you rather believe, an actor who says that she prefers to eat food that doesn’t contain pesticides or a scientist working for a pesticide manufacturer who says that they’re not bad for you?
Are these the same guys who Philip Morris created to generate news about something else once the whole smoking/cancer battle was lost? If it is them, they’ve been briefing against the scientific evidence on global warming for about 10 years.
I hope their houses are by the coast.
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