Some news outlets, including Fox, have been
wildly spreading fears about Ebola. As an example of both good and bad ways
that the media covers science, let’s take a look at a recent clip from Fox News
in which they interview Dr. David Sanders about the possibility of Ebola virus mutating to become airborne-transmissible
(right now it is only spread by direct contact!)
Their story is titled "Purdue professor says Ebola 'primed' to go airborne." Here is a link to the video.
I’ll
start off with the good things:
1) Dr. Sanders did a good job explaining that Ebola is not airborne right now, but there is a "non-zero" probability that Ebola might mutate to infect the lungs and become air transmissible. And this probability increases as more people are infected.
2) The newscasters
did a good job of accurately recapping what he was explaining without blowing
it out of proportion.
Now for
some bad things:
1)
Quite obviously, the scare-you-into-clicking-on-it title. First of all, it's
completely misleading for the sole purpose of grabbing attention (it got me!).
Second of all, it's completely false. I watched it three times and Dr. Sanders
never said "primed." So it is blatantly incorrect.
2) They
did not include coverage of other scientists that claim the fears of airborne transmission are over-hyped because
there are no instances of that ever happening naturally for a virus that
infects humans. HIV and hepatitis are both good examples that have infected
millions without changing their route of transmission.
3) The
way Dr. Sanders describes his published research is a little misleading in the
context of this story. It sounds like he describes the research
demonstrated Ebola virus can infect the lungs. In fact, the actual study showed
that if you take some of the proteins from the surface of Ebola and code them
into a completely different virus (in this case a feline lentivirus, similar to
HIV), you can infect human airway epithelial cells grown in cell culture. So
this research did not use the full Ebola virus, and did not demonstrate this
infection in a live animal model. Link to study here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12719583
Some of these negative aspects might be a
consequence of the brevity of this story. However, in an information-dense
world, people get the news in short snippets, so the media needs to be careful
not to compromise accuracy.
Interestingly, on the same network, Shep Smith
reported on Ebola with commendable accuracy. He communicated the facts clearly
and concisely while criticizing “hysterical” reporting as “irresponsible.”
I hope future reports from Fox News and the rest of the media follow his tone.
*Update Nov 19, 2014: A follow up to this post detailing a thoughtful response from Dr. Sanders can be found here.
*Update Nov 19, 2014: A follow up to this post detailing a thoughtful response from Dr. Sanders can be found here.