Science PR: hindrance or help?

The murky goings on in the world of scientific PR should give us cause for concern says Russ Swan as he picks apart the strange case of the world’s oldest hafted axe…

If your career has ever required you to delve into the murky shallows of the public relations business, you might appreciate what a strange industry this is. If it hasn’t yet, chances are it will happen. PR seems to be everywhere these days, stretching its insidious tendrils into every nook and cranny of our existence. It’s not all bad. If you’ve ever taken part in one of the growing number of science festivals, that’s PR. Worked on the company stand at a trade show? PR. Been part of a team that did something clever enough to become the subject of a press release? That too.

At the same time, I have to say that it’s not all good. While some PR is about telling a story for the greater benefit of all, some of it is about manipulating opinions or stock prices, or massaging corporate or academic egos. This isn’t, on the whole, an industry driven by altruism. Some areas are closely regulated, and rightly so. In the UK the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, MHRA, issues its Blue Book guidance outlining what’s allowed and what isn’t when advertising and promoting drugs. This includes what the industry calls ‘above the line’ – paid for advertising – and below the line activity such as issuing press releases and putting forward pundits for interview. In the US, the FDA has its own guidelines.

PR seems to be everywhere these days, stretching its insidious tendrils into every nook and cranny of our existence.

There are good reasons for tight regulation here. Share prices can be boosted enormously on news of a new blockbuster pill, and the medics are keen to prevent queues forming outside their surgeries the day after the latest cure for something makes it into the papers. Either of these could be abused by the unscrupulous, although of course nobody in the real world of PR would ever even consider that sort of thing. Nobody. Nope, not a single one of them. Ever. If anything, PR gets even weirder when it runs into the world of scientific research. Universities are increasingly operated like businesses, and their longstanding obsession with conventional metrics and rankings is no longer enough. They need a high profile as well, and that means press coverage – which is where things can get very murky indeed. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you to the curious case of the hafts and the haft nots.

[caption id="attachment_54003" align="alignnone" width="450"] Universities are becoming increasingly run like businesses...which means a high profile is needed with the help of PR.[/caption]

Last month we learned of the discovery of the world’s oldest hafted axe – that’s one with a handle. At about 46-49,000 years old, it predates the previous record holder by at least 11,000 years. What makes this even more extraordinary is the location of the discovery – not the Rift Valley, or Mesopotamia, or any of the other centres of early culture and technology. It was found in Western Australia, and indicates that the aboriginal colonists then newly arrived from Asia had quickly developed the world’s most advanced industry. This is what science is all about, and I defy you not to share a frisson of excitement. We found something new, and it’s unexpected, and that’s great. Microscopic analysis of a rock fragment the size of a fingernail had revealed the tell-tale marks of grinding, which the expert archaeologists identified as a probable repair to a chip out of the cutting edge of the axe. Charcoal at the same level provided the radiocarbon date. Isn’t it amazing what you can tell from so little?

Who am I to argue with an eminent professor with 17 letters after his name?

But the story begins to unravel with just a little gentle tug at the loose threads. How does such a small chip from the cutting edge indicate that the main stone implement was attached to a handle? Enquiries to the archaeologists elicited some fascinating further information. This axe was hafted because, apparently, a different axe – which was half as old and from a different place – was known to be hafted. Now, I can’t help feeling the spirit of Carl Sagan move over me at this point. He popularised a phrase (actually coined by Marcello Truzzi) that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Surely this extraordinary claim must have some evidence? This is serious science, published in a leading scientific journal by two eminent experts in their field. It was peer reviewed, for heaven’s sake.

Except no. No it wasn’t. The professors certainly published a peer-reviewed paper on the axe fragment, in the journal Australian Archaeology, but this mentions hafting only in relation to other finds. How on Earth did the world’s media come to repeat the claim that the world’s oldest hafted axe, and by extension the world’s leading technology at that time, had been discovered in Australia? You are probably ahead of me here. It was a press release, issued by the Australian National University, that made the claim. Whether by accident, design, or time zones, this was the only information initially released. The academic paper was not made available pre-publication. Who am I to argue with an eminent professor with 17 letters after his name? He says it was hafted, although on questioning he acknowledges that he has no direct evidence for this and concludes that it is his belief that “the likelihood is high, but who knows?”

Who knows? I thought you did. So science moves forward, not by peer reviewed papers and unimpeachable evidence, but by press release. And it’s all thanks to the weird world of scientific PR.