In April, a story was promoted by mainstream Scare Journalists that imported rice had high levels of lead - I am linking to Time but it was everywhere.  It was based on a poster at a conference. It had no systematic scrutiny and was not even close to being peer reviewed. No, we did not cover it here, but promoting unfounded claims is one reason why corporate media makes a lot more money than we do.

Once the FDA and outside scientists began to look at the data and its claims of 20-40X acceptable lead levels, the author withdrew the work, saying there was an “issue” with the instruments he used to make his measurements. How much attention do you think that withdrawal got, compared to the Scare Journalism coverage? Not much, those same science and health journalists had moved on to some new Miracle Vegetable Of The Week story by then. 

What to do? Emily Willingham writing at Forbes dissects that instance and says it would help clear up journalistic hysteria if articles were more dynamic and tracked how the rest of the story unfolds and link to follow-up articles rather than doing the reverse, as is done now, with follow-up articles simply linking to the first one.

Sure, that is a fine first step. Journalism could also do with some real peer review. In Science Left Behind I worried that as science journalism retracted it had become more corporate- and institutionally-controlled and politically homogenized and something of an insider club. The problem of providing proper context in such an environment is compounded by the fact that some science journalists want to be cheerleaders for science rather than asking the awkward questions and being trusted guides for the public. And they cheerlead for each other too.

Due to all that, there is no real peer review for science journalism - there is just a pretense of it. Knight Science Journalism Tracker claims to do it, but they are clearly not peer reviewing all journalism. Paul Raeburn's idea of peer review about Dr. Alex Berezow's piece in USA Today outlining the numerous anti-science positions of the left wing was to simply gush about how his friend Chris Mooney wrote a 'nice post' refuting it and that what Berezow wrote 'happens to be untrue'.  That's peer review? How is it untrue?  We never find out. Instead, the hunt is on to find out whether Raeburn can invalidate Berezow's microbiology PhD by declaring him a conservative:

You might wonder why I took a few minutes to run Berezow down. What I found doesn't tell me much about him, but we can at least ask whether he himself is a conservative, based on where he's published some of his writing. (He has also written for CNN's website, in addition to USA Today.) If Berezow is a conservative, that might explain why he thought Democrats were just as bad as Republicans in their attitude toward science. 

Actual peer review would tackle that issue, not invalidate the idea because his buddy says it is invalid. That Chris, a fine writer, is an avowed progressive has never caused Raeburn to wonder about his objectivity or truth but that Berezow once wrote a piece for two 'conservative' publications, along with dozens of 'liberal' outlets, gets this: "I think USA Today's editors should have held him to a higher standard."

What higher standard? Still no refutation of the data, which was contained in a 300 page book with over 500 citations. 

And when Dr. Daniel Sarewitz pointed out the Big White Political Elephant in the academic room, Raeburn fell back on the exact same technique: "And what is Sarewitz's political affiliation, I wonder? Wouldn't it be fair to disclose that if he is alleging that others are reaching conclusions based on their political leanings?"

So if you disclose you are a liberal and call Republicans anti-science, cool, it goes unchallenged by Raeburn in every way.  But if you are in the middle or on the right ( I have no idea about Sarewitz's affiliation either, but I don't default to conspiracy theory over that) and use actual data, it is automatically suspect unless the conclusion matches the personal beliefs of people writing at KSJT. Peer reviewed is Google searches to figure out how the author votes.

I am not critical of Raeburn for going after Alex (I wrote a book with him, so I generally think he is a pretty sharp guy) though Raeburn may insist that is the case, but he can't really make that claim fairly; he has gushed over Chris Mooney in dozens of articles and was on a committee that gave the man a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship. It may be that he can only be critical about people who are not his friends - about writer and "Superbug" author Maryn McKenna, he wrote, "McKenna is a friend of mine, so if you're looking for an objective report, you've come to the wrong place".

No, Paul, no worries, we are never expecting an objective report from you.

But some peer review that is unbiased about everyone in science journalism - and doesn't give Obama voters or friends a free pass when it comes to reason and objectivity - would be terrific.  The problem is that the only groups that can afford to do it - universities - like only having 6% Republicans and more evidence would lead to calls for some sort of Title IX For Political Minorities. So we are not getting legitimate science journalism peer review any time soon.