Stretching the truth

Nothing is new in the world of TV science says Russ Swan ­– but with the advent of ‘docufiction’ has the time come where the truth is being stretched to breaking point? Trust me, I'm a scientist. There may once have been a time when that held true, but I'm not sure it does today. Scientists may still be held in higher esteem than, say, estate agents or politicians, but that isn’t saying very much – and no profession is immune from the general cynicism that pervades society today. If we rue the loss of the integrity and impartiality that was once assumed of us, I'm afraid we only have ourselves to blame. Ourselves, and those cynical exploiters of all humanity, TV producers. We've all heard of scientific fraud, and I guess we can all see why and how it happens. From the out-and-out forgery of Piltdown Man (and many subsequent fake fossil discoveries) to the subtle massaging of data that 'doesn’t quite fit', fraud has existed since the dawn of science. Even if we wouldn’t dream of indulging, many of us will understand the temptation to make the observations fit the hypothesis. Happily, the process of peer review and the demands of reproducibility will nearly always sift the fact from the fake, even if this sometimes takes a little while. Discovery is an iterative process and, as I've said before, scientific fact is no more than this year's best guess. What is more worrying in this age of pre-packaged and pre-digested information is the new type of scientific fraud that is pervading our lives. It come in various flavours, from multiple sources, and has one defining characteristic: it is on TV. We live in a golden age of scientific discovery, and a golden age of information. Humankind is learning ever more detailed and intricate things about the universe and the way it works, and is able to share that learning in fast and far-reaching ways. It's a shame, then, that some of the best of it is just completely bogus. Last year the otherwise quite well-regarded Discovery Channel found itself in deep water after presenting a documentary on the megalodon, an ancient shark that made today's great white look like an ornamental guppy. Megalodon – 'giant tooth' – was a genuine creature that died out a million years ago, but this deeply questionable documentary presented it as a living animal. You can spot the CGI, but as graphic arts get better each year it becomes harder and harder to see the join. Where Discovery really failed in this presentation was in the lack of disclaimers about the fictitious nature of the footage. A previous Discovery show on an aquatic theme from a year earlier was easier to identify as fake. Even so, such is the gullibility of the human race, no doubt a significant number of people believed that those were real mermaids. The presentation of dramatic fiction as scientific fact is hardly new – Orson Welles made himself famous in 1938 with a radio report of the fictional War of the Worlds presented as live newscast. Discovery is pushing this concept a little further with its made-up science, but it is not the only one. The last few years have seen regular announcements of exoplanets making the serious news bulletins, especially when the latest in the catalogue of extrasolar planets are of Earth-like size. Each time, the news is accompanied by an image of the planet that looks photorealistic. Based on the imagination of some skilled artist, with the scarcest of actual data to build upon, these are completely fake and yet are presented as fact. Would it really hurt to add a little label pointing out it is not a photograph, or to explain that no imaging system exists that can render more than even a pixel? Most insidious of all, though, is the most recent phenomenon in the genre. This involves real scientists, not actors, presenting real science, not fantasy. It is the live-on-TV discovery, and it must be stamped out. Last month the BBC ran an engaging two-parter in which a collection of telegenic scientists clambered aboard an airship and sailed across the USA. Operation Cloud Lab looks like a no-budget-spared production and is described as a 'unique exploration of Earth's most precious and mysterious environment – the atmosphere'. Jolly good fun it looked too. Where I take issue with this programme, and others in the genre, is the presentation of known facts as new discoveries. The engagingly attractive presenter leaning out of the gondola to experience being inside a cloud for the first time – has she never known a foggy day in England? The rugged male researcher firing laser beams into the void and detecting – oh joy! – the signature of biological molecules in the vapour. Nothing wrong with any of that, except for the blatant lie that this is a new discovery. Bacteria have been known to form nucleation sites for water droplets for decades. The phenomenon is so well understood that it is exploited in snow machines used to replenish ski runs. This is just one example of the growing trend of existing knowledge being presented as new discovery on TV, and I think it's deplorable. Making up facts to fit the story? Shocking. Trust me, I'm a journalist.