Rapid Reactions: responding to breaking news. The demands of the 24-hour media machine mean that news journalists often don’t have the luxury of time to track down the best scientists when a science story lands on their desks, so availability can sometimes win out over expertise. This is where the Science Media Centre steps in. When a story breaks – whether it’s the latest flu epidemic, health scare or a potential nuclear crisis – the SMC persuades leading experts to drop everything and engage with the story, then contacts journalists at all the major news outlets to offer those experts for interviews or immediate comment.
Roundups: putting new research into context. One of the other ways the SMC ensures that the media have easy access to scientists and their views is by offering journalists a variety of comments from scientists reacting to the latest research. This service differs from our ‘Rapid Reactions’ as scientists have time to react before new research is announced, rather than in response to breaking news.
With access to embargoed journals before publication, we can pick stories of most interest to journalists, asking third party experts to provide comments and information to put research into context before it appears in the media. The SMC’s unique Roundups help busy journalists critically analyse the strengths and weaknesses of new research, and highlight when studies are very preliminary or display a correlation that should not be read as causation. Equally, when leading scientists are excited about a significant study this can reassure journalists that the study should feature strongly in their coverage.
A Danish study looked at more than 16,000 men and 22,000 women, and found that exposure to air and noise … read more
The Education Minister is proposing secondary schools ban the use of mobile phones by students during the school day. Dr Keith … read more
A modelling study published in The Lancet Public Health looked at how deaths from heat and from cold will increase at various … read more
A Japanese study looked at people who had received video game consoles as part of a lottery run by stores … read more
As Ireland’s biggest festival gets underway tonight, the HSE are warning revellers to keep vigilant, with new synthetic drugs raising … read more
The World Health Organisation have declared a global public heath emergency in response to the new outbreak of the Mpox … read more
Ireland has swathes of abandoned farmland that could be rewilded, according to a study to be published in Current Biology. … read more
A study published in BMC Medicine looks at short term vegan diets and biological ageing. Prof Helen Roche, Full Professor of … read more
A study published in Nature looks at the collapse of AI models when trained on recursively generated data. Dr Deepak Padmanabhan, … read more
Scientists comment on the global IT outage. Dr Deepak Padmanabhan, Senior Lecturer, School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer … read more
Scientists comment on a herpesvirus outbreak at Dublin Zoo. Prof Julian Chantrey, Professor of Veterinary Pathology, University of Liverpool, … read more
A study published in JAMA Ophthalmology looks at semaglutide and neuropathy. Prof Graham McGeown, Honorary Professor of Physiology, Queen’s University … read more
A study published in Gut looks at gut bacteria and compulsive eating and obesity. Dr Harriët Schellekens, Funded Investigator at APC … read more