The Science Media Centre is not restricted to reacting to the headlines, and has helped scientists to more proactively set the agenda by bringing new science or evidence to journalists. This comes from our regular briefings, which take a variety of forms and cover a wide range of topics. Many are background briefings introducing journalists to the best experts and science on controversial issues like nuclear waste, nanotechnology, emerging diseases, or animal research, for example. They may also be news briefings where the SMC works with scientists to give the national media a new story on developments within science, whether it’s a report on climate change, a paper on stem cells being published in a leading journal, or science funding cuts in the latest budget. In addition, the SMC encourages leading experts to ‘speak out’ to the media about developments they believe may pose a threat to scientific research – not something science has been renowned for.
A while ago we asked whether journalists would value a background briefing on the biology of COVID that would explore … read more
Dr Raghib Ali is Senior Clinical Research Associate, MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge and he, along with Professor Keith … read more
Experts from the NHS, academia and the private sector are joining forces with the government in a new partnership to … read more
The National Institute for Health Research has published its dynamic themed review on what is commonly called ‘long COVID’. Comprising … read more
Scientists from the University of Warwick and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have done a study modelling … read more
Throughout the pandemic we’ve heard some politicians and experts reject comparisons of the impact of COVID-19 on different countries based … read more
This briefing provided the opportunity for journalists to hear from experts about the impact COVID-19 has had on the screening, … read more
The COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions appear to have had a negative effect on the mental health of the nation, … read more
Last week we heard from the REACT-1 scientists with interim results from their latest set of data – this week … read more
Meeting the UK government’s net zero emissions goal for 2050 will only be possible with the decarbonisation of new and … read more
Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez have won this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics for their work on black … read more
SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have the potential to end the global pandemic of COVID-19; however, many challenges remain. Data Evaluation and Learning … read more
This briefing covered the latest interim data from the largest community coronavirus testing programme, REACT, which was published at midnight … read more
We hosted some of the experts involved in informing and advising on the NHS Test and Trace App – which … read more
A new study to be published in the Lancet Microbe assessed the sensitivity and specificity of a 90-minute COVID-19 test … read more
This week, Cochrane published an updated special collection of systematic and rapid reviews focused on a range of public health … read more
Improving livestock to boost food production for a growing global population is a long-standing aim. For the first time, scientists … read more
This briefing covered the latest report from the largest community coronavirus testing programme, REACT. The report includes swab tests carried … read more
The largest global study to date has mapped trends in vaccine confidence across 149 countries between 2015-2019, published in the … read more
As hospitals around the world are faced with an influx of patients with covid-19, there is an urgent need for … read more
