The following is a guest post from this year’s Review instructor Tim Falconer. 

“I suck at math—that’s why I went into journalism” has been a humblebrag since before the invention of the humblebrag. I heard people chortle about their mathematical incompetence back when I was a student and I still hear them laughing today. My reaction has long been to roll my eyes, but I now realize silence just enables bad journalism.

I’m lucky: I flunked out after two years of mining engineering and then ended up doing what I really wanted. While the academic verbiage in some scientific studies can still trigger flashbacks of past struggles with differential equations, I never lost my fascination with science and technology. Good thing, too, because if I’ve learned anything over three decades as a freelance writer, it’s that most good stories need numbers.

Sure, you might be able to fashion a career free of data journalism and business reporting—though that would be your loss—but how can you be effective on the police beat if you don’t understand crime statistics? How can you discuss social trends if the numbers in demographic studies scare you? How can you write about hockey without a good grasp of salary caps and advanced stats? (Alas, the ability to read medical research on concussions will also come in handy.)

For generations, though, people who dropped math and science as soon as their high school would let them have chosen reporting as the ideal profession. The inevitable result is a lot of innumerate journalism. Newspapers are rife with number blunders—my guess is that screwed-up percentages are the most common errors, but that’s anecdote, not data—and reporters are terrible at covering polls, especially political ones (as Ronan O’Beirne explained in the Review last year.)

When journalists are intimidated by math, why would we expect them to be any good at covering health and science? The recent gong show at the Toronto Star is a particularly egregious example. But it’s just the latest in a long tradition of junk science journalism because reporters regularly misinterpret academic studies; confuse correlation and causation; and treat anti-vaxxers and climate-change deniers as reputable sources even though the facts prove these cranks are too ignorant to be quoted.

Reporters don’t deserve all the blame, though. Far too many editors and producers—often dazzled by hyperbolic press releases hawking dubious studies—make bad decisions because they’re bamboozled by science. Every day, assignment desks waste thin newsroom resources by sending people out to chase ridiculous stories. Some reporters blithely do what they’re told (even if it means cribbing sexed-up press releases) while others are too wary of developing “story killer” reputations to set their bosses straight. Worse, when the work comes in, these editors and producers are so clued out they don’t ask the right editorial questions and then, oblivious to the consequences, play the stories in stupid and dangerous ways.

In a census-free Canada, where the government gags its scientists and fabulist mayors appear to invent transportation policy in one of their drunken stupors, it’s crucial that journalists don’t think math and science are icky. I’m not suggesting we make a B.Sc. a requirement to be in this business. After all, lots of excellent reporters started with nothing more than a liberal arts degree and that most precious journalistic trait: curiosity.

But we do need a different attitude toward math, science and technology and it needs to start in j-schools and continue into newsrooms. So the next time a colleague smirks about his or her innumeracy, don’t laugh—suggest another line of work instead.

Tim Falconer’s next book, Bad Singer, has a lot of brain science in it.

I’m a journalist. I traded advanced functions and calculus for data management in high school. I use Google when I need to calculate a percentage. I have no idea what constitutes a polar vortex, or the difference between a tidal wave and a tsunami. When reporters proudly say they suck at math, how can we expect competent science coverage?

The Toronto Star is just the latest publication to take a hit for jumping too quickly to conclusions about a complicated science. For years, the Review has been looking at where we seem to keep failing as journalists. Here’s some of our work:

Polar vortex meme shows journalists don’t have the weather down to a science by Christina Pellegrini
When reporters sacrifice accuracy for readership and retweets, they deserve cold criticism

The media diet by Stephanie Maris
Why the wellness beat has become an unappetizing blend of sensational headlines, mixed messages and unhealthy reporting

Hard to swallow by Natalya Schafer
Should there be media guidelines in Canada for reporting on and discussing eating disorders?

The journalist is in—and dishing about doctors by Claire Prime
Brian Goldman, an emergency room doctor and CBC Radio host, examines the medical community in White Coat, Black Art

Showtime for science by Dan Falk
To make it on TV news, scientists must step out of character: If the role is wrong, so is much of the coverage

What we lose when papers give up on beat reporting by Lisa Coxon
As general assignment becomes the norm in newsrooms, publishers save money while the journalism—and the readers—suffer

Thanks to Nic McPhee for the image. 

Journalism has seen many evolutions-advocacy, gonzo, investigative and new journalism have all made their impact. But it’s precision journalism which may bring about the biggest change. Any journalist can join the movement. All it takes is a computer.
Finding the unfindable is one goal of precision journalists. Adept statisticians, they are motivated by calculating precise estimates and don’t flinch at terms like “null hypotheses”
or “chi-square.” These journalists realize that computers are not just glorified typewriters but highly sophisticated investigative tools.
You don’t have to be a math whiz to understand computer databases. Computer-assisted reporting, or CAR, revolves around the use of spreadsheets. This software lets users analyze numbers to locate trends or questionable figures.
But the onslaught of information circulating in the 1990s has caught many newsrooms off guard. Each day more numerical data is available. Polls, surveys and records offer lengthy details about legal, medical, economic, geographic, social science and technological areas, to mention a few. Knowing what to do with the data is the essence of precision journalism. Seven of the past 10 Pulitzer Prizes for investigative reporting were awarded to reporters who used CAR. “The Color of Money” was a 1988 series written by Bill Dedman for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. By using CAR, Dedman and his computer team cross-indexed federal computer records of home loans with federal census tapes and revealed racial discrimination in mortgage lending. Nine days after the series was published, Atlanta’s largest banks poured $77 million in loans into black neighbourhoods.
It was a big story. But where are Canada’s precision journalists? We’ve been slow to catch on to the wave of change. Our newsrooms haven’t used computers for very long, let alone for extensive investigation.
We have less access to information than in the U.S. Dean Tudor, Ryerson Polytechnical Institute’s information resource instructor, says it would be a “quick leap” for Canada to jump on the precision journalism bandwagon. But we need the data. It’s expensive to buy and interpret. Our government doesn’t like sharing computer tapes. Tudor believes we can push for tape access using American law as precedent.
Some people are pushing. Last November, a federal court judge rejected the federal government’s argument that their public opinion data on the constitutional debate should be withheld from the public. The Globe and Mail, Southam News and The Canadian Press along with access-to-information researcher Ken Rubin took the clerk of the Privy Council to court to release the data.
That’s one victory in a long battle for Rubin. Currently Canada doesn’t have what Rubin refers to as “democractic hardware/software capability.” He advocates the right of public inspection and the premise of open government. What we need in Canada is a monitoring agency like the Electronic Democracy Association in the U.S., Rubin says. CAR is about asking the right questions and knowing what to look for, according to Jock Ferguson, investigative reporter for the Globe. The first step would be to ask Statistics Canada for their “raw” data. To this point, no one has done that, Ferguson believes.
Sandra Ramsbottom, a Statistics Canada communications manager, believes that Statistics Canada’s raw data would not be clearly understood by the media. ‘Deadlines and the lack of practice at reading numbers inhibit most journalists. It’s this numeracy problem that hampers the discovery of many stories trapped in endless numbers.
Statistics Canada has a database called CANSIM, offering a range of subjects. “Dogbites, marshmallows, GDP, it’s all there,” says Ramsbottom. “There’s not a chance we wouldn’t have information on a story you’re working on.”
Trish Crawford, feature writer for The Toronto Star uses experts to help interpret data she uses in stories. Crawford is cautious around numbers. One story she wrote dealt with the most dangerous jobs in Canada. Figures showed that manufacturing had the most fatalities, but a closer look revealed that the forestry industry had the most deaths in proportion to the number of workers. Precision journalists never stop questioning the numbers. “All data is dirty,” says Dwight Morris, Los Angeles Times editor of special investigations. It’s not a comfortable thought to realize your story may depend on data punched into a computer by a clerk hired at seven dollars an hour.
The Montreal Gazette is one of the few Canadian newspapers that uses CAR. But Gazette reporters are “journalists, not sociologists,” says William Marsden, assistant city editor in charge of the investigation team. He sees the computer as a tool only and uses data as an aid to support the research, not as a source of stories.
All of Quebec’s court system is now on computer tape. The Gazette won the rights to the tapes after taking the Justice Department to the Access to Information Commission. Gazette reporters can now study trends in sentencing and frequency of crimes.
In time, Canadian reporters will become more familiar with precision journalism. As well, with a stronger commitment to freedom of information by Canadian media, more data will become available.
It’s time to catch up-to the past. Precision journalism actually began in the late 1960s as part of the new journalism movement. Maybe the journalists of the 1990s will embrace this computer technology, pushing buttons they’ve been avoiding, to better document the stories of our times.