Trial by Error

From Zoe Corbyn, Times Higher Education

In June, Dorothy Bishop decided to take matters into her own hands. Seething over the inaccuracies in a press report about a study in her field, the professor of developmental neuropsychology at the University of Oxford decided it was time to launch a new prize for science journalism. Via the medium of her blog (http://deevybee.blogspot.com), she called for nominations for her Orwellian Prize for Journalistic Misrepresentation.

“I am offering a prize each year for an article in an English-language national newspaper that has the most inaccurate report of a piece of academic work,” she explained. Bishop added that the prize – to be awarded each January – would consist of a certificate and statuette and be based on a points system where errors would be judged against publicly available documents: three points for a factual error in the title; two points for one in the subtitle; and one point for the body.

“I think it stirred things up,” she says, adding that although she has yet to receive a nomination, she has had many messages from fellow scientists who say it is a great idea.

“I just thought that this is so typical of what tends to happen … we have really got to name and shame the people who do this.”

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