Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to be with you today.
I am Penny Park, executive director of the Science Media Centre. With me is Suzanne Corbeil, who is the founding chair of the SMCC. Our testimony today is to inform you of the role the SMCC might play in shaping public policy.
The whole idea for the SMCC was born in part out of problems and challenges that were faced in communicating biotechnology to the public. It was about 10 years ago that the British House of Lords' select committee on science and tech published their report, which was in great measure a response to tabloid headlines on “Frankenfood”, talking about genetically modified organisms and media controversies over BSE and the MMR vaccine. That media coverage, as I'm sure you know, had tremendous policy implications in the U.K.
In its report the select committee referred to a sense of crisis among the scientific community and an emerging anti-science mood. So they called for suggestions on how to meet that challenge. What they came up with was this idea of the Science Media Centre. That is because the media is the place where the public gets its scientific information. Into this environment, the Science Media Centre in the U.K. was born. And it has spread. Now there's a Science Media Centre in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and one is going to be opening in the fall in Denmark.
We opened at the end of September of this year. It is a non-profit charitable organization set up to help journalists cover science when it hits the headlines. Our ultimate goal is to raise the level of discourse in Canada on issues of a science nature by helping journalists get access, on their timeline, to good quality evidence-based research. We believe that media coverage of science that is more informed, accurate, and incisive will help increase public engagement, and it will also benefit, not only the scientists and the journalists, but policy-makers and the public as well.
When we say science, we mean everything: natural, social sciences, engineering, biomedical—all aspects of science. As you know, too, these stories are pervasive. They underline major issues we face as a society—biotechnology being one of them. And biotechnology, of course, has incredible financial ramifications for farmers, economic implications for the country, and environmental consequences locally and globally.
I have some statistics from a published report, Making Sense of Emerging Technologies, which was prepared by the Genome Prairies GELS team at the University of Calgary, in September 2005. I think they are particularly interesting. While 69% of Canadians believe biotechnology will be beneficial, fewer than 25% believe specifically that genetically modified food will improve their life. A majority of Canadians believe their government probably doesn't do enough to study and manage the risks associated with biotechnology, and 85% of Canadians agree that the government should lower the use of biotechnology until more is known about the risk. It would seem that much remains to be discussed about biotechnology: what it is and what the risks and benefits are.
We need to have this discussion. We recognize that the media is where most Canadians get their scientific information, but at the same time the media is under an incredible stress. The financial business structure is imploding. There are fewer specialist journalists who are familiar with the complexities of science, and today's journalists are required to produce more stories, more quickly than ever before.
This is where the Science Media Centre of Canada comes in. We offer these sorts of services. Twice a week we send out a heads-up, a digest of significant stories that are about to be published in the major journals. That comes out in Canadian research news, conferences, and events of potential interest to registered reporters across the country. We provide this service in French and English. We have a rapid turnaround. In our office, we will take calls any time, 24/7.
Reporters can call us if they're working on a story and we will connect them to experts, like the ones who you're familiar with, I'm sure, such as David Waltner-Toews and Andrew Potter. As I say, we respond 24/7 on the timeline of the journalist. These experts are vetted not just for their scientific credibility but also for their ability to be able to communicate effectively with the media.
We hold webinars, online briefings on science topics that might be particularly complex, and these are done on the Internet. We can have experts, a panel of four, in Prince Edward Island, Victoria, Quebec City, and Ottawa, and journalists can call in and listen to the presentations by the experts, and also ask the experts questions.
We are also holding workshops for scientists, helping them understand how the media think and operate. We just had our first one at the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology a few weeks ago.
We're also providing introductory workshops for journalists--we're working on this--on such things as handling numbers, how to read scientific studies, and that sort of thing.
While there are also complex stories that are in the news a lot, we've also started building a database of backgrounders that are vetted again and are more detailed. For example, we had one recently on medical isotopes.
As far as our current status is concerned, we have more than 120 organizations from private, public, and corporate sectors who have donated $5,000 to become charter members, and a number of repeat funders have allowed us to open our doors.
We have two media officers, one in Montreal and one in Ottawa, providing our services, as I say, in English and French.
We have, to date, over 185 journalists who have registered for the SMCC, and registration is mandatory because the information we send out is frequently embargoed so they have to say that they will respect embargoes. They range from CBC/Radio-Canada, La Presse, the Calgary Herald, TVO, the major outlets--and it's growing as we become more well known.
We have a database of key experts, and our website has recorded more than 5,000 hits so far on comments from these experts posted online.
As I mentioned, we have webinars. We've had four. Those four webinars have resulted in more than 60 stories.
Material that we are providing is being picked up internationally as well. We've already had Canadian researchers quoted in the U.K. and in Australia, providing, in fact, a wider platform for Canadian scientists.
All of these services are provided free of charge. Currently, we're focusing on a start-up fundraising campaign for $2.5 million to establish ourselves with a strong financial base. After initial start-up costs, we project annual operating costs to be approximately $700,000 a year. Because we're a journalistic organization, no one source will contribute more than 10% of the operating budget.
The other part of the equation here is the scientists. We strongly believe that the scientists must step up and enter the discussion. They are the experts, and Canadians need to hear about their research in order to make informed decisions. At the SMCC that's what we're trying to make happen. We're not here to promote any one point of view at all. What we want to ensure is that good quality evidence-based science is represented at the table so that with an open and transparent discussion the public can be informed and engaged on these issues that drive public policy. We believe science has nothing to fear and everything to gain from more openness, even about its disagreements and uncertainty.
One of the most memorable quotes in a report that just came out earlier last year from the U.K. on science in the media is that “journalists get terribly excited by a glimpse of the ankle, but not at all excited by the full striptease”. That means, of course, that if you're open and above board, it gets much better coverage.
Media abhors a vacuum, and when experts are not readily available, that vacuum can be filled with unreliable information.
Government scientists can be important contributors to this discussion. By restricting their public voices with unrealistic delays, filters, and approval roadblocks, we are depriving Canadians of their expertise and knowledge. It is our hope that agriculture and agrifood issues will be prominently discussed through the Science Media Centre of Canada and that this sector will continue to actively support our start-up.
Being open about scientific issues and controversies can only lead to a better informed public debate on an issue. A higher level of public debate feeds into better policy on science issues. Evidence-based scientific information is an element, even a pillar, of policy, and having an open, lively discourse in the Canadian public is essential for a healthy democracy. And I'm sure it will make your jobs easier.
