Yes, I do.
Actually, we have a whole selection process for our experts where we take--we think--the best of peer review, which is that we look for recommendations from our advisory panel. We look for who has been funded by NSERC or SSHRC, where they are working, and the kinds of publications they've been getting. For example, are they published in Science and Nature? Has their point of view been peer-reviewed? That's how we try to keep on the straight and narrow as far as science is concerned.
With regard to ensuring that the journalists themselves follow through at the end, we can't. We can only provide them with good-quality expertise from the start. What they choose to do with it is their right and whatever....
Well, first of all, I'm a journalist from way back, and I know that journalists don't want to be wrong. They want to be right. In many respects, though, they need to understand more about science, that it's not balance to put in the fringe opinion when the consensus of scientific evidence says one thing. It doesn't make sense. As we move forward and as we at the SMCC talk to journalists, it is my hope that they will be learning, too, more about science and about how science is done, and will become more savvy about these issues.
Just to pick up on the point earlier about whether we can feed the world with.... I didn't get a chance to say anything, but I will now: that's a great idea for a briefing. If we are providing briefings with a range of valid scientific opinion, I think we are now providing a focal point for the journalists to start reporting on it, to start learning about these things. It won't be just one briefing. We'll slice up that story in different ways.