Pew science survey coverage science literacy scientists unscientific america

Over at MIT's Knight Science Journalism Tracker, the wise Charlie Petit has a great round-up of coverage of yesterday's Pew science survey. On what I described earlier today as a troubling "fall from grace" narrative in some reporting and commentary, Petit points to the obvious difficulties science reporters might have in covering an issue they deeply care about: One notes that bylines [in coverge] tend to belong to science writers. Science writers can hope to cover science itself with a semblance of objective dispassion. But they have an inbuilt conflict of interest when the topic is the…