Biomedical science in supermarket tabloids

Supermarket tabloids present, as truthful, stories about biomedical science that are greatly exaggerated and often fictitious. Apparently a sizable portion of their large readership accepts these stories as correct. This is "scientific journalism" at its worst, but its standards are not wholly different from those of the mainline press. Reprinted from Knowledge and Policy: The International Journal of Knowledge Transfer and Utilization, Fall 1989, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 74–81. Allan Mazur is both a sociologist and a technologist. He received an M.S. in Engineering from UCLA and worked for several years as an aerospace engineer before obtaining a Ph.D. in sociology from Johns Hopkins University. He has been a member of the social science faculties of MIT and Stanford University, and is currently a professor in Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. The Dynamics of Technical Controversy (1981) is his major work on public disputes over technology, and he continues to work in this area as well as in biosociology.