Research Policy 27 1998.

869879

Science and the media

Peter Weingart
Institute for Science and Technology Studies, Uniersity of Bielefeld, Postfach 100131, 33501, Bielefeld, Germany

Abstract

The traditional view of the popularization of science, if it was ever correct, is being challenged in the new arrangement
between science and the media. The paper discusses the changes in that arrangement and gives three particular cases of what
is termed an increasingly closer sciencemedia-coupling: pre-publication of results in the media, the role of media
prominence in relation to scientific reputation, and the cassandra syndrome in some areas of research, i.e., the initiation of
catastrophe discourses in order to catch public attention. The coupling with its problematic consequences seems inescapable
given the increased dependency on public support on the part of science, and the medias enhanced role in providing
legitimation. q 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Science; Media; Legitimation; Public; Democracy

1. Science discovers the media
A Dutch Aids-researcher announces the discovery
of a vaccine. Pressured by his colleagues to give
proof of his discovery he has to admit having exag-
gerated his claims. In justifying his behaviour he
declares that only with such exaggerations is one
able to obtain the desired public attention and sup-
port Hagendijk and Meeus, 1993.. This is just one
example among many others. It indicates a new
relationship between science and the media. The
question to be pursued here is if this relationship is
really novel and if so what its consequences are for
science.
2. The traditional model of popularization and its
criticism
The scientists approach to the media and the
repercussions this has for science can only be under-
stood appropriately if one considers how populariza-
tion mediates between science and society. The pre-
vailing understanding of popularization derives from
a hierarchical concept of forms of knowledge. Ac-
cording to this, scientific knowledge is superior to
popular everyday-knowledge, so-called common
sense. Science has a monopoly on truth in society, it
produces true knowledge. The media transmit in-
formation. The current model of popularization of
scientific knowledge derives from this image. Scien-
tific truths are produced within the social system of
science and then are transmitted in accessible form
to the public. The control over the adequacy of this
transmission lies with science. From the perspective
of science, popularized knowledge is in the best case
simplification, in the worst case pollution Hilgartner,
1990, 519f.; Green, 1985..
The traditional concept of popularization is one
which typically implies a passive and generally un-
specified public. The process of communication of
scientific discoveries from science to the public is
unidirectional. The public is perceived as purely
receptive. It is excluded from the production and

0048-7333r98r$19.00 q 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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870 P. Weingartr Research Policy 27 (1998) 869879
validation of knowledge and by implication is con-
sidered to be incompetent to judge the transferred
knowledge Whitley, 1984, p. 4.. In this asymmetri-
cal image, the popularizers whether they be authors
or the modern media are not granted an independent
function, and it is also implied that they have no
selection criteria of their own when processing scien-
tific knowledge.
The ideology of science reporting which corre-
sponds to this traditional concept of popularization
has prevailed until far into the 1970s Lewenstein,
1992.. The conviction underlying this ideology was
that if the public only understood science better it
would also support it more readily. The media were
given the role of the translator and propagandist.
Their task was to represent discoveries of science in
adequate, popular and appealing form to the public.
Many of the training programs for science journalists
which are oriented to the improvement of the quality
of representation and an increase in the level of their
education can be traced back to this time. Accord-
ingly, the media have been under the critical obser-
vation of science whenever questions of the ade-
quacy of reporting were at issue Dunwoody, 1982..
This view is still far from being out of date Kepp-
linger et al., 1991..
3. The independence of the media
It has taken a long time until criticism began to be
levelled at this asymmetrical concept of the relation-
ship between science and the public. The media have
gone through a development very similar to that of
science in terms of growth rates and internal differ-
entiation. The insight that the media do not simply
mirror reality but make their own selections is not
new Lippmann, 1954, 317ff... Meanwhile, however,
the implicit criteria according to which journalists
judge the news value of a piece of information and
according to which they process it to news have been
decoded: actuality, sensation, personalization, and
locality are among the most important ones. It is
evident that these criteria are different from those
which structure communication in science. The so-
called frames according to which the media select
and process information and which structure their
knowledge world are also different from, say, the
disciplines within science. Basically they are mostly
implicit theories about what exists, what happens
and what is important Dunwoody and Peters, 1993,
p. 331.. The specific parameters of the production of
the media, i.e., organizational factors, have an im-
pact on the way in which news is selected and
processed. The accessibility of information, the
availability of crucial resources: time, money and
competence, the dependence on advertisement ac-
counts as well as editorial policies all have an impact
on the processing and diffusion of information.
In view of all this it is hardly surprising that the
media cannot function as transmitters of representa-
tions of scientific discoveries or any other events
true to reality. They construct their own reality in
the same way as science does. They only use differ-
ent instruments, different approaches to reality and
different forms of representation. Thus the complaint
of science about wrong or distorted reports or the
purportedly wrong selection of news is futile.
With recognition of the constructed character of
reality represented in the media, the asymmetry be-
tween science and the media and implicitly also the
hierarchy of forms of knowledge. is questioned.
Evidently the media also produce knowledge at least
in so far as they have their own independent repre-
sentation of reality. And part of this reality is also
science and its descriptions of reality. It is thus no
accident that especially between science and the
media there is hard competition and even conflict
over the adequacy of representation. To the degree
that the media gain in importance, the monopoly of
science in judging representational adequacy may be
weakened. Sciences abstract criterion of truth is
now being confronted by the medias criterion of
public acclaim. The reliability of information for
example, as represented by the prestige of a scien-
tific journal. now competes with level of diffusion
represented by the circulation figure of the newspa-
per or the number of viewers of a TV broadcast..
The validation criteria of science are not replaced but
are supplemented by others.
This becomes particularly evident with respect to
media reporting on science: prominence in the me-
dia competes with reputation in science. Prominence
has a similar function in the media as reputation does
in science Luhmann, 1990, p. 247.. It has news
value insofar as it represents an attractive item for
reporting. At the same time prominence, like reputa-
 P. Weingartr Research Policy 27 (1998) 869879
tion in science, is a product of the media, an
orienting mark and an indicator for self-referentiality
and autonomy. Media prominence does not have to
be consonant with scientific reputation. Scientific
reputation is only one condition among several to
attain prominence in the media Dunwoody and Ryan,
1987.. Goodell has pointed out in her pioneering
study that the usual criteria characteristic for the
media have to be added in order for a scientist to
obtain media attention: extraordinary personality,
high level of communication and self-representation,
the attractiveness of the topic of hisrher work with
reference to problems and fears of society Goodell,
1977..
The media may use scientific reputation as an
orienting criterion implicitly regarding the compe-
tence and credibility of a scientist. Thus, reputation
may have a legitimating function for the media in
their reporting about science, but credibility is not
sufficient to guarantee media prominence Peters,
1994a,b, p. 174; Peters, 1994a,b.. Scientific reputa-
tion and media prominence refer to very different
and unrelated processes of attribution. They overlap
and interfere when the media report about science or
let scientists speak. This happens on the stage of
public discourse in which politics and science are
involved for example, when the legitimation of the
funding of research before the public is at issue..
In view of the selectivity of the media and their
self-referentiality and operational independence, it is
problematic to hold on to the traditional concept of
popularization. The arrangement has changed funda-
mentally. The more important the media are for the
structuring of public discourse the more important it
is for science to gain media attention. Or put in
different terms: the stronger the dependence of sci-
ence on public consent, the more important is atten-
tion and consent of the media. Under these condi-
tions the most interesting question becomes what the
repercussions of this dependence on the media will
be for science itself. What are the consequences of
an orientation to the media for science?
4. The medialization of science
The recourse of science to a non-scientific public
is not a novel phenomenon. In a sense it is part and
871
parcel of popularization. If originally unspecified and
diffuse publics were envisioned by popularizing au-
thors these non-scientific publics become more fo-
cused. Thus, their involvement loses the character-
istics of education and enlightenment and assumes a
more strategic function. Non-scientific publics are
engaged by science in order to settle conflicts which
cannot be solved internally. In a very general sense
one could say that recourse to the public by scientists
serves the purpose of mobilizing legitimacy with
reference to two types of problems: 1. the securing
and expansion of the boundaries of science vis a` vis
its social environment, and 2. the settlement of
conflicts within science. Mobilization of the public
and specific groups, respectively with the help of the
media, the forms it takes, and the changes it has
undergone are the focus in the following.
There are many indications that the relationship
between science and the media has changed but a
plausible explanation is lacking. A prominent exam-
ple of an instrumentalization of the media by science
is the pre-publication of scientific discoveries in the
media. It is evidently a phenomenon which occurs
increasingly often. Usually it is attributed to a
changed behavioral pattern of scientists. However,
Robert K. Merton has argued convincingly that this
does not signal the dissolution of the normative ethos
of science. The interest of scientists in priority has
remained unchanged. In his view, the really interest-
ing conditions which decide over the intensity of
competition are to be seen in the quality of research
areas, i.e., whether they are hot Merton, 1973..
This depends on whether they allow relatively many
original discoveries andror if they are socially eco-
nomically, politically, ethically. relevant. Illustra-
tions of the latter are priority conflicts between the
American Robert Gallo and the French researcher
Luc Montagnier over the discovery of the AIDS
virus when not only the honor of the involved re-
searchers was involved but also patent rights for a
presumptive vaccine worth millions of dollars.
In this and other spectacular cases, the practice of
pre-publication in the media has played a large role,
but an orientation to the selection criteria of the
media is not yet at issue. Instead this practice reflects
instrumentalization of the media in order to obtain
priority and public attention. Possible sanctions by
the scientific community are accepted in exchange
872 P. Weingartr Research Policy 27 (1998) 869879
for the advantage of gaining time with regard to the
publication in scientific journals which have long
intervals between submission and publication of
work, if the relevance of the results for society and
thus the expected gains are considered very high.
Phillips et al. 1991. have shown that even within
science, perception of scientific publications may
indeed be affected by the media. Their study sup-
ports the assumptions held by scientists who use the
media in their fight for priority.
Beyond this case many studies show that criteria
and frames of the mass media are incorporated in
scientific publication strategies and thus have an
impact on the core of knowledge production Shinn
and Whitley, 1985.. Nelkin 1995. shows how scien-
tists adapt themselves to the increasing importance
of media for the perception, evaluation and promo-
tion of their work and how they develop strategies of
information control in public relations work. With
the necessity of selling results of research influenc-
ing researchers strategies, it is a reasonable assump-
tion that they have a potential media impact in mind.
Nelkin provides numerous indications of an active
and strategic dealing with the potential of mass
media representation on the part of science. She
gives examples for PR-activities of institutions and
scientific journals which by targeting mass publica-
tion of scientific results try to improve the image of
their institution or to enhance public support for
particular research lines. In many of the cases men-
tioned by Nelkin popular mass media frames are
being used. The aversion of global catastrophes,
hopes for new medications and treatments or the
opportunity to solve fundamental problems of hu-
manityall these are referred to as a possible basis
for legitimacy in the competition for scarce re-
sources.
This strategy is most successful where the internal
mechanism of peer review is already weakened and
more direct political decisions determine the alloca-
tion of resources. Nelkin points out that especially
decisions on large scale research projects are no
longer made within the traditional system of research
support and that external criteria therefore gain in
importance. Where this is the case, science is under a
very concrete pressure of legitimation Nelkin, 1995,
147f... Numerous indications for the media orienta-
tion of individual scientists are provided by Goodell
1977. who describes the visible scientist as a new
type molded in the media age. The visible scientist
seeks for the public especially in controversies in
order to obtain public prominence even if this behav-
ior does not conform to the scientific ethos. How-
ever, Goodell does not pursue the question whether
or not public prominence has an impact on scientific
reputation.
Finally it has been shown in specific cases how
the implicit rhetoric of scientific articles is targeted
to the acquisition of resources and thus oriented to
external interests. Green demonstrates with the ex-
ample of the media discussion in the USA over the
XYY-chromosome that the basis for sensationalist
reporting was prepared by the scientists themselves.
The ex-post criticism by scientists of the XYY myth
which was purportedly created by the media recre-
ates the known pattern of a division between good
science and the distorting media. The role of the
scientists themselves is ignored Green, 1985..
All these indications of a new relationship be-
tween science and media can be assembled into one
picture. Communication of science to the public is
nothing fundamentally new. Novelty is in the form
and intensity which emanates from a closer connec-
tion between science and its social environment as
well as the new role of the media in observing this
connection. The phenomenon which is at issue here
may be termed the sciencemedia-coupling. It is the
basis for the thesis of the medialization of science:
With the growing importance of the media in shap-
ing public opinion, conscience and perception on the
one hand and a growing dependence of science on
scarce resources and thus on public acceptance on
the other, science will become increasingly media-
oriented. Under certain conditions the constructive
effect of the media-specific processing of scientific
knowledge can lead to the establishment of themes
on the political agenda. This process which is ori-
ented to the attainment of public attention follows
the logic of discursive overbidding. Large research
programs can be derived from such themes which
become the basis of long term projects designed to
mobilize financial resources on a national and supra-
national scale. Thus, the thesis of medialization
claims an indirect impact of the orientation to the
media on science itself. The assumed mechanism
described with medialization is the coupling between
 P. Weingartr Research Policy 27 (1998) 869879
science and relevant societal environments. This is
typical for modern mass democracies.
In order to illustrate and corroborate the thesis of
medialization I will examine three cases.
1. The phenomenon of pre-publication of scien-
tific discoveries in the media with the example of
cold fusion. Here the relationship between traditional
scientific communication and communication in the
media is at issue.
2. The role of scientists as media stars and
potential impacts of media prominence on scientific
reputation.
3. The intertwining of scientific, political and
media discourses using the example of climate
change. The resulting pattern is a discourse dynamics
by exaggeration triggered by media orientation lead-
ing to catastrophe discourses. It may be termed the
cassandra syndrome.
5. Priority, profits and the presscold fusion
The story of cold fusion has been described many
times and does not need to be repeated here Close,
1991; Huizinga, 1993.. The most important condi-
tion for cold fusion to catch media attention was the
expectation of an economic and political revolution
in the energy sector. The leading industrial nations
have invested billions of dollars into physical hot.
fusion research over the last three to four decades.
The solution of the problem of nuclear fusion is
expected at the earliest in 2030. The promise of
cheap chemical. cold fusion could only be regarded
as a sensation and had to attract worldwide attention.
Just this was promised by B. Stanley Pons of the
University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of the
University of Southampton at a press conference
immediately before the Easter weekend 1989: They
had achieved nuclear fusion at room temperature
with a little water, wire and electricity. The news
magazine Newsweek commented: It was as if
someone had said hed flown to Mars in a prop
plane! Newsweek, May 8, 1989, 41.. The an-
nouncement of the two researchers was unusual inso-
far as it did not contain any details of their experi-
ment. In fact, they had published an article in a
non-review journal April 10, 1989. titled Pre-
liminary information that did not specify any details
873
either. Another article was sent to the reputed journal
Nature, but was rejected for paucity of experimental
details. The press conference announcement ignited
a hysteria both within the scientific community and
in the media. Lewenstein stresses that for lack of the
normal stable communication via scientific journals.
in this situation there was a confounding of different
forms and sources of communication. Lacking more
precise data scientists used video tapes of the press
conference in order to replicate the experiment. The
press served at least in part as a source of informa-
tion and information broker for the scientists
Lewenstein, 1995, 415f...
Thus, the special role which the media assumed in
this phase of the story consists of their becoming
part of the process, source and broker of information
in a communication process which actually belongs
only in the domain of science. Of the six leading
German scientists who took part in the cold fusion
debate, four received their first information from the
media, none from scientific journals. Lewenstein
characterizes this situation as instability of informa-
tion Lewenstein, 1995, p. 417.. This phase of insta-
bility lasted for a while according to Lewensteins
scheme until May 1989. and is reflected in the actual
information behavior of scientists, in the insecurity,
and contradictions of their evaluation of Pons and
Fleischmanns results as well as in their evaluation
of the situation with respect to its impact on science.
The views about the role of the media were split.
But in the conflicting opinions the two central as-
pects of the sciencemedia-coupling become appar-
ent: First the importance of amplification and second
the impact and repercussion of media prominence.
Regarding the importance of amplification: critics
warned that media hysteria would lead to bad sci-
ence. Wrong results published without control could
lead research laboratories into impasses. Proponents
saw positive impacts in the fact that attention and
excitement would increase the speed of scientific
debate and the exchange of opinions and results.
Also science would be shown with a human face
so that possibly the interest of schoolchildren in it
would be aroused. Of the six fusion researchers
interviewed, four were opposed to publication in the
press. The two others were opposed in principal but
thought that in spectacular cases like that of cold
fusion, a duty to inform the public existed. As can be
874 P. Weingartr Research Policy 27 (1998) 869879
expected, the guardians of a traditional but slow
communication system operating with the control
mechanism of peer review are in opposition to those
researchers interested in a stronger and faster fo-
cussing of attention.
A partial aspect of amplification is the intensity of
reaction. Lewensteins comparison between the vol-
ume of electronic and traditional information com-
municated shows again the faster reaction time of the
media e-mail, fax. and also the larger volume com-
pared to the delayed and relatively slower reaction of
scholarly journals. This pattern is another illustration
of medias function of concentrating attention and
diffusing information faster.
Lewenstein speaks of their catalyzing role in
creating complexity Lewenstein, 1995, p. 419..
This complexity is best illustrated by the insecurity
of the scientific communitys evaluation of Pons and
Fleischmanns theses. Another aspect of the same
phenomenon and a further consequence of amplifica-
tion can be seen in the higher risk of misleading a
much larger number of laboratories and scientists
working in them than was previously the case. An
American researcher cited in Newsweek pointed this
out with some exaggeration: So many scientists had
been lured into cold fusion that it probably brought
the rest of science to a halt for the last months
Newsweek, May 8, 1989, 44; c.f. Lewenstein, 1995,
p. 422.. Indeed, research laboratories all over the
world entered the race for the confirmation or refuta-
tion of the PonsrFleischmann experiments. It is
conspicuous that researchers involved directly or in-
directly see the case of cold fusion as confirmation
that the control system of science functions in spite
of the new role of the media. But surprisingly they
overlook or denigrate the sheer breadth of reaction
and the cost incurred by it due to the type of
information incomplete description of experimental
setup in the press. and its amplifying effect. Five of
the German fusion researchers interviewed declared
that the resources used were extraordinarily few:
Hardly any material was needed and the apparatus
for measurements was available everywhere. The
expenditure in manhours in the five groups varied
between five days for three scientists and one techni-
cian up to about a month with a group of around ten
scientists and several technicians. The sixth expert
belonged to a group of four physicists and three
electrical chemists who worked on cold fusion for
about 20 months. Elsewhere this financial aspect of
the cold fusion affair has also not been thoroughly
investigated. The research center in Harwell, Eng-
land, purportedly spent half a million dollars and two
months full time work for several dozen specialists
in examining the PonsrFleischmann results. If one
were to extrapolate data such as these to the total of
all laboratories in the world engaged in replication
attempts, one would perhaps obtain a more realistic
picture of the overall impact of the combination of
publications in the media and the withholding of
crucial information on the scientific community as a
whole. The prevailing attitude is that given the ex-
tremely high scientific and economic stakes, no one
can afford to let an opportunity pass by. The costs of
following a wrong path must be borne.
6. Scientific reputation, media prominence: on the
role of scientists as media stars
With this background in mind, the role of media
attention for scientists and the themes propagated by
them gain particular relevance. As argued above, one
of the indicators of the independence of the media is
that although they orient themselves in their report-
ing on science to scientific reputation, which they
take as a sign of reliability and competence of the
scientists concerned, on the other hand they do not
feel bound to scientific reputation and thus feel free
to depart from it and highlight other features. Thus,
the media have their own internal reconstruction of
scientific reputation. Media prominence of scientists
is a media-specific construct. In view of a science
media coupling, the question arisesfrom the per-
spective of science, of individual researchers, and of
science policyhow scientific reputation and media
prominence relate to one another in directing the
course of science and the decisions to support it.
With this, the difference between scientific reputa-
tion and media prominence becomes a crucial re-
search site: From the perspectie of science it is
theoretically possible that the attention of politics is
directed to media-prominent scientists and their top-
ics and that this attention is translated into decisions
of resource allocations even though the scientists
prominence is not in line with their reputation; from
 P. Weingartr Research Policy 27 (1998) 869879
the perspectie of the indiidual scientists, it is
likewise imaginable that the path to success which
has previously been blocked in internal evaluations
may be found via prominence in the media; from the
perspectie of science policy this creates the poten-
tial problem of focus being directed to topics whose
state of research does not justify the support sug-
gested by media attention. In other words, the media
coupling may theoretically lead to a competition
between media and scientific criteria of relevance
and validation. In modern mass democracies such a
development is increasingly probable. In order to test
if there are empirical indications for this hypothesis,
a thorough examination of media reporting on scien-
tists in the leading German print media was carried
out. 1
The first question concerned the frequency of
scientists being mentioned in the media. The assump-
tion was that the media create their stars among the
scientists through frequent mentionings and that they
refer to only a few names known to them. Surpris-
ingly the share of scientists who appeared in the
sample more than once was only 12%, i.e., most of
the scientists were mentioned only once, with one
notable exception. 2 Also the reporting remains very
closely tied to the expert role of the scientists con-
cerned. All scientists mentioned more than three
times speak on only one topic.
In order to control for a possible bias of the
period of observation and to obtain a more detailed
picture of the role of well-known scientists repre-
sented in the media, the media presence of 11
selected scientists was analyzed over the entire pe-
riod of their appearance in the media usually several
years.. The results of this analysis were set in a
temporal relationship to the citation profiles of the
same scientists. Citations are taken as a rough mea-
sure of perception and recognition of a scientist in
the scientific community and thus as an indirect
1
2The first phase of the project covered all reporting on
scientists and science between April 15 and July 23, 1996 in four
daily and three weekly papers.
2
The exception is Daniel Goldhagen who gained unusual atten-
tion for his book Hitlers Willing Executioners. Even Goldhagen
is not a media star in the strict sense insofar as although he is
mentioned very often, he only speaks about or is asked questions
concerning his own narrow field.
875
measure of hisrher scientific reputation.. The pat-
terns resulting from this comparison were interpreted
in connection with biographical data and the contex-
tualizations of the articles in the media. The crucial
question is whether relationships can be identified
between presence in the media prominence. and
scientific reputation. The method does not allow any
causal inferences but it does justify interpretations
about plausible connections.
The comparative analysis of the patterns of media
presence and citations of nine scientists resulted in
two distinguishable types: 1. Scientific reputation
precedes growing attention by the media. 2. Media
attention precedes growing reputation in science.
Within these two typical patterns there are consider-
able variations which, however, do not alter the
fundamental pattern. The first pattern corresponds to
expectations directed to the relationship between sci-
ence and the media: scientists who gain recognition
in their respective fields eventually become an object
of media attention and are recognized by them as
experts. The media accept the scientific evaluation of
a person. This pattern appears more often than the
second one. The second pattern is in the extreme
case the opposite. Attention obtained in the media
leads post hoc to attention and recognition in the
scientific community. Thus the second pattern raises
the issue to what extent the media have an influence
on the scientific reputation of the respective scien-
tists and thus secondarily on the control mechanisms
of science proper. Scientists who fell into the first
pattern were Ulrich Beck social scientists., Paul
Crutzen atmospheric chemist., Robert Gallow im-
munologist., Hartmut Grassel climate researcher.,
Hubert Markl evolutionary biologist. and Otmar
Wassermann toxicologist.. Those who fell into the
second pattern were Wilhelm Heitmeyer research on
violence., Opaschowski research on leisuretime. and
ErnstUlrich von Weizsacker biologist and environ-
mental researcher..
The most interesting case among scholars falling
into the second pattern, is the pedagogue and re-
searcher on violence Wilhelm Heitmeyer. Heit-
meyers scientific reception and his media presence
are obviously connected to the boom enjoyed by the
topic of Auslanderfeindlichkeit hostility to foreign-
ers. at the beginning of the 1990s. It is impossible to
determine without a doubt whether the attention to
876 P. Weingartr Research Policy 27 (1998) 869879
this topic that set in with some delay in science can
be traced back to an increased media presence. Heit-
meyers most highly cited work, Rechtsextremistis-
che Orientierung bei Jugendlichen 1987. had gone
through three editions before he himself appeared in
the media and was published a fourth time in 1992,
the year of his highest media presence. Nonetheless,
85% of all citations of Heitmeyers work occurred
after 1992. This means that scientific reception be-
gan largely after media presence had been estab-
lished. Another indication that attention for Heit-
meyer was connected to the topic of Auslander-
feindlichkeit and the respective incidents is the al-
ways dramatic and personalized form of media pre-
sentation. It is also evident that this is primarily a
German discussion: Half of all citations to Heit-
meyers works are found in German pedagogical and
social science journals; only 14% come from An-
glosaxon journals. Heitmeyer is not a media star but
he had considerable presence in the media as long as
the topic Auslanderfeindlichkeit was strongly repre-
sented in the media.
In a case such as Heitmeyers, the question may
be asked whether media attention preceding scien-
tific reception had an impact on political decisions
concerning the allocation of resources. In 1996, the
State Government of NorthrhineWestfalia appropri-
ated funds for the foundation of an institute for
interdisciplinary research on conflict and violence at
Heitmeyers home university in Bielefeld. One of the
laudatory speakers commented at the opening of the
institute that this topic did not have the same priority
on the research agenda as that accorded to it by
politicians due to its actuality. In fact, however,
violence was decreasing at the time, and research on
violence was nothing new, but had been carried out
for a long time. Heitmeyers example is perhaps an
extreme case among those analyzed. The connection
between his media prominence and resource alloca-
tion is plausible but cannot be proven. However, that
such a connection can exist is beyond reasonable
doubt.
7. Catastrophe discourses: sciences strategic ori-
entation to the media
A third example of the science media coupling is
the strategic adaptation of scientific discourses to the
anticipated. desires of media attention. To be clear,
the issue is not whether scientists provide the public
with wrong information. To prove this would be
difficult. The case at issue is different. Scientists
adapt to the media when addressing policymakers
and the public. The results are simplified, dramatized
pronouncements and prognoses calling for immedi-
ate action which are taken up and amplified by the
media. Often enough they become politically effec-
tive discourses. The strategic element recedes into
the background. Only when public attention wanes
do dissidents and critics speak up and question the
original catastrophic scenarios. In this phase the
allegation may be formulated explicitly that the pre-
dicted threats were a conscious misleading or at least
a public relations version of the truth.
The implication of this aspect of the science
media-coupling is a dual one. On the one hand the
prognoses amplified by the media often create a need
for political action and thus focus on legitimacy.
That means drawn out public debates on impending
catastrophes have delegitimating implications for
politics and force it to self-binding declarations which
ultimately must be implemented in concrete political
measures especially if other social groups have en-
tered the discourse.. The strength and intensity of
impacts thus created depend on the scope of the
declared threats. On the other hand it can be ex-
pected that the public may get used to scientific
scenarios of this kind. It can then no longer be
judged reliably whether the drama of declarations by
scientists is justified or only construed with a view to
their PR-effect. It may be that politics thus is in
danger of losing an important basis of its legitimacy,
namely certified expert knowledge.
Again, a particular case illustrates the phe-
nomenon just described: the discourse on global
climate change. It is part of a broader discourse on
global environmental changes. Its chief character-
istics are the globality of threats and their assumed
irreversibility. Along with climate change, these are
the destruction of the ozone layer, of tropical forests
and of genetic diversity.
The debates on climate change ran more or less
parallel in the USA and Germany. I focus here only
on the German discourse. In 1986 an article in the
journal Physikalische Blatter predicted a climate
catastrophe that would render the earth uninhabit-
 P. Weingartr Research Policy 27 (1998) 869879
able. This prognosis came with a relatively precise
date: Irrevocably in the next 50 years. The authors
made explicit what interest had motivated them.
Atomic energy should be developed rapidly in order
to lower CO 2-emissions. In the same year the Ger-
man Physical Society published a warning of im-
pending worldwide anthropogenic climate change
with estimates of the rise of the sea level 5 to 10 m
were believed possible. which, in turn, triggered the
media to dramatize. Der Spiegel provided the icon
of the debate on its title page with the Cologne
cathedral standing in water. The first proclamation
demanded an immediate worldwide regulation that
focused specifically on Germany. The scientific un-
certainties of the prognoses were played down in
view of the claimed urgency and feared every irre-
versibility of the change. A second proclamation
published a year later, now authorized by the Ger-
man Physical Society and the German Meteorologi-
cal Society, toned down the warning of a catastrophe
somewhat. It no longer spoke of a climate catastro-
phe but of climate change. None the less the pres-
sure on politics was now supported by two large
national science organisations.
The proclamation of the DPG which initiated the
discourse on climate change was closely linked to
the legitimation problems of nuclear energy which
had been heightened after the accident at Chernobyl.
The physicists did not in the end achieve their
objective. The opposition to nuclear energy had be-
come too strong. Instead, the debate on anthro-
pogenic climate change took its own course. The
first reaction by policy makers was to call for more
research and thus to allocate funds. A side effect of
the physicists initiative was, however, that the issue
of climate change was largely narrowed down to the
CO 2-emission-problem Engels and Weingart, 1997,
100f...
With this, climate change was established as a
political arena. The success of the scientific whistle-
blowers may be seen in the fact that climate research
as a policy-relevant research area was institutional-
ized: In 1991 and 1992 two research institutes were
Klima, Umwelt,
established Wuppertal-Institut fur
Klimafolgenforschung..
Energie; Potsdam-Institut fur
The Max-Planck-Institut for Meteorology which al-
ready existed in Hamburg was supported so lavishly
with new computer technology that it was able to
877
develop an internationally competitive climate model.
The German climate computing center was funded
with 100 million D-Marks, German climate research
by the Federal Ministry for Science and Technology
with 120 million D-Mark annually.. Once this was
achieved, the scientific and advisory community
which was now occupied with detailing their warn-
ings of the catastrophe and operationalizing them
into regulatory measures, began to diversify.
By the mid-1990s the climax of public attention
for anthropogenic climate change was past. But cli-
mate research has become a firmly established re-
search sector financed by a multitude of national and
international funding programs. Meanwhile the prog-
noses of climate researchers have become much
more cautious, the analyses more differentiated and
more inaccessible to public understanding. In this
phase the controversy among climate researchers
surfaces whether the warnings are justified or not. In
contrast to the usual scientific controversies which
are reported in the media, this one reacts to the
participation of the media. The discourse has reached
a new level. Scientists who had provided the media
strategically with exaggerated climate scenarios were
now forced to regain their credibility under the at-
tacks by sceptics in the media. The fairytale about
the boy who cried wolf! once too often comes to
mind.
The journal New Scientist called the controversy
the Greenhouse Wars and cited climatologist Pat
Michels of the University of Virginia who was con-
vinced that the tide is about to turn in his favour,
that IPCC Interparliamentary Panel on Climate
Change . scientists manipulated data. Questioned
whether he saw communalities between the warners
and the sceptics, he points to the agreement accord-
ing to which a doubling of CO 2 in the atmosphere
would lead to a rise of the average temperature by
1.58C. That is the baseline of what modellers and
climatologists assume. With the view to in his opin-
ion exaggerated claims, he comments: You cant
make a case for global apocalypse out of 1.5 C
warming. It destroys the issue. If politics werent
driving this we could all meet on common ground
Pearce, 1997, pp. 38, 43.. An article by climatolo-
gist Klaus Hasselmann of the Hamburg Max-
Planck-Institut is equally explicit about the role of
the media in the climate change controversy. He
878 P. Weingartr Research Policy 27 (1998) 869879
accuses the media of dramatization, leaves exagger-
ated claims of climatologists in the past unmentioned
and then repeats a controversial probability state-
ment: 95% estimated probability that the observed
temperature changes are of anthropogenic origin.
And again he repeats a standard warning of urgency
to policy makers: If we wait until the last doubts
are overcome it will be too late to act Hasselmann,
1997, p. 31..
What appears here as a recent and unique devel-
opment can be demonstrated to be a recurrent pat-
tern. In policy-relevant areas the emergence of new
research fields follows the path of climate research:
In the beginning is the claim of an impending danger
if not catastrophe. A small group of scientists from
different disciplines. who proclaims this danger also
provides suggestions for a solution. The promise to
be able to avert the threat comes with the authority
of scientific expertise in a brand new research area
and is tied to the condition of needed financial
support. Once this arrangement is successfully estab-
lished, the scientific organizations are founded and
the respective field begins its life cycle, the knowl-
edge expands, becomes more differentiated, special-
ized, abstract and often less important for the practi-
cal arena for which it was originally recommended.
The example of eugenic scenarios of catastrophe
at the turn of this century as well as their revival in
the 1950s are an instructive example that this pattern
is not new. What is new is a much tighter science
media-coupling which amplifies the mechanism. In
the competition for attention all actors try to gain
control but none of them does control the game. The
results are overbidding discourses: the catastrophes
claimed by science are becoming more global, the
political self-commitments made to secure or regain
legitimation become more riskful and count on the
forgetfulness of the public, and the media comment
their own role in the dramatization as if they had no
part in it. In fact, their role is central in the transfer
of scenarios, their simplification, exaggeration and
effective diffusion.
8. Conclusion
It seems to be paradoxical: the more independent
science and the media are the tighter becomes their
coupling. I have analysed three configurations of this
coupling: 1. the detour of scientists to the media in
order to secure priorities; 2. the media construction
of prominence and how it differs from scientific
reputation; and 3. the competition of science for
public attention through overbidding discourses. In
all three cases the crucial question was whether the
media gain an indirect influence on or compete with
the self-steering mechanisms of science, and whether
the reference to the general public gains greater
weight than the reference to truth. The examples
which illustrate such an influence are still few and
they are indications rather than proof. They are what
climate researchers call fingerprints of the phe-
nomenon in question.
The sciencemedia-coupling can be understood
as an expected side phenomenon of modern mass
democracies and corresponds to their increased de-
mands of legitimacy. The increased importance of
the media on the one hand and the increased depen-
dency of science on public legitimation on the other
constitute an institutional lock-in which does not
lend itself to moral blame on either the media or
science. Elitist science as it existed both as a self
concept of science and in public perception until the
middle of this century is no longer viable. Beliefs
formerly held to be self evident such as the social
primacy of scientific knowledge are beginning to be
questioned. That such a development has its price
and cannot be exaggerated infinitely without damage
to the arrangement is obvious. The suggestion to
create more distance between scientists and their
observers is useless because it refers to a previous
state of affairs and thus fails to grasp the problem.
The question is how under the conditions described
an adequate balance can be created between a legiti-
mate public observation by the media and a reflexive
distance of science and who is the proper addressee
of such a demand.
Acknowledgements
Research on the German cold fusion community
5. was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsge-
meinschaft DFG.. Research on media prominence
6. was supported by the Department of Sociology,
University of Bielefeld, and carried out with P.
 P. Weingartr Research Policy 27 (1998) 869879
Pansegrau and M. Winterhager. Research on catas-
trophe discourses was supported by the DFG and
carried out with P. Pansegrau and Anita Engels.
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