Climate Feedback

Not the feedback loop, but fact-checking media reports. In perhaps the next iteration of evaluating climate news and data, how trustworthy is the science you read about? A new group will track the accuracy of climate news to evaluate what's out there:

Last week, Climate Feedback announced the Scientific Trust Tracker, a feature that will track news outlets’ accuracy on climate change, one scientist-reviewed story at a time. Right now, the Trust Tracker has preliminary data for five outlets: The New York Times, Mashable, the Washington Post, the Telegraph, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal. Climate Feedback’s community of scientific reviewers — which include actively-publishing scientists specializing in climate change, ocean acidification, sea level rise, and other related topics — has reviewed and annotated articles from these outlets, pointing out their strong and weak points. Taking these reviews into account, the Trust Tracker creates a “reliability index” for news outlets’ climate coverage.

Our own Marshall Shepherd is quoted at the end of the article, as an example of scientifically sound writing in support of the Forbes.com. If/when publications begin to take their reputations for accuracy more seriously, the level of scientific credibility will rise and the public acumen about scientific phenomena will stabilize. That sounds hopeful, but our experts are already playing an important role in this second-level challenge to make sure the public is informed with sound science.

Image: Shutterstock via Thinkprogress