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word "SARS" in its headli ne. And the infor mation-hungry publi c abso rbed those facts,
leading to lay people discussin g the problems amongst themselves.
Several areas of concern crop up in this scen ario. as brietl y (and therefore
inaccurately) as it has been stated here. For one. there are distinct levels of vocabulary in
all three layers of this pictu re. from the highly technical medica l ja rgo n of the sc ientific
community. to the simplistic vocabulary employed by most newspapers. to the wide ly
varied communication styles used by laypeople. Th e problem is that the med ia- which
has arguably the si mplest language of the three-is the main source of communication
betwee n the sc ientific and lay co mmun ities. Any inform ation that co mes from the
scie ntific community must therefore be pared down to its bare bones and rephrased in
such a fashion as to make it "understandable" to the ge neral public. Co nsiderab le loss of
nuance and meaning is the result of such paring, a co nsequence that ca n res ult in
miscommunicat ion and misunderstanding.
A second area of conce rn in this scena rio is the accuracy and co mpleteness of
information as it flows from one source to anot her. In addition to the problems mentioned
in the previous paragraph. the med ia is a problematic source of information precisely
beca use it is a business, and therefore has as a primary interest the crea tion of prof it.
News stories that will sell newspapers will get published as a result. while news stor ies
that are of lesser interest (or impact) will be put as ide. pushed to later pages of the paper ,
or left uncovered altoge ther. So while the announce ment of. say , lemmings having bee n
discovered as the carr iers of SARS wou ld rank high on the list of "publishable material."
the retraction of th is information at a later date might or might not be co nsidered as
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