Discussion

The present analysis suggests that only a minority of media-visible COVID-19 experts have had major scientific citation impact in their careers. Moreover, only a minority have any scientific record of any COVID-19-related publications. Highly visible COVID-19 media experts are very rarely influential in the scientific literature overall and/or in the COVID-19 scientific literature in particular. Women are markedly under-represented among those visible experts, although additional female experts exist. The under-representation of women in our examined samples was more prominent than what Fletcher et al found by analysing articles in 10 US newspapers in April 2020 where 34% of the authors were women.11 We could not assess the racial background of media experts, but we suspect that minorities would also be under-represented, as they are under-represented in many aspects of both academics and societal power structures.12 13

One other recent study has examined the scientific productivity of COVID-19 experts.14 Murayama et al assessed the 11 most frequently appearing medical experts in Japanese television during the first 6 months of 2020, 10 of which were men. They found that only one of the 11 experts had published a single scientific paper on COVID-19 indexed in PubMed as of 14 August 2020. The very low rate of publishing experts in this Japanese sample may be due to the fact that the search date for publications was too early. It is possible that some experts may publish COVID-19-related papers later and the same applies also to experts without COVID-19-related publications in our evaluation. Indeed, on 30 August 2021 we re-examined the publication record of the 11 Japanese experts and found that five (45%) had published at least one Scopus-indexed COVID-19-related paper until that time. By analysing data on payments from the pharmaceutical industry made in 2017, Murayama et al also found that 7 of the 11 experts had received payments from the pharmaceutical industry amounting to $317 324 for that single year. We did not assess potential financial conflicts in our study. However, certainly this is an important issue for all countries and it may often be difficult to ascertain in the absence of comprehensive payment databases that cover all potential financial conflicts for all scientists, not just clinicians.

The lack of sufficient representation of top scientists among the most visible experts in media may not be specific to COVID-19 and may affect all topics where science is invoked in public discourse. A preprinted analysis of experts in German media (no individual names were available) suggested that media coverage on the COVID-19 pandemic actually used experts with higher citation indicators compared with earlier pandemics.15 Past empirical evaluations of experts on various topics have shown that many of them, typically the majority, have not done any research themselves on the topics on which they pontificate.16–18 Concurrently, there is an increasing hunger for having more and more experts in popular media.19 20

The best or the most cited scientists should not necessarily be the ones who appear the most frequently in media. Some of the experts whom we analysed have accumulated a track record of massive media engagements that require an enormous commitment of time and psyche. Many highly competitive, excellent scientists would find it difficult or even impossible to pursue their scholarly work and have an intense media presence at the same time. Moreover, especially for COVID-19, polarisation, politics and an environment of conspiracy, mistrust, and public unrest and rage may have disincentivised many leading scientists from engaging with media. Women and minorities may feel even more disincentivised in this environment.

Nevertheless, communication with the wider public is an important mission of science, medicine and public health. Information on COVID-19 in media has been shown to be of questionable quality.1 2 Its quantity is clearly immense. The vast majority is produced and disseminated by people without any scientific training and with little or no self-reflection on their inadequacy to judge complex and rapidly evolving scientific concepts. It may be impossible to diminish the bulk of information, but at a minimum its quality should be improved. Engaging qualified experts may be critical in this regard.

Empirical studies show that non-experts are very poor at making predictions about COVID-19, and they are worse than experts—even though experts do not account sufficiently for uncertainty in their estimates and are therefore often also wrong.21 Both models and empirical data suggest that media can have an impact on the course of the pandemic22 and it can also affect mental health during its course.23 While there can be questions and concerns even about the media appearances of the best and most knowledgeable experts, media without involvement of scientific expertise is likely to be far worse.24 25

Of note, several of the highly visible media COVID-19 experts were probably invited in some capacity other than their research scholarship, for example, some scientists had political or administrative roles and others were front-line clinicians rather than academics. These aspects of non-research expertise are also very useful, and it could well be that all experts analysed here should be applauded for their willingness to engage and inform the wider public. Even if they lack focused research expertise on COVID-19, certainly many practising physicians and scientists may still elevate the discourse compared with people without any medical and scientific training. However, it is worrisome that ‘scientific experts’ in the news include so few of the scientists who have themselves made substantial scholarly contributions.

The current study has used diverse data from several countries for experts who are highly visible in media and has linked their profiles to objective data from bibliometric analyses. While methods for selecting experts are different in each country, the observed patterns seem to be consistent across countries. However, there are also several limitations that need to be discussed.

First, we should acknowledge that citation metrics are far from being perfect measures of epistemic expertise. Moreover, we focused on using already existing data on the 2% top-cited scientists across each scientific discipline, and we could not examine whether scientists who were not in the top 2% of these pre-existing lists might be in the top 3% or in the bottom 5% of citation impact. Obviously, many scientists may still have considerable epistemic expertise even if they are not strictly in the top 2% of citation indicators.

Second, our examined lists of media visible experts were precompiled independently of the current analysis. The precompilation had happened either by our team (in the case of US experts) or by news and media organisations in different countries and these compilations may use different criteria for identifying and ranking experts for visibility. It is possible that some different names might have entered these lists, if different visibility criteria had been used. Nevertheless, all of the experts analysed here had prominent media exposure and all analysed experts in European countries had massive media exposure in order to be able to reach such high ranks of visibility (even if variously defined).

We encourage media to look more carefully at the diversity and scholarly qualifications of the experts they invite, even more so for experts that have massive media appearances. Special attention should be given to inviting women, and our evaluation offers examples of many women scientists who might be considered in this regard. We suspect that many top experts may still wish to avoid media exposure and this should be respected. However, transparency and availability of opportunity are still important to ensure.