Science rare topic of editorial pages.

On most days, on most major papers, editorial writers have little to say about science-related topics.

That's what we discovered when we carried out a content analysis of 1,333 editorials published in 1991 by The Baltimore Sun, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. Only 3.7% of the editorials dealt directly with science or technology - subjects such as global warming, toxic waste dumps, and space exploration. Just 1.1% were about fetal tissue research and the many other issues involving medicine and health care.

Seven percent of the editorials dealt indirectly with science, technology, or health care, with opinions on the politics of the AIDS epidemic, abortion, environmental battles, industrial competitiveness, and other matters where science and technology are factors but not the primary focus.

We reviewed all the editorials published in the five papers during the first week of January, the second week of February, the third week of March, and so forth. Each editorial was classified as dealing directly with science or technology, directly with medicine or health care, indirectly with these subjects, or as unrelated. Some editorials were hard to categorize, and all were published before the health-care debate reached high gear, so the findings are more suggestive than definitive. But they were fairly consistent across the five papers and very likely reflect the condition at other papers in the U.S.

The Boston Globe had the highest percentage of editorials (15.8%) touching on science, technology, and health care. Next came The New York Times (13.1%), The Los Angeles Times (12%), The Chicago Tribune (9.9%), and The Baltimore Sun (8.2%).

The two leaders differ from many newspapers in having editorial board members - such as Loretta McLaughlin, a former medical reporter at the Globe, and Philip Boffey of The New York Times - who have experience covering science, technology, or medicine. The editorial boards at most papers are much smaller than at the Globe and the Times. At many small and mid-sized dailies, the editorial pages are produced by one or two people.

Editorial writers are most likely to discuss science, technology, and health care in the context of some broader issue, such as the economy or a political dispute. More direct discussions about these topics, such as whether to build the supercollider, are less common. Rarer still are editorials that deal with science per se rather than with policy questions. For example, newspapers seldom comment on the latest findings about the Big Bang or genetics. As McLaughlin said, an editorial involving science still "has to make an editorial point."

Boffey, the former New York Times science editor who now is the paper's deputy editorial page editor, concurred. "An editorial has to be more than an analysis of something," he said. "It has to have some hortatory point.... Editorial pages aren't particularly the venue in the paper for dealing with a purely scientific advance."

Many editorial writers come to full-time punditry after years of covering politics. Not surprisingly, politics often is their bread-and-butter subject. As columnist Howard Means observed, "For the most part, we thumbsuckers are mad - stark raving nuts - to write about politics, and particularly national politics."

When papers do publish an editorial on science, there is a good chance the piece originated with a woman. A 1987 study found that 32% of the women editorial writers, but only 11% of the men, listed science, health, and the environment as specialties.

Does space matter?

Does it matter how much space editorial pages devote to science, technology, and health care? In a word, yes. Newspapers editorials may lack the thunder of years gone by but they remain widely read. The Newspaper Advertising Bureau reported that 87% of daily readers open to or pass through the editorial page. A study by researchers at Syracuse University found that more than a third of those who read newspapers are regular readers of editorial and opinion pages. Belden Associates reported recently that the averaged reader of a Sunday paper is almost as likely to read the editorial pages as the sports section.

So editorial pages have influence. Whether they do an adequate job of covering issues involving science, technology, and health care depends on one's news judgment. Many science writers, who typically work apart from editorial boards, may find it disconcerting that only one in every eight or nine editorials deals with scientific issues even indirectly. But editorial writers also must ruminate on Somalia, civil rights, education, the arts, and countless other topics. It's a tough balancing act.

Still, somewhere amid the flood of punditry on Zoe Baird's child-care problems there may be room for a few more editorials involving science and technology. How does new genetic testing affect privacy rights? Should we go to Mars? Which environmental dangers pose the greatest threat? How can we apply new technology to ease traffic jams? The issues are there. It's the editorials that are lacking.

Former NCEW member David Jarmul is senior information officer at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Leah D. Fine is research associate at the Institute for Genomic Research in Gaithersburg, Md.