Is the accommodation of science for broader audiences ethically sound?

In response to Aubrey Burrough’s post in her blog, dis-course rules (http://aubreyburrough.blogspot.com/):

Is the accommodation of scientific texts for broader audiences in this way ethically sound? Is it an underestimation of the ability of people to read and understand science, or rather a sad truth?

Is it worth risking the validity of scientific texts in order to allow it to pertain to a mass audience? Or should scientific journalism cease to exist in the shadow of real data and reporting?

Both of these texts were written in the late 1980s. How has the accessibility of scientific information changed since then, primarily considering the widespread access to the internet?

After reading both “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts,” by Jeanne Fahnestock and “Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America” by M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer, I believe that the accommodation of purely scientific texts into the general public is not necessarily unethical. The adjusting of the information is carried out with the intent that it is better understood for those who are not familiar with such scientific terminology. Fahnestock also claims that “the science accommodator is not telling an untruth; he [she] simply selects only the information that serves his [her] epideictic purpose.” I am not sure how far I agree with this, though. Part of me leans towards the idea that telling half-truths is the equivalent of telling a half-lie. Killingsworth and Palmer’s text agrees. It claims that “glamming up scientific research implies that “science must solve human problems and thus must transcend its own version of objectivism worthy of being reported by the press.”

I am not sure of exactly where I stand in regards to the second question on the blog post. To a certain extent, I can see how it is worth it to manipulate scientific texts in order to get a mass audience on board with it. As not many people have a thorough knowledge of science, adjusting a scientific text for the mass audience can double, if not triple the amount of people who will be exposed to that information, and understand it. However, when I think of a topic that I know plenty about, and I think of, in a way, “dumbing it down” so that people who do not know as much as I do understand it, I feel like it is a rip off. There is just no way someone can fully understand say, the Arab-Israeli conflict, for instance, if someone were to accommodate it to a less interested and less knowledgeable audience. The audience ends up missing points that may be crucial to their understanding of the research. All in all, I do not believe I am in favor of this kind of accommodation.

Last, a lot has changed since the publication of these articles in the late 1980s. With the widespread and daily usage of the Internet, I believe these “for the general public” accommodations have become a bit dangerous. Because of the high accessibility to information, we encountered blogs such as the one we read by Lehrer, where research information was not “accommodated,” but completely distorted the information into false realities and untruthful information. As a wider audience is targeted, the validity of the information presented is put at risk.