Urgency to Scrutinize Reports on Gaza Starvation

A couple of days ago a photo of a mother holding an emaciated child composed as a Pieta went viral in the media. The gaunt appearance of the little boy was quickly attributed to lack of food resulting in starvation and death among population of Gaza, especially small children. This became a great fodder for journalists, followers of current events, particularly in Gaza, and for people inclined to blame Israelis and Jews in general for all the misfortune in Gaza. Of course, widespread denunciation of Israel’s combat and aid distribution in Gaza followed very quickly. As I mentioned yesterday in my ToI blog, several sources, including CNN and Honest Reporting pointed out that the boy suffers from a genetic disease and that he, his brother and mother traveled to Italy for treatment (with Israel’s help) in mid-June. I wish him and his mom the best. Unfortunately, the damage was done and many more articles appeared comparing situation in Gaza to famine in Ethiopia and Biafra. I as a scientist and MD have a somewhat different take on this reporting. I would like to explain why.

Almost every day I read about at least one scientific paper being retracted from a variety of scientific journals, even from journals highly regarded, such as Nature. There is group of scientific sleuths dedicated to fight fraudulent data, plagiarism, misinterpretation of results, manipulation of tables and photos of gels and many other mischiefs. A lot of the deceit is intentional because of “publish or perish” attitude leads to hasty paper writing, inadequate supervision of graduate students and postdocs by principal investigators (who are busy by other important tasks such as committees and endless meetings). The repercussions for authors of these papers are severe. Not only papers are retracted, many institutions initiate and do thorough investigations of all authors. If confirmed that the initial suspicions were justified any or all of these scientists can lose funding, or even their positions. It happens even to deans and well-known scientists.

I do not believe that this scrutiny happens in journalism, even a newspaper such as New York Times can just issue a half-hearted apology and correction, but the original article is not retracted. And in addition, instead of applying more scrutiny and fact finding of the rest of the article and new articles covering the same issue, in this case war and suffering in Gaza, very little what is published is truly verified – this is not surprising as scientists who fulfill reviewer function also take what is submitted for publication and eventually published as being true and verified as such by authors. And the same goes for journalism. Many hard-working journalists trust other journalists and sources. The pace is much faster in news-reporting, hours or even minutes, compared to months and even years in scientific fields. However, I doubt that all journalists and reporters really scrutinize certain sources, such as Hamas for veracity, and should be more rigorous before they publish for example the number of dead mostly by Israelis firing at Gazans announced by Hamas health ministry

I suggest that New York Times retracts the entire article which contains the libelous claim about the boy’s condition. The venerated newspaper should devote more effort to confirm the legitimacy and truth of what it publishes. Many other publications should do the same, even Times of Israel, one of my favorite venues. We all have stakes in this. I want to emphasize that I am not writing as a fan of Netanyahu or of his government, but because a reckless or malicious reporting is dangerous. And it is dangerous right now as I am writing – many media and internet sources are flooded with pieces comparing Israelis basically to Nazis (sometimes I do wonder whether I am reading Der Sturmer). The level of antisemitism and physical attacks on Jews is exponentially increasing, in part because of dishonest or erroneous reporting. Just read what’s going on in Europe, and to a lesser extent in the US. I find it terrifying and so should you, dear reader.