Bastiaan Vanacker

Co-PI

Bio

Baastian Vanacker’s primary responsibility for the Loyola Program for Neuroscience and Society is to oversee all communications about the project to the general public. He is an associate professor in the School of Communication at Loyola University Chicago. His research and teaching focuses on media ethics and law. Vanacker has held appointments as the program director for the School of Communication’s Center for Digital Ethics and Policy. He was also the chair of the AEJMC’s Media Ethics Division. Vanacker has authored or co-edited three books and guest edited one special issue of the Journal of Media Ethics. His research has won numerous awards and has been published in numerous academic publications. He has also written many articles for the Center for Digital Ethics and Policy and has assisted in the planning of the center’s Annual Symposium on Digital Ethics and Policy.​ He holds a doctorate in mass communication and journalism from the University of Minnesota. 

You are a scholar of media ethics. What made you want to get involved in a grant related to neuroscience and society?

A combination of events steered me in this direction. One of my mentors during my time as a grad student at the University of Minnesota was Gary Schwitzer, a former CNN medical news reporter. I was a TA in his media ethics courses. One of his pet peeves was the poor job our media outlets were doing in responsibly reporting on health care issues. He later went on to found healthnewsreview.org, a site that systematically reviewed pretty much every health care story that appeared in print, online or on air. The project ultimately ran out of funding, but he imbued me with the belief that it is important that we question how science gets reported by the media.  When I had the opportunity to teach a course in Loyola's Honor's program, I seized it to design a course focusing on how science is communicated in society, which still is mainly done through traditional mass media. This was shortly after the pandemic, which made this topic all the more relevant. I have since then also started some research projects on how media reports use science when reporting on divisive issues. Bill’s multi-disciplinary grant proposal included a pillar that involved communicating science and organizing neuroscience journalism competitions. My hope is that by doing this, we can contribute to elevating the standards for science reporting in general and neuroscience journalism in particular. 

As you've researched the nexus of neuroscience, communication and ethics, what are some of the most interesting things you've learned?

I am a newbie in the field of neuroscience. But I have learned that it is a field that literally touches every aspect of the human experience. What is not related to the brain? However, neuroscience doesn’t get a whole of media attention. In doing some preliminary reading on media coverage of neuroscience, it appears that many of the problems Gary Schwitzer observed with the coverage of medical issues in terms of hyping research, ignoring risks and costs and providing false hope can also be applied to coverage of neuroscience.