I need to treat this news with the scrutiny it deserves. Although the reporting of science in mainstream media has improved vastly over the last ten years (thanks to organizations like the Science Media Centre and Sense About Science, as well as Learned Societies like ours), it's still not perfect.

Before we highlight news stories to our members through Facebook or Twitter or any other social media tool you care to mention (Google+ anyone?), we must make sure it 'does what it says on the tin'. Or if it doesn't, we provide the context.

This recent news piece was about Clostridium sporogenes, a bacterium normally found in soil which produces spores that grow where there is little or no oxygen. These spores were found to grow in the centre of solid tumour tissue, such as breast, brain or prostate tumours.

The spores were engineered to produce an enzyme which can convert an anti-cancer drug from its inactive (pro-drug) form into its active form and will only be delivered to cells where the C. sporogenes spores grow. So, this has the potential to become a very effective cancer treatment.

"That's fantastic news" I hear you cry. But, as the bad science buster Ben Goldacre often says: "It's a bit more complicated than that".

This story came from results that were presented at a conference, and have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. I won't go into the details of peer-review, but you can find out more here.

There is debate within the science and science communication communities, on whether we should publicize science which hasn't been through the rigorous scrutiny of peer-review and I'd like to know what you think.

Personally, I have no objection to this. I think, as long as it's clear in a news story that this science hasn't been peer-reviewed, it's a great way to demonstrate the scientific process. It provides transparency and informs the 'general public' how science works.

Here's what I mean: these results are just one tiny step forward in over a decade's work (much of which has been peer-reviewed). Scientists have been looking at this bug and its potential role as a drug delivery mechanism against cancer for a long time. And, as the press coverage rightly stated, this won't go to clinical trial until 2013. Then, if the clinical trials are successful, it could be a further decade before this becomes a usable treatment.

I hope this gives you a sense of perspective, a sense of the small steps which contribute to the larger 'cure for cancer' breakthrough which might be reported in 2023.

But does everyone consider the context when reading a science news story? I think we should all be equipped with enough information to do so and at the moment I don't think we are.

We should be told that the results have yet to be peer-reviewed. It should be clear that there will be a lot more research carried out before this one step forward becomes a treatment regime (if it even gets to that stage). We should know that scientists have been working on this for decades and be pointed towards the papers which show this work. In short, we should be able to see where this piece fits within the jigsaw.

We should all be equipped to investigate science news stories as fully as we want to. There's some amazing science going on at universities, research institutes and industrial establishments all around us every day. We just need to know how to sift the significant developments from the smaller, but still important, steps.

What do you think? Are you worried about whether the science behind a news story has been peer reviewed? Would this knowledge change your view of the importance of a story?