Bad Reporting, Not Email, Worse Than Marijuana 290
MoNickels writes "Turns out, those endless news reports and blog entries in April about "texting makes you stupid" were inaccurate. As linguist Mark Liberman at LanguageLog now reports by way of apologizing to Wilson, it wasn't Wilson's fault, but that of "rotten science journalism." Psychologist Glenn Wilson was reported to have done a study said that chat and email, as the Guardian put it, "are a greater threat to IQ and concentration than taking cannabis." But Wilson says, "This...is a temporary distraction effect—not a permanent loss of IQ. The equivalences with smoking pot and losing sleep were made by others, against my counsel, and 8 [subjects] somehow became '80 clinical trials.'" The original Slashdot story was covered back in April."
Worse than this? The horror.... (Score:4, Funny)
I smoke pot 24/7... (Score:3, Funny)
really that bad? (Score:3, Funny)
That's interesting (Score:5, Funny)
the man is takin my IQ (Score:2, Funny)
At least.. (Score:5, Funny)
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot's Bad Reporting (Score:1, Funny)
I mean, just take a look at yesterday's story about armed dolphins [slashdot.org], which was patently false, and had no basis in fact. [slashdot.org]
Did slashdot editors even RTFA or correct it afterwards? No, of course not. It seems to be par for the course here nowadays. Post the most fantastic, sensationalistic articles to spark pagehits and flamewars, and the editors sit back and cash in.
The excuse that it's the readers jobs to correct just doesn't hold. The editors have a duty to inform in an accurate and factual matter, even if this is just a crummy overgrown tech blog.
Chat and email a threat to concentration??? (Score:2, Funny)
Welcome to our information age crack house.
Holy crap (Score:1, Funny)
My hats off to the illuminata that made it possible for me to be able to see stupid high school kids screw around!
Re:I smoke pot 24/7... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:really that bad? (Score:2, Funny)
Meanwhile.. (Score:5, Funny)
Inaccurate news? (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.joejag.com/pics/cnn_columbia.jpg [joejag.com]
Re:Why report good? (Score:2, Funny)
ditto for this place
Surely... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:really that bad? (Score:2, Funny)
Good job on that
Re:In other news (Score:3, Funny)
No way (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I smoke pot 24/7... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Finally... (Score:5, Funny)
Man.. I've really gotta stop trusting everything I read on the internets, someday this is gonna get me in trouble.
Oh well, I'll always have those free Xboxes and iPods I won...
Re:I smoke pot 24/7... (Score:2, Funny)
OMG Reelly? cuz liek ive ben IMing tuuuunz of peepl fer sooooo long and liek I think its reelly helpt mee wiht liek skool and stuph...lol 8)
Re:Not only Carl Sagan (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Finally... (Score:4, Funny)
On the plus side, you can program in Lisp, now.