Bad Science Journalism Gets Schooled 212
TaeKwonDood writes "Biology post-doc Dr. Michael White takes a look at the '2007 Best American Science and Nature Writing' and doesn't like what he finds in an article called Bad Science Journalism and the Myth of the Oppressed Underdog. Turns out it's not just political writers who pick a position they want to advocate and then write stories to confirm it. Science journalism gets a scolding and it's been a long time coming."
Rather obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
This is quite logical, as it's human nature to do so, and not a direct result of one's career field.
Even simple background research on the authors of articles in many different fields reveal that yes, the majority of writers are biased, either consciously, or otherwise.
obvious != right (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:obvious != right (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:obvious != right (Score:5, Funny)
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I expect the opposite.... (Score:4, Interesting)
The real problem is that the public want science to be wrong. Look at global warming, it's been known for over a hundred years, there's tens of thousands of studies which back it up but you publish one article or make one documentary which says it's wrong (eg. the Channel 4 one) and you'll have an army of followers. It's human nature.
Can you cite these? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Can you cite these? (Score:5, Informative)
Greenhouse-effect studies before the 1990s lacked the detailed numerical models that we have developed since the 1990s, since these depend on massive amounts of computer power, but the effect has been known for a long time, and it was definitely discussed before the 1990s.
This isn't an exhaustive search of the literature-- this is the first book that I happen to have handy. If the very first atmospheric science book I put my hands on that predates the 1990s has the reference, yet you say you never ran across any references to greenhouse-effect induced global warming that predated the 1990s, this seems to be an indication that you are unfamiliar with the literature.
Re:Can you cite these? (Score:5, Informative)
Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. J. Hansen, et. al., 1981.
Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment. Charney, J.G., et al., 1979.
A Terminal Mesozoic "Greenhouse": Lessons from the Past, Dewey M. McLean, 1978.
Greenhouse effects due to man-made perturbations of trace gases. Wang, W. C., et al., 1976.
The effects of doubling the CO2 concentration on the climate of a general circulation model, Manabe, S., and R.T. Wetherald, 1975.
Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?, Wallace S. Broecker, 1975.
The concentration and isotopic abundances of carbon dioxide in rural and marine air, Keeling, C.D., 1961
Carbon dioxide exchange between atmosphere and ocean and the question of an increase of atmospheric CO2 during the past decades. Revelle, R., and H.E. Suess, 1957.
Or, going back a little further:
Callendar, G.S., 1938: The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 64, 223-237.
Arrhenius, S., 1896: On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature on the ground, Philos. Mag., 41, 237-276.
The current IPCC report has a review of historical climate research, and is available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter1.pdf [www.ipcc.ch].
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Actually, the earliest concern over greenhouse gases that I'm aware of was proposed in 1896, by Svante Arrhenius. The American Institute of Physics has a pretty extensive bibliography as part of their review paper on this subject, which goes back even further than this.
See The Discovery of Global Warming [aip.org]
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Since the very first reference I put my hands on indicates that you are unfamiliar with the scientific literature predating 1990, why should I pay attention to anything else you say?
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I'm addressing the assertion that anthropogenic climate change driven by CO2 was something that was cooked up for political purposes in the 1990s. The literature search clearly shows that this is false as anybody who was alive and paying attention at the time could tell you.
Now, on to your assertion. It sounds like an unassailable philosophical proposition to say that anthropogeni
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Hmmm... I guess sometimes it *seems* that way.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Science journalism would perhaps be the one area where you would expect the author to concisely go out of their way to be unbiased.
WTF?
A good journalist has a strong understanding of the biases of his intended audience, and writes with those in mind. He may suppress his own biases to do this.
If he is writing for a scientific journal, then yes, he will probably strive to present an unbiased POV. But if he is writing for the popular press, he will strive to express his findings in ways that are understandable within the context of his readership. Which usually means accepting many of their biases as constraints on his wording.
Re:Rather obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
More than the majority. I'd say that everyone is necessarily biased about everything, because we can never avoid the fact that we approach every issue with some sort of background or perspective.
However, there are those who are biased, and those who are biased and also throw all logic to the wind.
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AND there are those who are biased, know they are biased, and do their best to present the other side of the story and choose neutral words...to help mitigate their bias and be as balanced as humanly possibly.
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Re:Rather obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Question is, is there another way to tell the stories that isn't so formulaic and that doesn't give such an incorrect impression?
Actually, there is way (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, there is a way: just stick to reporting, don't turn it into an entertaining story. We're talking science, FFS, not the Hero's Journey archetype. It's not about the everyman who discovers his calling and ends up single-handedly fighting the super-villain, it's about a more mundane process where basically they're all on the same side.
But science is boring for most people. There's really two kinds of stories that you can make out of it, that anyone outside that profession will read. (And those inside that profession already have the relevant peer-reviewed journals instead.)
A) It's a BREAKTHROUGH!!!
B) The Hero's Journey in disguise. The lone maverick who slays the dragon. (Except sometimes the climactic confrontation hasn't happened yet, so you're left to infer it.)
And unfortunately both end up used by the journos as ammo against the real science. TFA already thrashes B, so let's just say that bogus A is what PR carpet-bombs the media with.
So other than banning science completely from the non-peer-reviewed media, I can't see how that's solvable.
Or if you were merely asking if it's possible to make it entertaining without being a case of lone heroes versus tyrannical super-villains... well, maybe. But consider this: the current generation of storytellers can't even tell any story except the Hero's Journey. We could live without it very well until, IIRC, the 60's, but then all of a sudden everyone had to obey the monomyth to the letter. And if two movies are the same length, they have to have their first turning point in exactly the same minute.
So incidentally for whole classes of movies, once you figured out who's protagonist, who's antagonist, etc, you can know in advance what will happen... and in exactly what minute of the movie.
Unfortunately, ever since, that structure has been hammered into the heads of every single story teller or screenplay writer. There are course, workshops, and the knowledge that Hollywood will chuck your manuscript in the garbage bin if it doesn't fit the mold to the letter. Not many people still know how to write any other kinds of stories any more.
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It would help if (more of) the peer reviewed media was accessible to the public.
Somebody has to pay, though.
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Question is, is there another way to tell the stories that isn't so formulaic and that doesn't give such an incorrect impression?
That's an excellent question, and I think the answer is; yes, there are numerous ways to tell a good story regarding science. One slight modification to the lone-scientist-against-the-establishment narrative might be to cast the scientific method itself as the hurdle for our budding young scientist to overcome. This approach would allow the writer to detour into describing what the scientific method is and why it's important to scientists. That's one obvious avenue to better frame the story, but I sus
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Of great interest to Science, Science Teachers, and wanna-be Scientists, but basically boring. This is not the way to write a story that causes the reader to Continue-On-Page-32.
Re:Rather obvious (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah. Sure -- if you're, like, good at your job.
(Though I would add that criticism like yours is what we in the media field need more of.)
Re:Rather obvious (Score:4, Funny)
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Summary is itself an example (Score:3, Informative)
And while journalists of course have bias as everybody else, what characterize the profession is not bias (in fact, they are probably better than average at hiding it), but the sear
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The problem is this. Researching a story properly (not just science), a good story, should, unless it is breaking news take anywhere up to a month to perfect. First you have to understand the field the story is in, be it science, politics etc. M
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Just look at what poor reporting has done to the medical sciences. If y
Science has always been biased (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why Max Planck said: "A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
On top of personal professional bias we must now add those extra pressureses exerted on scientists to toe some line so that their funding/department/ access to publishing/whatever does not get cut. Gotta say the right stuff to keep the backers happy.
Anyone expecting unbiassed science to come out of that lot is just a misguided idealist.
Re:Science has always been biased (Score:4, Insightful)
"experiment" with Global Warming? (Score:3, Insightful)
Certain things, although treated as science, are not really open to an experiment... And while disagreements over, say, some aspect of Cosmogony can be discussed in a friendly manner, issues like Global Warming tend to polarize people along their political persuasions...
Since academics' inco
Re:"experiment" with Global Warming? (Score:4, Informative)
Certainly. It's very easy to think everything is covered under science. But, there are many things (mainly, philosophical questional) that some would try to group under science because they believe they can conjecture out an answer.
Perhaps you haven't heard of cosmology and WIMPs vs MACHOs? Seriously, though, people who tend to quickly polarize over Global Warming tend to do so because of the seemingly obvious ramifications of admitting whether Global Warming exists. In short, the issue has more to do with people unwilling, on both sides, to go over the evidence and accept the proof that's available and leave it at that. But, then it's the same issue that came up ages ago when discussing the racial relations (especially, any claimed superiority) of various ethnicities. And *that* issue is still unresolved because dogma can override common sense.
Sorry to break it to you, but universities existed long before there were governments to fund them. And, they will continue to exist long after governments refuse to fund them. Academics, in general, are interested in their work above all else. Now, this may lead to dogma and pet theories without any evidence. But, that doesn't translate into trying to sustain a revenue stream (well, at least, it only does so in the sense of funding their research, not in padding the academic's pocketbook). And sure, there are academics who are in it for the money, just like there are charlatens in any field. But, there isn't any evidence (at least, none I'm aware of) to hint at some sort of inherent academic conspiracy, no matter how good such conjecturing looks good on paper.
Or, people with evidence they think will be helpful are trying to warn people of the potential risks of merrily continuing our current actions. Most, realizing they *don't* know the long-term consequences (at least for humanity) of what happens if we continue, urge those with the most power to effect change (citizens and through them, their nations) to effect change. Of course, they realize they can't do much (at least, not without advocating military force) to push "the poor" countries or dictatorships to do the right thing. So, the tend to focus on "the rich".
We're already engaging in an experiment on a planetary scale (you know, burning all that oil, coal, etc). And it happens that people are constantly making predictions based on those fossil fuels burned and how that affects the global climate. And all those scientists with their measurements of ocean CO2 absorption, temperature stations, measurements of ice sheets, etc all provide the data to confirm or deny those predictions. The only real question, then, is if the people on either side are actually looking at the theories that repeatedly pass and the evidence collected (to verify that it does, in fact, not contradict the theory). And if one side, after seeing the evidence, dismisses it based upon their own beliefs without any proof, then they are being anti-science. But, that says nothing about Global Warming.
I'll try to be more angry next time.
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It seems you're right, but for the wrong reason. It would seem there's sevearl definitions of university. One is "an institution of higher learning". A more strict/original definitino is "a corporation of students"
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Re:Science has always been biased (Score:5, Insightful)
That's sort of the rub, though, isn't it? Only a few new theories which suplant the old model do so with a really compelling single test. We can think of a few of the exceptions: General Relativity and the 1919 eclipse, the Big Bang (which was already pretty widely accepted, but never mind) and the discovery of the CMB, the giant impact theory of the origin of the Moon and the numerical simulations of the 1980s, etc. But these *are* the exceptions. Most theories which will eventually take over do so by slow accumulation of evidence in their favor, not with any slam dunk. As a result, convincing scientists to abondon the older model is difficult and there's no magic cut-off where you can say, "Now the new theory is better than the old one." So are the scientists being bad at science? Sure, it's easy to spin the narrative that way, but I'd say no. They're at worst being conservative and not wanting to leap onto a new model until they see that it's really better.
(Any time you hear about scientists being involved in a massive conspiracy, like some anti-global warming fanatics will try to tell you, you can bet it's wrong. Any person who could prove evolution or GW conclusively incorrect would have just made a career and world-wide fame for herself.)
Re:Science has always been biased (Score:4, Informative)
Are you sure ? (Score:2)
QUOTE
However, there is a problematical aspect to this "Newtonian" prediction, because it's based on the assumption that particles of light can be accelerated and decelerated just like ordinary matter, and yet if this were the case, it would be difficult to explain why (in non-relativistic absolute space and time) all the light that we observe is traveling a
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Newtonian theory predicts light bending even for zero-mass particles. (The amount of deflection is given in the article you linked.) But it does not explain why zero mass particles all have the same speed. That is where relativity differs from Newton.
By the way, I highly recommend Kevin Brown's web site (the mathpages.com site you linked). It contains many interesting calculations and musings.
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I actually don't feel like Mercury's perihelion precession was a good test since the theory was designed around that observation.
From what I recall of the history, that's not true. Einstein already had almost all the field equations, and then applied them to the Mercury problem in his November 18, 1915 paper. He was quite excited when the result turned out to agree with the observations, precisely because he hadn't designed the theory to get Mercury right. On November 25 he modified the equations to their final, current form, but the prediction for Mercury did not change.
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I thi
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More than just human nature, it makes sense. If I believe strongly that something is the truth, then it seems only logical that I'd oppose somebody who says that my theory is completely wrong. Also, I think that Max Planck might have been being just a
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Even you're buying into this fallacy that the two ideas must be exclusive, wh
Par for the course (Score:5, Interesting)
HIV not causing AIDS conspiracy, Fluoride in the water conspiracy, Cancer being cured but evil corporations in league with all scientists not releasing the cure... I have to endure this every single day.
I think the more interesting subject to explore, is the psychology of why people are so eager to believe the improbable, and far more likely to accept an outrageous exaggeration, a halftruth, or an outright lie, merely to spite the establishment. As a scientist, that's a subject that interests me the most, because I would like to locate the part of the brain that will believe that the herbs in "Airborne" will miraculously prevent you from getting a disease, but will refuse to accept scientific principles and facts that have held firm under scrutiny for decades.
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The answer is so obvious, that you are doing it yourself- rejecting the facts for an alternative conspiracy (ie. seeking some obscure "part of the brain").
People are just dumb, and they want easy answers. That's all.
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On a more serious note, I don't really find the "supernatural" to be irreconcilable with science. Science just emphasizes the parts of the world that we can understand through logic. The only contract one signs when they become a scientist is that they will not bring up questions which are not scientifically verifiable. The biggest one that comes to mind for me is th
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Exploration over. Where's my grant check
You can blame that on the press too (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The lone researcher vs the evil establisment stories, like in TFA. Invariably the establishment is evil, you know. Well, these stories are just ammo then for the quacks, who are invariably all too eager to present themselves as that oppressed underdog.
2. PR-sponsored and -wrote "breakthrough" stories, the sillier and more contradictory the better. "Chocolate is good for you! Cocoa beans have valuable enzymes!" (Yes, but they're no longer present in chocolate.) "Wine is even better!" "No it's not!" "Scientists prove: Beer is better than both!!!" Etc. If you can't distinguish those from real science, and Joe Sixpack can't, it looks like "science" is just a bunch of guys saying contradictory things and telling you one day that X is good, and the next that Y is bad. That what passes for bulletproof science one day, is disproved the next day, so you might as well ignore the whole clown posse.
3. Probably the most damaging: the fucked-up idea of journalistic impartiality. See, the idea is that impartiality means presenting two conflicting views as equals, without taking sides. So if you run a story about, say, why vaccines are good, you have to also find a quack or two to go, "no they're not!!! They cause autism!!! They kill your immune system!!! Buy our 100% natural and hollistic snake oil instead!!!" And present the two as equal. It's not that one of them is bogus, it's that it's a "controversy", see. Taking sides and telling people which one is backed by solid evidence, well, that would violate that impartiality.
This creates a false image of, well, everything being equal and equally unproved and dubious. Everything is a controversy. The Nobel prize winner in that corner of the ring is just about as likely to be right or wrong, as the quack with the fake diploma bought on the internet in the other corner. So you can take your own pick. If you want to believe the earth is flat, go ahead, even that is probably a controversy.
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Not having explored this more than looking at my own willingness to believe some things, what I've found is that in many instances the establishment (or more specifically, doctors and scientists) are responsible for pushing people down this road.
That above state
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And it gets even better than that; people love being the ones in on the secret. Yup, the poor, ignorant
It's fake, everybody (Score:5, Funny)
Politically Correct bias? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps the bias in reporting is due to the "intuitive attractiveness" of the conclusion?
The opposite might be true as well. For instance, I didn't hear much about this study [wikipedia.org]:
You'd think a Harvard professor saying in effect that diversity has a down side might be news worthy, unless that idea isn't attractive to the majority of the news media.
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Is it really news? I'd have thought that the existence of such downsides should have been perfectly obvious who has opened their eyes. Indeed, the interesting discovery from that article seems to be that the downsides aren't quite as existing theories suggested, not the mere fact that downsides exist.
The trouble is we're all perched on
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What the hell is "diversity" in this case? My high school was 96% white, but by 1900 standards it would probably be incredibly "diverse," with folks of English, German, Polish, Irish, and even (gasp!) Jewish "descent" intermingling. But ironically, once this "diversity" reaches a critical mass and a few generations pass, it all gets folded into the norm and nobody considers it "diverse" anymore.
So if this guy's right and "diversity" has a caustic effect on communit
what do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
For an example for the second point, remember the "gravity-powered lamp [vt.edu]" concept that was advertized last month? I saw several independent write-ups in newspapers all repeating the canard of "this will work if only we have better LED technology" when an elementary calculation shows that even with 100% efficient lighting elements the lamp will need to weigh about a ton.
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Did you notice the "Feb. 21 Update" on that article?
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Did you read my comment? you seem to have missed the point entirely. It's true that with current LED technology, the lamp would weight tons. However, current technology is already pretty good: it converts about 10% of the incoming energy to light. A 100% efficient LED from the
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That's Not Kuhn (Score:5, Informative)
I think it would be more appropriate to say that Kuhn is mostly rejecting the idea of science proceding via revolutions. The sort of view that preceded Kuhn was that science proceeds by formulating hypothesises which in turn are overthrown should they be contradicted by experiment. Thus Kuhn is actually arguing against the idea that science primarily progresses via the disproof of the prevailing view.
In fact I think it's a fair interpretation to say that Kuhn does not even believe there is an objective fact of the matter of which paradigm is better. It's quite clear that Kuhn holds out evolutionary expansion of the paradigm to be the stereotypical example of progress in science.
scientists aren't good at communicating (Score:2)
but most are, frankly, asocial. they would rather exercise their minds in the pursuit of science. actually explaining what they do to other people is a drag and a waste of time. not that you can blame them. this ability to tune out the rest of the world and engage their mind in silence is actually a very valuable skill for a scientist, and it is a mindset that probably led them to science in the first place as a life pursuit
the result is that
Re:scientists aren't good at communicating (Score:5, Insightful)
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I would disagree. They are trained to communicate with other scientists, not to just anyone. So "communication" in this context is a vague term, what really needs to be done are studies on how to break down complex topics into vocabulary that people can understand to get the main principles and points across without alienating them. I find it quite curious that scientists have yet to learn from marketing and
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Well, broad generalizations about large groups of people (and programs) are almost always simplified, but most of the programs I've looked at at least try to address communication in a variety of contexts. Which one are you talking about, out of curiosity?
Look at a Brief History of Time, Guns Germs and Steel, Fermat's Last Theorem etc.. there have been very good (and very successful) books written by scientists on very complex
Re:scientists aren't good at communicating (Score:4, Insightful)
That's quite the caricature. I've been employed as a scientist for going on a decade now, and your depiction of John/Jane Q. Scientist works for only a tiny minority of the people I've worked with. I've worked with a hippies, hipsters, single moms, Norman Rockwell-esque family types, religious people, nonreligious people, sports fanatics, geeks, barflies, rednecks, people of all different races, colors, creeds, nationalities, and in general a wide, wide slice of humanity. Maybe you ought to not paint a group of people with a wide brush until you've at least met one or two of them first.
Plays into the hands of global warming denial (Score:2, Interesting)
Biased journalism may lead to biased science (Score:3, Interesting)
Nearly every journalist is biased in some way or another. While journalists may not necessarily inject the bias directly into their story like the example given in the article, the very choice of topic may be indicative of bias. Take for example the Reuters science articles [yahoo.com] on Yahoo! News. Nearly all the articles consist of biology stories or NASA/space related stories. In fact, when was the last time you read a news story in mainstream media on physics or chemistry? It was probably about the LHC or the "Exceptionally Simple Theory". This might be because it is harder to put the same spin on these types of stories. In fact, Garret Lisi's theory is so well known because he's been cast as a brilliant young surfer dude railing against the establishment. (Admittedly, the guy is no where as pig headed and arrogant as the biologist quoted in the article). Even Slashdot seems to be home to plenty of anti-establishment "scientific thinkers" who attempt to claim that nearly every other scientist has got it wrong and dark matter was simply invented to fit into an existing theory*, or our calculations of the age of the universe are complete BS. While I don't claim that the established theories are always right, they are considered to be "established" for a reason: they have a good deal of evidence in their favor.
To get back to my original point however, I would argue that this sort of selective reporting shapes the public view of science negatively. If you only hear about how scientists are wrong, then you might never even believe that they are right. Perhaps of more direct impact to scientists, the fact that the prevalence of this sort of scientific reporting seems to favor biology, can shift the spending of public money. After all, it seems like biologists are making breakthroughs every day and overturning established and outdated ways of thinking while physicists build expensive machines (even condensed matter physics research is expensive) and twiddle their thumbs. There's no excitement in a story that says "BaBar confirms that CP-violation in B-mesons fits within the parameters of the Standard Model" or "Researchers at (insert university/national lab of your choice) discover a method of sub-wavelength optical transmission". But without stories like that, the public sees almost nothing getting done in physical sciences.
Before a bunch of biologists start to flame me, I'd like to note that I don't think that biology is meaningless, or that biologists are pretentious pricks. It's just that journalists seems to draw an excessively large amounts of attention to biology, at the expense of other fields, almost always through no fault of the scientists.
*Dark matter does in fact have plenty of evidence for it. See the earlier Slashdot story of galaxies that don't have dark matter and gravitational lensing in the Bullet Cluster. Dark Energy, however, may in fact be a purely theoretical construct.
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I'm not a biologist, but it's painfully obvious why so much reporting is done about biology.
Specifically, one element of biology. Evolution.
I don't really think this is the case. The people who don't believe in evolution are unlikely to be reading science articles in their local newspaper to begin with. Besides, controversy about evolution usually isn't covered as part of scientific journalism. I still think that it has more to do with the fact that findings in biology are far easier to sensationalize because they have more to do with us. Whether its gay monkeys==gay people or "A new study shows that large does of vitamin L makes toucans
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I think the amount of biology reporting has to do with:
1. People are interested in what goes on in their own bodies.
2. Many biology stories have a direct health/medicine angle, which people are very interested in.
3. The rest of the biology stories usually have to do with charismatic animals.
and maybe:
4. Biology is often easier for people to understand or identif
That's about right (Score:2)
Obvious explanation (Score:2)
Pity so few will see this. (Score:5, Insightful)
root.
Someone else summed it up much better, though:
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
- Carl Sagan "
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Columbus is the worst case of this underdog narrative. Many people (evidently Dr. Sagan was one of them) believe A. that he set out to prove that the world was spherical, and B. that the dogmatic 'scientists' of the time believed the world to be flat.
This is pure fiction developed to sustain the myth that scientific and moral progress are intertwined.
Re:Pity so few will see this. (Score:4, Insightful)
For starters, that's really amazing that you know so much about what goes on in the archaeological community, and even more about the private thoughts and motivations of archaeologists. You must know a whole lot of them, huh?
Anyway, on to my main point: OMFG are you high? Any archaeologist finding real evidence of something like that would see gigantic dollar signs and a chance at amazing fame. Even if they were the small-minded and self-centered idiots you paint them to be, I bet the money and fame that would come from such a discovery would still weigh more than the disruption of their precious communi-tah.
(Please forgive me for feeding the troll)
People will always be biased. (Score:2, Insightful)
I know this isn't specifically about scientific journalism, but I think it must be said. People will always be biased, no matter how much they claim to provide a balanced view. In the end, the writer has an opinion, and this will appear in the writing.
In some cases, the bias is deliberate. The news reporting that you receive on television and in the papers is the best example of materials that are biased. This is done in a rather sophisticated manner. Information isn't necessarily modified to favor one view
Dumb it down to keep it interesting... (Score:2, Funny)
If you want good science at a popular level you do fair better leaving out the popular press. There are some goo
It's all about the story (Score:3, Interesting)
The author has a good point: mainstream media outlets focus far too much on the story and not the science, so much so that they will lie and equivocate to generate conflict. Yet, I would rather see a light science articles that are interesting and easy to read than none at all, as long as the science is actually correct.
"Science is interesting, and if you don't think so, you can fuck off." This Dawkins quote sums up the other side of the argument. It bothers me that people would be so protective and elitist about having science portrayed perfectly in the media that they would rather it not be written about at all. We need to be criticizing the accuracy [themanitoban.com] of science journalism, not its glamorization.
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The author has a good point: mainstream media outlets focus far too much on the story and not the facts, so much so that they will lie and equivocate to generate conflict.
Just generaliz
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I am reminded of a time that I sat on a train next to a group of salesmen on their way out to a conference. For the whole trip they were having an animated discussion about how important high numbers were and how a truly great salesman wouldn't be afraid to put the squeeze on anyone, even his friends or family, to make a few extra sales.
Why was I reminded of this? Not because of the parallels betwe
For good science reporting (Score:3, Informative)
Bad Summary (Score:2)
He didn't like what he found in the article, or he wrote this article to express his dislike for what he found? TFA and some common sense make it the latter, of course, but that sentence could be clearer.
great old column by ben goldacre (Score:5, Informative)
The one startling regularity I have noticed across all science reporting is that the more I know about the subject area, the more misleading the article seems. It seems clear this pattern can't be completely limited to science reporting. I cut popular media a lot of slack in terms of glossing over details and simplifying for a popular audience. But the distortions I see are more often fundamentally misleading about the nature of the work and the details that are relevant to the story. Disturbingly, I'm still tempted to believe some of what I read in areas about which I know little. Even more disturbing, I find this mode of reporting seeping into the scientific articles I read and review. I guess this saves the reporters the trouble, but points out one of the many problems with science reporting done by people who have no ability to read science critically.
The one time I was interviewed about my work, I had the sense the reporter already had a story outlined, based on a science-fiction-y reading of the press release, and was basically fishing for quotes to add meat to the story.
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It's an educational experience to be "backstage" in a running story. I, or my family, have been personally involved in a few things that made the news for a while.
Newspapers are good at getting facts right. The individual facts they print are, in my experience, probably true (or, at worst, difficult to prove false). They are very good at picking and choosing facts to make a certain, apparently pre-determined, conclusion.
There is also the arrogance factor. I was in a meeting where some of us questio
My personal experience (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a serious issue in terms of the effects it has on the public opinion of science.
not a good thinker (Score:3, Insightful)
We've all seen this definition of "obvious" play out with road ragers on busy highways. From the road rage perspective isn't it "obvious" that if I cut past that car ahead of me, I'll get there just a little bit sooner? Why is it I can still many of the cars that dangerously cut me off ten miles later, still struggling to gain every foot with the valiant effectiveness of trench combatants in WWI? When you actually study traffic flow on a highway, what you discover is that this kind of aggressively self-serving behaviour produces standing waves which reduce the net capacity of the highway as a whole. But still, somehow, it seems obvious to many that this driving strategy constitutes a good way to gain personal advantage.
Third, he's using *Darwin* here in an anecdote about over-reaching scientific orthodoxy undermined. Unbelievable. No, don't use Freud, Chomsky, Pauling, Schottky, or the Leaky family as an example of a scientist possibly prone to overreaching. No, use Darwin, Marie Curie, or Michael Farrady.
Re:Complaints about writing (Score:4, Interesting)
When there is general distrust of a group of people, all that is left to motivate others to follow their footsteps is pure greed. Lets face it, scientists are not in the top 500 richest people in the world, now are they?
The reverse side of that coin is that there is no positive image of such groups, and this is just another look at the negative. Psychology at work. It takes real dedication to commit to some field of employment that everyone thinks is corrupt or devoid of reward. Much easier to imagine yourself as a WWE wrestler than an astrophysicist when you are young. What is pointed out in a backhand way is that we are discouraging the young by no smacking down the bad ones now.
Well, that was my take
Re:Complaints about writing (Score:4, Insightful)
But that's just something that discourages those who are already considering becoming professors or scientists because they like doing research. The bigger challenge is probably encouraging people to choose a scientific career in the first place, as you mentioned.
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Oops, sorry. I forgot.
A couple of the moderators around here get pretty bent out of shape if you criticize the US or religion. Doing both in one post must REALLY have got somebody's knickers in a knot. I promise to be a good boy until the next time.
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Jeez, now I have to take it all back because a couple of sane moderators came along and outvoted the weasel with delusions of omnipotence.
Very well, then, I'll do it like a man: I stand corrected! The system, for the most part, works and the would-be censors will probably get caught and put in their place in time to preserve the diversity of opinion, off-centre humour and freedom from bum-kissing that make /. a nice place to visit.
Hail Cowboy Neal! Hail!
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As far as I can tell, there are only relevant experts on one side of the evolution debate.
Re:Of course ... (Score:4, Informative)