Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists • Hacker News Board

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#91

Post by golergka » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:24 PM UTC

MostlyStable wrote: post #17

ke88y wrote: post #10

Big question: HOW? Most journalists in the USA receive basically zero scientific education. At university I majored in two STEM subjects but also took 10 courses in Philosophy, Art, History, Journalism, and Economics. Almost no one majoring in any of those fields except Econ took more than 2-3 STEM courses, and even then there a dedicated watered down courses to ensure those people could graduate (Algebra instead of…

In the past, wasn't it normal for journalists to have a particular specialization (even if that's not the _only_ thing they did), like "science reporter" or something? It is obviously impossible for every reporter to become an expert on every single topic that they might ever cover, but it is not unreasonable at all to get enough of a background on a topic that you cover regularly to be able to ask intelligent questi…

There isn't enough money in journalism anymore to sustain this.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#92

Post by ctrlp » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #88

ctrlp wrote: post #79

Nate Silver fundamentally misunderstands his own role in the information ecosystem. He and other journalists are primarily votaries to the mainline political myths of our time. This idea that they should be skeptical is laughable on its face. They can't do that, not meaningfully. Mostly, they can't actually think outside the religion, but even if they could they can't write skeptically without losing their careers. T…

While there are some (many) like that, I don't believe that Nate Silver is one of them.

but why?

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#93

Post by rossdavidh » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

robot_no_421 wrote: post #37

Everyone should be skeptical of all sources. But out of the myriad of various opinions coming from politicians, CEOs, propagandists, flat out out idiots, and everything else in between, scientists are arguably the class of truth sayers you should be least skeptical of. So while the title is technically true and I agree with the premise of the article, the article itself is wholly unnecessary at best and damaging at w…

The essence of science is not trusting an expert, but requiring evidence and repeatability. Scientists aren't more trustworthy than those other groups for no reason, it's because they work in a field where work can be double-checked. As the repeatability crisis has shown, many believe their work will not be double-checked, and once they believe that, they become less and less worthy of that trust.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#94

Post by alphabet9000 » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

the line about "The truth is never going to come out" is related to the uncertainty of whether or not it came from a lab, not (as the piece implies) having anything to do with "They also thought they were going to get away with it". it's very misleading and should be corrected

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#95

Post by VintageCool » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

I have been upset with the NY Times for years because of their uncritical addiction to access journalism.

* They held into the Abu Ghraib story for a year to avoid influencing the 2004 election.

* They dismissed and discredited the story about DNS lookups between email servers at Trump Tower, Spectrum Health (DeVos / Erik Prince), and Alfa Bank (Russia) in 2016.

* They uncritically repeated the Barr memo about the Mueller report. That one I couldn't believe -- there had been weeks of reporting about how Bill Barr had been hired/appointed to suppress the Mueller investigation. Then Bill Barr publishes a memo a few days before the report saying that it's no big deal, and the NY Times is publishing mea culpas about how they had done wrong by reporting on Trump/Russia connections exposed by the Mueller investigation??

Instead, it seemed like the New York Times liked getting scoops from their sources high up in government, and they didn't want to preserve those sources by not upsetting them.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#96

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:27 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #46

biophysboy wrote: post #13

One thing that dulls my interest in this debate is my doubt that it will ever get “resolved”. We dont have sequence samples at the time of covids origin. China is never going to cooperate on giving more circumstantial evidence. So we cant really do any phylogenetic or epidemiological analysis at the level of spatial precision that this would require. The data is extremely fuzzy where it needs to be sharp. In my opini…

There's really no reason to care about which of the two prevailing theories are right, because they have the exact same outcome: Whether it came from the chinese lab or the chinese wet market, china will not let anyone know, and they have no intention of letting anyone else tell them how to prevent it in the future. We cannot make them run their bio labs safer, and we cannot force them to prevent a natural source wit…

[deleted]

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#97

Post by andreygrehov » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:28 PM UTC

grammers wrote: post #87

ke88y wrote: post #10

Big question: HOW? Most journalists in the USA receive basically zero scientific education. At university I majored in two STEM subjects but also took 10 courses in Philosophy, Art, History, Journalism, and Economics. Almost no one majoring in any of those fields except Econ took more than 2-3 STEM courses, and even then there a dedicated watered down courses to ensure those people could graduate (Algebra instead of…

Exactly. In addition, how would you gather any information at all if there's no one to trust. Yes, fake news are a huge problem, but we need reliable sources to gather information.

You don't need a reliable source. Maximizing the chances that a source is reliable is good enough. This can be achieved by maximizing the number of journalists attacking the same problem. The process must be transparent and publicly available / open to critics. People (non-journalists, readers) will point out if something smells suspicious.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#98

Post by rossdavidh » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:29 PM UTC

wredue wrote: post #69

biophysboy wrote: post #13

One thing that dulls my interest in this debate is my doubt that it will ever get “resolved”. We dont have sequence samples at the time of covids origin. China is never going to cooperate on giving more circumstantial evidence. So we cant really do any phylogenetic or epidemiological analysis at the level of spatial precision that this would require. The data is extremely fuzzy where it needs to be sharp. In my opini…

I’m really not sure what you mean. There is literally zero evidence supporting a lab leak, while there’s multitudes of evidence of multiple contact leaps in the market. Was there a time when the lab leak theory had the same credibility as it being naturally occurring in poor unsanitary market conditions? I’d personally say no, but for the sake of argument, forgetting basic tenants like “the simplest explanation is mo…

This sounds like "your theory is outside the Overton window, you are not allowed to think this". The simplest version of the lab leak theory is not a conspiracy, it is very literally the opposite: "never ascribe to conspiracy what is adequately explained by incompetence". We had warnings, in writing, about the very lab in question, from western scientists, that the safety standards there were insufficient.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#99

Post by jonnycomputer » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:29 PM UTC

I spent at least an hour reading through both the emails and the slack messages in this "expose", but I came away from it fairly certain that they are being portrayed unfairly, and I'm fairly surprised that Nate Silver has latched on to this. You have to both look at the time-line of the paper writing and the time-line of the conversations. By my reading, by the time the paper was being written, most of them had indeed come to the conclusion that (1) there was no evidence for an engineered virus, (2) that the data was consistent with both a leak from a lab (without engineering) or from exposure to animals, but that (3) the former was not as a priori likely, given what they knew about the kinds of research being done.

You just can't take something someone says in Jan. 2020 at the start of their looking at the problem, and what they said in their paper written in Feb. 2020 on the same level. They started with concerns that it was an engineered virus and moved away from that view the more they learned.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#100

Post by avenido » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:30 PM UTC

"They also thought they were going to get away with it. 'The truth is never going to come out', wrote Rambaut in one message."

He took that statement way out of context. They were looking for the best explanation and given that their assumption of "the truth" about a lab leak wouldn't avail itself, they felt they needed to go on what would be a plausible scenario - a natural evolution of a virus.