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Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

natesilver.substack.com

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Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#141

Post by AlbertCory »

This is actually an excellent article. If you look at why he says the lab-leak theory was problematic for these "journalists" (and the quotes are deliberate), none of the reasons are "it isn't true":

1. It could cause a political backlash

2. It could upset China and undermine research collaborations

3. It could provide validation to Trump and Republicans who touted the theory

But in fact, the journalist's only legitimate question is "is it true?" The consequences of reporting on it are not their concern.

There was a time when journalists thought that way, or at least made a show of it. That time might have been a few brief decades, but it was there.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#142

Post by ke88y »

SoftTalker wrote: post #128
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…

> How are journalists supposed to be productively skeptical when the vast majority of them don't receive anything remotely approaching a truly well-rounded education? Ask questions. Ask "why" a lot, don't take things at face value. Assume you're being bullshitted. You don't need to deeply undestand a subject to make someone back up what they are saying.

Again, without a baseline educational background, doing so in a way that's productive -- ie anything more than running around like a chicken with its head cut off -- is impossible.

There were journalists on the COVID vaccine beat for ove a year who had never taken a Bio 101 course, let alone self-studied undergraduate level genetics. They lacked the fundamental background required to assess evidence, to know which questions to ask, to know which people to ask, is all highly suspect.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#143

Post by robomartin »

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…

> Big question: HOW?

Simple: If they are not equipped to understand what they are going to write about, they should refrain from adding noise to the conversation. The potential to add nothing but noise or cause damage is great.

Interestingly enough nobody would ever propose that, say, a fashion journalist report on surgical procedures or a range of other subjects. How is this problem not obvious in other domains?

It's interesting to watch the difference between a reporter/journalist on any TV news show and, say, the people working at a financial news network like CNBC. In the latter case, they have to have a serious body of knowledge just to open their mouths. If you plucked your average reporter/journalist and put them into that seat, they would sound like complete morons because they just would not know what they are talking about.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#144

Post by gunapologist99 »

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…

Then why didn't the scientists simply say 'we lack the data to conclusively resolve'?

There was a specific reason why they didn't -- and in fact promoted a specific theory, and it had more to do with politics and funding than science.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#146

Post by hackyhacky »

thorncorona wrote: post #71
mike_hearn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to shoot for perfection. The bar has sunk so low even very basic techniques can yield huge improvements in trust: 1. Report the fact that disagreement exists. Phrased differently, stop taking academics at their word when they claim there's a consensus. Do some basic web searches to find people who disagree. Get quotes from them. Stress on the word people ; not just other academics but literally anyone…

> 1. Report the fact that disagreement exists. Phrased differently, stop taking academics at their word when they claim there's a consensus. Do some basic web searches to find people who disagree. Get quotes from them. Stress on the word people; not just other academics but literally anyone disagreeing on scientific grounds eliminates the claim of consensus. Bloggers are fine. This is how you get journalists to repor…

> This is how you get journalists to report disagreements that don't exist in reality. For example, whether the earth is flat, whether climate change is real, etc.

Correct. Part of the problem is that there is disagreement about whether a disagreement exists. Cranks believe that there is a vigorous debate about flat-earth/evolution/climate change, and scientists don't.

Do how does one (journalist) objectively determine whether an issue is settled or not?

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#147

Post by kmontrose »

rossdavidh wrote: post #84
mapt wrote: post #8

The biggest error a considered, good-faith journalist typically makes is "Presenting both sides" without comment when one of them is an established consensus with abundant supporting evidence. If you go looking for a fringe outside perspective on an issue, or the motivated reasoning of somebody who stands to gain by a bit of sophistry, you will probably eventually be able to find one presented by a PhD. That is not h…

Certainly you are correct that there are several different "lab" theory versions, and they vary by orders of magnitude in how plausible they are. However: "I think the main thing still in my mind is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin' likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario." This, is damning evidence regard…

> This, is damning evidence regardless of any of that. Nothing remotely like this was being presented by mainstream newsmedia, perhaps because nothing remotely like it was being presented to them by the scientists they talked to. There was no version of a lab origin theory that was being presented as worthy of consideration.

You have to acknowledge this is incredibly weak logic. “A thing is possible, therefore it happened.” Is this molecular evidence the Furin Cleavage Site? Cause that was peddled basically as a lie - they occur in nature just fine, it’s also used in research.

I’m unaware of any compelling evidence for the lab leak theory, but I will acknowledge it’s basically impossible to disprove. We don’t know where most diseases arose (or where they came from) - it’s just we mostly don’t care, unlike with COVID.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#148

Post by mike_hearn »

ke88y wrote: post #114
mike_hearn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to shoot for perfection. The bar has sunk so low even very basic techniques can yield huge improvements in trust: 1. Report the fact that disagreement exists. Phrased differently, stop taking academics at their word when they claim there's a consensus. Do some basic web searches to find people who disagree. Get quotes from them. Stress on the word people ; not just other academics but literally anyone…

I agree with your prescriptions, but worry the point might've slipped by. > READ the papers The point of my original comment is that most journalists don't have the educational background required to do this. And everything else flows downstream of that problem.

The issue is not that they can't do it, they just don't want to. Journalists with no science background are happy to write quite technical fact checks of articles - even articles written by scientists - when those articles are contradicting something the journalists are already invested in.

And often the problems don't need specialist knowledge to spot. The before/after images purporting to be of surgery in this article can be detected as fraud by anyone:

https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-i-7e9764571422

No expertise needed. Blatant stuff like that is more obvious than we'd hope.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#149

Post by cactusplant7374 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #128
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…

> How are journalists supposed to be productively skeptical when the vast majority of them don't receive anything remotely approaching a truly well-rounded education? Ask questions. Ask "why" a lot, don't take things at face value. Assume you're being bullshitted. You don't need to deeply undestand a subject to make someone back up what they are saying.

> Assume you're being bullshitted.

> You don't need to deeply undestand a subject to make someone back up what they are saying.

Isn't that what the Covid vaccine skeptics did? It didn't turn out that great and made journalists look like conspiracy theorists in some cases.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#150

Post by SoftTalker »

ke88y wrote: post #142
SoftTalker wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How are journalists supposed to be productively skeptical when the vast majority of them don't receive anything remotely approaching a truly well-rounded education? Ask questions. Ask "why" a lot, don't take things at face value. Assume you're being bullshitted. You don't need to deeply undestand a subject to make someone back up what they are saying.

Again, without a baseline educational background, doing so in a way that's productive -- ie anything more than running around like a chicken with its head cut off -- is impossible. There were journalists on the COVID vaccine beat for ove a year who had never taken a Bio 101 course, let alone self-studied undergraduate level genetics. They lacked the fundamental background required to assess evidence, to know which qu…

"Dr. Scientist, you said X. Describe the evidence for that claim?"

"Dr. Scientist, are you aware of claim Y, which seems at odds with what you are saying? Explain why claim Y is wrong?"

Write it up. You don't have to understand it to write a story about what they said. That's what "reporting" is.

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