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Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

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Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#181

Post by enragedcacti »

pessimizer wrote: post #155
jimbokun wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republicans absolutely have their own media organizations, just as likely to get the facts wrong in a way that's biased towards Republican interests. It's just that the expectations are so low for them no one is surprised when they report things with an obvious slant or just factually wrong.

> The Republicans absolutely have their own media organizations Everybody has their own media organizations. > just as likely to get the facts wrong in a way that's biased towards Republican interests. This is both the law of averages, and also not relevant even if you had a good reason for saying it. I'm not saying the Republicans are any more honest than the Democrats (god forbid.) The Democrats are generally pushi…

> and because they are supported by more billionaires. No other reason.

If we take the 2022 House races, republican's House PAC received $79 million from 42 billionaires or their spouses, while democrat's House PAC received only $20 million from 17 billionaires or their spouses.

The numbers might play a little differently if you look at all donations to party affiliated PACs and individual campaigns but it doesn't seem like it reverses the overall trend.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/article/meet-the-bill...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/american-billionaires-politic...

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#182

Post by jarjoura »

Journalists have always been best at reporting the facts given to them, even without understanding intent and all the other nuance surrounding those facts. So we as readers should never take what you read at 100%. I don't think that will ever change.

I love this little quote from "Michael Crichton"[1] as it's so true.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/344530-briefly-stated-the-g...

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#183

Post by no_butterscotch »

stainablesteel wrote: post #176

define journalist: 1. an independent youtuber, who gives their opinion, can admit their bias, and is able to operate on good faith while allowing open discussions with people they disagree with 2. a corporate "journalist" who's integrity has become second rate in the age of the internet, who uses language as an instrument to get people to admit what they want them to admit in the most petty way possible i can agree w…

Yes this. Additionally (1) has no "higher caste" mentality. Whereas (2) often believe themselves to be the anointed truth-sayers of a secular world. Generally speaking they don't live up to that promise.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#184

Post by no_butterscotch »

xbar wrote: post #165

I, for one, am skeptical of everyone who still calls themselves a journalist.

Yes, journalists used to speak truth to power.

Now they work on behalf of the power.

And they don't just work on behalf of power, they are power themselves, and it isn't the people's power despite their claim to being "the voice of the people".

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#185

Post by hooverd »

mike_hearn wrote: post #65
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…

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…

wrt 1., there are an unfortunate number of cranks for every discipline. It would be funny to see journos publish the emails that every faculty member who releases their email in the university phonebook gets as Serious Disagreement* though.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#186

Post by antisthenes »

thewanderer1983 wrote: post #170

"“trust the science” or “trust the experts” is usually right." This statement and general belief is antithetical to science. Dr. Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying talk about this misconception of science on their Darkhorse podcast all the time. Dr Brian Keating nicely summarises this issue in this short video https://youtu.be/gAqq72m-ipo You should "trust the scientific method" when done correctly.

> This statement and general belief is antithetical to science.

No, it's not. 99% of the population doesn't have the cognitive ability to independently verify whether a scientific publishing has had rigorous checks on its scientific method and methodologies and samples were selected appropriately.

In this scenario, you should trust the science and/or experts, unless other experts have verified that the findings are garbage and/or something was fabricated.

What's really antithetical to science is when people present sources as having equal weights.

Joe Rogan vs Meta-analysis of 30 studies does not have the same weight.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#187

Post by throwaway14356 »

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…

Gary Stevenson was surprised no one wanted to publish his article. They already had an economist one said. He argued he could walk into large financial institutions and they would immediately hire him for millions, the staff economy writer wouldn't make it past the reception - but he should be the one to write all of the articles to inform the public?

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#188

Post by hooverd »

aredox wrote: post #158
jonnycomputer wrote: post #99

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 inde…

Nate Silver has been blatantly wrong several times during COVID, has been schooled by actual scientists and is now on a personal vendetta against them. He is ready to fan the flames of science-bashing because his fragile yet enormuous ego has been hurt. That tells all that you need to know about him. (Don't believe me? He has never apologised nor shown a little bit of humility after being corrected. That's who he is.…

Superforecasteritis is the new Nobelitis.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#189

Post by jonnycomputer »

gptbore wrote: post #168
jonnycomputer wrote: post #99

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 inde…

I agree with your description of what these correspondents consensus seemed to be at the time of writing. I don't see how this is at all consistent with that the paper claimed - "we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible", nor how it was portrayed by the media - "COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic has a natural origin".

The phrase "is not likely" imo should have been substituted for "is not plausible", though I am not sure everyone else interprets the phrase "not plausible" as meaning something like "almost certainly not true"; they could have meant it as, something like, "the least likely of all the possibilities, by a fair margin." Sure, I'd have preferred if they had been explicit, by giving their estimate of the probability of each possibility explicitly.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#190

Post by dekhn »

blitz_skull wrote: post #119
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…

Simple: Stop believing it’s true just because a scientist said it. You don’t need a STEM degree to stop propagating theories before they’re proven.

Wouldn't that mean that Galileo and Newton's discoveries would have had little to no impact?

For modern endeavors, it's hard to see how anybody who didn't have a detailed education in the subject could really contribute in a useful way to debunking junk science. I can see this happening for papers that can be dismissed outright because the authors made egregious errors in the study design or data collection (where data scientists/statisticians who don't work in the field can still be very useful), but for most modern physics or medical research, there are literally hundreds of years of well-established theory and practice that you absolutely need to know before dismissing ideas that don't make sense.

This is especially important in areas like infectious disease.

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