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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

#271

Post by HWR_14 »

timr wrote: post #82
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…

Great comment. One thing I'll add: if you don't have specific training in the field in question, just ignore any use of "scientific consensus" to justify an argument. The "scientific consensus" trope is just dressed-up appeal to authority, and even if there is such a "consensus", it's almost never broad enough to be applicable to whatever pop-science journalism thing you're reading. Also, even within the hallowed hal…

I'm not sure what scientific thing would be reported on in popular media, there was a scientific consensus that was reported on and was wrong. Anything from the past 3 or so decades you can point to?

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#272

Post by biophysboy »

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…

Theres definitely lots of evidence: COVID on surfaces, animals that can catch COVID photographed in the market, cases surrounding/emerging from this point. But the smoking gun would be a covid positive sample from one of the animals, which we can’t get. This is what I mean by the evidence always being a little cloudy.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#273

Post by rgrieselhuber »

skybrian wrote: post #270
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false barrier to critique of the scientific establishment. Many foundational questions can always be asked about the claims that scientists make, such as, how is research funded, where are the moral hazards, who benefits from certain conclusions, is the data open sourced, how are dissenting opinions treated, has repeatability been demonstrated, why is fraud not a concern, etc. Simple and rational questions…

Those aren't foundational questions, though, they're circumstantial evidence. They don't get at whether the scientists did a good job or not. "Why is fraud not a concern" is kinda useless in proving fraud. Maybe they help you feel a bit more or less confident? I think reading a paper and asking "okay, what did they actually do, and how could it go wrong" might be a good start, or better yet asking some other scientis…

They are the questions that journalists should be asking in order to do their jobs. There are real political and economic consequences to the impact of science today, especially when funded by special interests.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#274

Post by ajkjk »

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…

It's just that it's not true "receiving education" is a requirement for "being intelligent". Get journalists who can do it. Don't hire ones who don't?

Like... I didn't study music or history in college but I know a lot about them. Because I'm not a dumbass and I read books. Being literate on subjects when it's your job to be should not be a high bar.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#276

Post by djtango »

dbsmith83 wrote: post #224
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…

Thinking out loud here and this might be a terrible idea, and maybe at the risk of snubbing journalism majors, but what if the dependency was inverted? As in, what if, instead of having journalists who take a few classes here and there in various subjects, we instead had people who majored in subjects who also took some journalism classes, so they could write on subjects within the field? What I mean is, instead of h…

I went to a very academic uni and my professor grumbled that while our students were all "clever" none of us knew how to make a poster. Which is also kind of important when you're doing research and presenting your findings

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#278

Post by biophysboy »

zmgsabst wrote: post #173
wredue wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We don’t have zero evidence: - we know of the US funding collection of coronaviruses at WIV; and research on them using humanized mice - we know that the closest genetic match is a thousand miles away - we’ve been unable to identify the precursor in an animal, unlike other pandemics That strongly implies that directed evolution on a collected sample via repeated infection of humanized mice is responsible for COVID. C…

Two of the points are lack of evidence; these would be more compelling to me if I felt that our viral surveillance was robust. The first point is circumstantial like the wet market evidence.

Good evidence would be covid positive samples. We cant go back in time and collect this.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#279

Post by djtango »

fallingknife wrote: post #269
andromeduck wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colleges really need to upgrade STEM requirements for liberal arts. At my alma, science/engineering required 18 arts credits while arts required only 6 science/math credits.

They can't. Liberal arts classes are taught at such a massively lower level that this requirement would mean STEM courses would have to be dumbed down or liberal arts majors couldn't pass. Lots of failed STEM majors in history class, but did you ever run into a failed liberal arts major in diff eq?

I went to a UK uni but my observation was that the curve was much narrower and forgiving for humanities and then much broader for STEM. So this meant it was much more straightforward to get a top grade in STEM but on the flipside it was easy to objectively fail.

Whereas for humanities it was extremely opaque what it took to get a top mark but most people would get a decent mark. And almost no one fails.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#280

Post by oefrha »

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…

As a former scientist, I would say scientists who talk to the media are much less trustworthy than scientists in general, and scientists in fields frequently featured in the media are much less trustworthy than the rest.
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