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The Death of Quanta Magazine

mateusaraujo.info

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Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine

#11

Post by ilitirit »

bowsamic wrote: post #9
ilitirit wrote: post #3

> It falls so far below any journalistic standard that the magazine is dead to me. I'll be honest. I found it very hard to read beyond this line. I powered through though. Here's the tldr: It's a rant about details in one specific article.

The context is that this is causing a big amount of chaos in the physics community, with a lot of high profile (and/or popular) physicists calling it out. It isn't just one guy's rant. Even my research group is talking about it

Sure, and I don't have any issue with that.

But this blog post literally says "The death of Quanta Magazine", and in the same breath talks about "journalistic standards".

Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine

#12

Post by mjburgess »

It's definitely one of the worst articles they've published, on the grounds of expecting them to demystify science with their journalism rather than mystify it -- which is what every other publication on the planet does.

I read it in its entirety to see if there was any justification for its write up. As with all tabloid journalism, the caveats are at the end where you find out the "bridge principle" from QC-to-Wormhole requires assumptions that are non-physical.

Everyone is well aware that non-physical assumptions to the equations of physics can produce arbitrary magical effects (eg., perpetual motion, etc.).

The whole structure of the article was something I'd expect from "tabloid science" and I expect Quanta will get a lot of push back from it; and hopefully not do it again.

Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine

#13

Post by sigmoid10 »

>The problem is, if they write such bullshit about topics that I do understand, how can I trust their reporting on topics that I do not?

Funny how this is true for basically all of science and yet so many popsci authors get away with it, because the vast majority of the audience will not be experts in the field. If you want the true story you'll always have to read the original paper (though sometimes even Nature lets bs slip through) and absolutely ignore the common media articles about it. Complaining that articles for the masses are not adequate recitations of real research is like complaining that water is wet. It's kind of the whole deal. This stuff is supposed to sound intriguing and generate clicks, not push the research itself ahead or inform real experts.

Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine

#14

Post by yogsototh »

I still follow Quanta Magazine, but I kind of moved from it to SciTechDaily, which while still imperfect, generally has a direct link to the scientific article for which, if they have done their work correctly, is easier to follow after the blog article about it.

The positive side effect is that I am reading scientific articles more often since I'm doing this.

Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine

#15

Post by aortega »

I saw that wormhole article and something in it triggered the bs detector. Those discoveries are often made by a big team in a big lab, the article only named one researcher.

IMHO Quanta is far from the most respectable source of science news, since their articles tend to be very sensationalist, but in this case Quanta is not to blame, as the article it was published in Nature, but publications in big magazines are becoming more and more political, and less about real science.

Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine

#17

Post by rob74 »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #13

>The problem is, if they write such bullshit about topics that I do understand, how can I trust their reporting on topics that I do not? Funny how this is true for basically all of science and yet so many popsci authors get away with it, because the vast majority of the audience will not be experts in the field. If you want the true story you'll always have to read the original paper (though sometimes even Nature let…

Yeah, but "creating a wormhole" is laying it on a bit thick, even someone who is only remotely familiar with physics will find this statement highly suspicious - I mean, even in Star Trek, they didn't manage to create a wormhole, they only used one (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bajoran_wormhole).

Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine

#18

Post by [deleted] »

hucker wrote: post #7
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #2

Not the actual death of the magazine, just someone getting upset about lack of depth in an article. Specifically: > "No, scientists haven’t created a wormhole using a quantum computer. They haven’t even simulated one. They simulated some aspects of wormhole dynamics under the crucial assumption that the holographic correspondence of the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model holds." Quanta publishes great, detailed articles - but i…

This is not some "glossing over some details for a lay audience" situation. It is not a lack of depth. It makes ridiculous claims, fundamentally misrepresenting what this research is, to make it sound cooler and more interesting. This is one of the worst pieces of science journalism I've ever seen.

[deleted]

Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine

#19

Post by Veen »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #2

Not the actual death of the magazine, just someone getting upset about lack of depth in an article. Specifically: > "No, scientists haven’t created a wormhole using a quantum computer. They haven’t even simulated one. They simulated some aspects of wormhole dynamics under the crucial assumption that the holographic correspondence of the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model holds." Quanta publishes great, detailed articles - but i…

> I seriously doubt that many of it's readers have sufficiently deep knowledge of QC to properly understand the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model

But that's the problem. Most people don't understand the underlying science, so they rely on science journalism to distill and explicate complex topics without simplifying and distorting to the point they lose any relationship with the truth. In this case, the writer has failed in their task; they've written a load of nonsense that actively undermines a reader's ability to comprehend the topic—in short, it's bullshit.

Re: The Death of Quanta Magazine

#20

Post by prof-dr-ir »

Two things can be true at the same time: one, quanta magazine is the best publication out there when it comes to popularizing recent advances in fundamental physics and mathematics; and two, this article was bad.

If we are allowed to base our opinion of a publication on one article, should I declare that Mateus Araújo's blog is dead to me?

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