Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an arrogant and toxic saying. Let's not repeat it let alone add to it please.
But is it true or not? That’s what matters right?
No, it's not true.
Why does science news suck so much?
191–200 of 285 posts
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Exactly this. It is all about click bait to drive digital advertising. It is largely our own fault. We (by and large) don't want to pay good journalism. I'm not buying it. Science reporting from university press departments is just as bad if not worse, and they are funded by the university not advertising (tuition, grants, alumni donations, etc..)
IMO: People that write well are not jumping at the chance to write science articles for universities. Writing is hard and science is hard, and being passionate about both is rare.
It's not that rare, but the problem is that a lot of people who are outsiders, yet who truly understand science and then write about it, often end up becoming quite sceptical of it. Just like how journalists who understand politics end up sceptical. The difference is, journalists holding politicians to account is well understood to be a critical part of democracy, but for science it's the opposite. If journalists start asking tough questions they're immediately evicted from the best known institutions because scientists (academics) have done a great job of convincing those in power that doubting scientists in any way is immoral and dangerous.
So what you get is worthless fanboy journalism in which those who are smart enough to ask tough questions get removed, and those who are left just want to copy paste university press releases.
In turn that beds general scepticism amongst the population because they can sense that nobody is challenging the "experts".
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#193A friend of mine worked for a mainstream European science news website. Most journalists had no science background, and were pressured into writing 4 articles a day. The result of course, was low quality articles and hastily copied press releases with no critical thinking. They believed everything corporations said, because they had no time to check. I don't blame the journalists, but the work conditions and economic…
The behavior we see due to the private ownership of media and news publishers betrays the colossal failure it is for the public and nations at large to have our society's self-reporting undermined by profit motives. News and media need to be treated as protected speech, with more formalization and more regulation. Leaving the governance of our society's self reporting to greedy Capitalists is a clear and active recip…
On the contrary, letting the government determine what comes through the media is the recipe for fascism. As evidence, consider that the first thing that any authoritarian regime does is to take control of the media.
The first test you've got to do for any proposal like yours is to consider what the impact of it will be when your political opponents are at the reins. Are you comfortable with Donald Trump (or really, anyone of his faction) having this power?
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#194As a counterpoint, I'm a scientist whose work occasionally gets media attention. I was definitely worried about my name being featured in the middle of absolute nonsense, but the experience has usually been good: very few of the journalists completely missed the mark. The "tone" didn't always match what I was trying to get across, but it was usually close to someone in the field's attitude. There were some minor erro…
many journals believe it's unethical to show "copy" (the complete article) to a source--or sometimes anyone outside the newsroom
It seems like you didn't quite complete this thought. It sounds like your point is that inaccuracies creep in because the journalists won't give a chance to vet an article's accuracy to the people who have the expertise to do so?
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it was hard for me to understand some papers in closely related sub fields, and that was with working experience in that area. I've noticed this too. The reason why I think this happens is because if you're an employed scientist, then the system is set up in such a way that you HAVE to publish, or else you lose your job. If someone criticizes your paper, and it gets pulled from publication, then thats the same as h…
> If someone criticizes your paper, and it gets pulled from publication, then thats the same as having never published anything in the first place. Therefore, the technique to survival is to write your paper in such a way that repels criticism as much as possible. Not trying to be snarky, but that's not how publishing works.. you don't get a paper retracted for criticism, you get it retracted if there was scientific…
> you don't get a paper retracted for criticism, you get it retracted if there was scientific malfeasance.
Why would somebody criticize a scientific paper for something other than to point out some kind of scientific malfeasance?
If the paper is written in such a hard to understand manner, then its not possible to make any response at all. That's the point.
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#196A friend of mine worked for a mainstream European science news website. Most journalists had no science background, and were pressured into writing 4 articles a day. The result of course, was low quality articles and hastily copied press releases with no critical thinking. They believed everything corporations said, because they had no time to check. I don't blame the journalists, but the work conditions and economic…
The behavior we see due to the private ownership of media and news publishers betrays the colossal failure it is for the public and nations at large to have our society's self-reporting undermined by profit motives. News and media need to be treated as protected speech, with more formalization and more regulation. Leaving the governance of our society's self reporting to greedy Capitalists is a clear and active recip…
The profit motive does a poor job of handling the externalities journalism should be addressing. But govt control of the media landscape to the degree you're talking about can easily hamstring the important adversarial function journalism has vis-a-vis govt.
It's a very hard problem, and there are no obvious or pat solutions.
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#197No post body was provided.
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#198The big news in Science (big S for the institution of) is the existential crises of the Anthropocene, the art and technology of sustainably occupying planet e, radically transforming human culture around primary support for the ecological planetary biosphere vs the old dominionist paradigm of human centered everything, and the fight to preserve the biological wealth of the planet against the inexorable onslaught of mass consumption and exploit, especially as it impacts global systems like atmospheric and ocean chemistry, threatening habitability of the surface. This news is very exciting!
I think one can only call science news boring if one clings to merely the old idea of science as a simple methodology for validating laws/truth of reality rather than appreciating that Science is the institution of cultural realism and the modern religion to which we all subscribe, so much so that we take it for granted. This is the problem with "science news", is that it's news performed under the presumption that the methodology of scientific practice needs to be more explicit for it to be effective news. This is only true for folks who accept superficial obeisance towards science as significant equivalence for factuality.
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#199Well lady, too bad, you have a conflict of interest with the news writers. What you care about is the news, what they care about is how much traffic they get.
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#200Science is really hard to make into news for three reasons: 1. Error and uncertainty. The news like concrete facts, not (paraphrased from the article), "3 months plus or minus 100 years". Also, a lot of science does not hold up over time. It takes a long time to explain uncertainty and it also dilutes from how interesting the article might be. 2. Science is mostly boring. Incremental, tiny improvements in understandi…
On your first point about uncertainty, I think both scientists and non-scientists struggle with how to have a meaningful conversation where real world decisions and policies have to be made in the face of material uncertainty.
I generally see two ways of dealing with this on the ley side, which is to either ignore it altogether or to write if the finding or result completely. Neither is really appropriate and I think it's due to humans not being well wired to appreciate how uncertain everything that we don't have uncertainty parameters for actually is. Establishing a probable interval doesn't actually affect the probability of a thing.
On the academic side, the problem is that most academic are cowards. They see a disproportionate cost to being wrong, and culturally, are trained to always be able to give a 'right' answer, even if that answer is useless. Theres a kind of automoton language that is used by researchers that allows them to escape any real consequences that might extend from having an opinion. It's a kind of aloofness that pretends that the science is happening in some kind of white tower vacuum of pure intellectualism. And they aren't wrong from a social perspective, in that academia will enforce a serious cost to them for being wrong.
To sum up, my broader point is that both journalists and academics tiptoe around and hide behind uncertainty far too much. Any issue worth having a conversation on is one where decisions will need to be made inspite of uncertainty. As well, everything is uncertain, and just because we haven't/ can't get an uncertainty on something, it shouldn't give you more confidence than something we can establish an uncertainty for.