Why does science news suck so much?

Post by peyton » Sun, Jun 19, 2022, 11:54 PM UTC

openknot wrote: post #219

timr wrote: post #150

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NPR's science reporting has been abysmal for the past few years. Maybe they don't have the click-bait problem (debatable), but they routinely report everything one side of the political spectrum says as scientific fact. They also fall victim to the "experts say..." and "scientific consensus is..." tropes. Their "scientific expert" source list looks suspiciously like a group of the loudest voices on Twitter. I say thi…

>"Their "scientific expert" source list looks suspiciously like a group of the loudest voices on Twitter." That's probably where the journalists find people to interview, likely because a large majority of journalists are active on Twitter. This definitely isn't the only place, because there are free services like SciLine by the AAAS (source: https://www.sciline.org ) and many others for connecting journalists to res…

Post by pvg » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 2:45 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #231

pen2l wrote: post #227

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To go even further, I find a saying attributed to Aristotle to be quite true: "Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach." I find that true experts are able to explain subject matter in their domain simply , they can ably distill complicated issues to their essence lest their pupil be bogged down in unnecessary side-details. I used to think Raymond Hettinger was just an awesome teacher because he could make ce…

Seems pretty unlikely that Aristotle said anything like that; all these epigrams are kind of silly, in that they're all stemming from something a fictional character said (or wrote) in a play. But I agree, it's cringe-y to see people try to dunk on teachers like this. There are good teachers and bad teachers like there are good and bad everythings; if you've had a good teacher for something before, it's hard for me t…

Post by alphabettsy » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 3:04 AM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #242

snarf21 wrote: post #84

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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. We want it to be free which means ads. NPR/PBS tends to have better and more balanced news but it is largely because of their donor/patron model. But to be clear, they are surely not immune. They are still run by people who are judged by views and reach and other eye…

There's a bunch of millionaires who have broken off from legacy news to make written and/or podcast style news content. We're willing to pay for quality work, but the legacy news isn't creating it.

Post by pclmulqdq » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 4:24 AM UTC

kylebenzlee wrote: post #266

pclmulqdq wrote: post #205

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NPR used to be my main news source until around 2016. Despite the bias in their funding source (~90% left-leaning donors), they put out a lot of important stories that criticized both sides of the aisle. Then they got a serious case of TDS.

What does TDS mean. Google is no help :(

Post by Ekaros » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 5:43 AM UTC

wrycoder wrote: post #252

Ekaros wrote: post #209

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So how many such findings per year we are currently producing?

About once a century is all you need.