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Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

nytimes.com

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Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#31

Post by Finnucane »

buboard wrote: post #7

This was inevitable and is the culmination of two things: - Too much hypothesis-driven science that results in statistically significant, but untrustworthy results. It's easy to find statistically significant data to backup whatever crazy thing your brain comes up with. - Too much pseudo-scientifically backed popular press. Popular science is useful for disemminating science that has been solidified through decades o…

Some years ago, when I was working as production editor in New York, I had to manage a manuscript for a book of new-age woo that was trying to pass itself off as pseudo-science (one of these 'quantum magic' type books). Not only was the premise crap, but the author clearly did not understand even basic historical facts about science. I brought this up with the editor, who seemed surprised to be told that the author did not know what she was talking about. I'd guess the editor had not really read the manuscript very closely. I worked with the copyeditor to try to straighten some of it out, but it was pretty much futile.

The NY publishing system is set up so that editors spend most of their day doing tasks unrelated to actually editing their books, of which they have too many. It gets worse as you go up the food chain.

Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#32

Post by thrower123 »

jfk13 wrote: post #9
carlmr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm not sure if this is true, but I have the impression the error rates have increased in the last decades, despite spell-check becoming more effective at finding them at low cost.

Most publishers seam too have decided its knot worth employing copy-editors any moor.

There are some publishers I won't even buy books from anymore, because I've paid too much money for books that are so rife with typos and nonsense that it was clear that it never even touched the inbox of an editor or a proofreader.

Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#33

Post by gwright »

povertyworld wrote: post #26
ReptileMan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are working hard to lose the newspaper of record status. They omitted some critical information last week in the Kavanaugh story and blamed it on editorial process. Reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly said in an interview on MSNBC that they wrote in the draft of their Sunday Review piece that a woman who Kavanaugh was said to have exposed himself to while a student at Yale had told others she had no recollec…

At least Buzzfeed never tried to convince the American public that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and therefor should be invaded and occupied. NY Times is already below Buzzfeed.

The TL;DR is always that the US ginned up the evidence on WMD as a pretense to go back to war.

My take on all of that was the Saddam Hussein was running a con. He wanted his regional adversaries to have the thought that he had WMD but wanted the UN inspectors to never find a "smoking gun". The analogy would be someone making a gun gesture in their coat pocket and then finding themselves confronting someone who really does have a gun...

On top of that he clearly didn't adhere to the restrictions imposed on him after the first Gulf War leading to the second Gulf War to eliminate any possibility of him having WMD and to enforce the restrictions.

Other explanations for our motivation to go to war never made sense to me such as "it was for the oil". Much cheaper (in blood and $$) to just purchase the oil if that was our goal, but the oil economy is basically private so it doesn't even make sense as a government goal. But I digress...

Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#34

Post by __s »

carlmr wrote: post #5
wwqrd wrote: post #2

I'd settle for spelling and malapropism checks.

Yeah, I'm not sure if this is true, but I have the impression the error rates have increased in the last decades, despite spell-check becoming more effective at finding them at low cost.

I recently read all of Philip K Dick's novels. Spotted typos in every book. I log typos in my goodreads reviews

In the past it wasn't even the author's fault necessarily. The worst case of this was an anthology of Ursula Leguin, "Five Complete Novels" where I quit recording the typos as there would be multiple per page

Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#36

Post by lallysingh »

ratsmack wrote: post #35

I have a problem with "news" sources that don't allow commentary on their articles. It seems that many eliminated the comment sections when the articles were too often found to be incorrect and/or pushed a blatant narrative, rather than just reporting the facts.

Also when they'd get filled with comments from the "other side" of the political spectrum.

Re: just reporting the facts. Look in a journal or in data tables for facts. News is propaganda to sell newspapers. Everything else is secondary to that for them.

Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#37

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

buboard wrote: post #7

This was inevitable and is the culmination of two things: - Too much hypothesis-driven science that results in statistically significant, but untrustworthy results. It's easy to find statistically significant data to backup whatever crazy thing your brain comes up with. - Too much pseudo-scientifically backed popular press. Popular science is useful for disemminating science that has been solidified through decades o…

That's a huge problem, but not the one this article is about. The examples given are things like books about 19th century court cases or insider stories about the trump admin, not science.

Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#38

Post by burntoutfire »

ratsmack wrote: post #35

I have a problem with "news" sources that don't allow commentary on their articles. It seems that many eliminated the comment sections when the articles were too often found to be incorrect and/or pushed a blatant narrative, rather than just reporting the facts.

That's my impression too, specifically with the Guardian. If I'm not mistaken, you used to be able to comment under most articles, then they started to disable comments under articles on "inflammatory" subjects (read: about immigrants etc.) and now you can hardly ever comment. Which makes sense, because o lot of their articles would be just torn to pieces if commenting was allowed.

Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#39

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

tyri_kai_psomi wrote: post #15

Add to this Richard Dawkins new book, "Outgrowing God" which is rife with inaccuracies, baseless conjecture about the motivations behind some of the ancients civilizations he talks about (an assyriologist posted a pretty pointed takedown of some of the inaccuracies on twitter https://twitter.com/GHeathWhyte/status/1175081067943997440 ), and theology so bad you would question whether or not he himself has ever actuall…

Great... so now I can't trust Richard Dawkins OR the people who review his books.

Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#40

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

I wish there was some mention of major newspapers in this. It seems like a glaring omission. Through all the "fake news" stories in the last years, I have yet to see someone like NYT openly talk about e.g. the gell-mann amnesia effect that the rest of us so openly agree is a thing.
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