71–80 of 285 posts
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How can you tell what has impact, though? What's the point in paying for school lunches for kids who have no interest in learning?
The impact is they aren’t malnourished? Seems like a good goal. Edit: we prioritize feeding people over giving them educational science articles; seems appropriate
It's not that science (or tech) news is bad, it's that all news is that bad. We just don't notice it outside our area of expertise. The next time you're reading an article about some field you're not an expert in, try to remember that it is just as bad as the news in your area of expertise.
> We just don't notice it outside our area of expertise. This is a common trope - and has a name - "gell-man amnesia", that people raise again and again, but I don't think it's the whole story. There are different incentives at play. Journalists are sometimes investigators, sometimes storytellers, and other times just mediators. The article mentions the exagerations and unique incentives at play in the research domai…
The only differentiator is to what degree. Gell-man amnesia is stating that all news has a high degree of it, not exactly equal amounts.
It's not that science (or tech) news is bad, it's that all news is that bad. We just don't notice it outside our area of expertise. The next time you're reading an article about some field you're not an expert in, try to remember that it is just as bad as the news in your area of expertise.
The issue compounds when poorly trained, poorly paid journalists interview scientists and then misreport and misquote their findings, leading to a loss of a trust, the next interview being less detailed, etc. It's a vicious cycle of dumbing down and hyping up, all to fit our clickbait-sized attention spans.
Is there an easy way around it? I doubt it. You're essentially reporting bleeding-edge findings from leading PhDs flailing under a publish-or-perish model, to an audience who mostly has not touched science since middle school (if even then). People don't even know why they should CARE about science, much less what your margins of error and P-values are, etc.
Not too be overly negative but Hossenfelder herself is a good example. She posted many authoritative-sounding videos about topics where she has little knowledge and it shows quickly. She’s a walking illustration of Gell-Mann amnesia. But clicks are good for her business, just as they’re good for the business of newspapers.
Examples to substantiate this accusation would be good.
> ... stories about how the increasing temperatures from climate change kill people in heat waves, but fail to mention that the same increasing temperatures also save lives because fewer people freeze to death. Yeah, I don’t trust any of these sources.
This is not sourced, but then again it is also not science.
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I think this is true to some extent. The fundamental problem is that the majority of journalists are generalists with training mostly in writing. This may have worked in the past, but the world has become very specialized. Generalized knowledge with a hermeneutical approach to discovery just doesn’t cut it. Media organizations seem to have realized this when it comes to law where many analysts are now lawyers, and in…
The good news is that we're about to have AI that can make anybody a geat writer, including any researcher whose reporting the general public finds boring and incomprehensible.
What I expect, is more wordy gibberish, that gives the impression of high level writing, but is not.
The irony here is that Sabine Hossenfelder falls into exactly the same patterns as the science media that she is criticizing. A punchy headline, with significant oversimplifications. For example, she makes it sound like science news is always aimed at scientists, and that they do not explain the science (I have several excellent counter examples). That doesn't mean there is not some very good points in there (e.g. pu…
> The other irony is that likely she does it for exactly the same reasons as why science media is often bad: economics. Can we all stop blaming 'economics'. Economics says people are largely self-interested, selfish and maximize their own utility (happiness-whatever). It's not 'economics', it's people. Labor unions are also maximizing their revenue.
It's not that science (or tech) news is bad, it's that all news is that bad. We just don't notice it outside our area of expertise. The next time you're reading an article about some field you're not an expert in, try to remember that it is just as bad as the news in your area of expertise.
I dunno if that's strictly true. Many fields can be reasonably covered with some minimal training. The hard sciences, though, are constantly changing so much that even practitioners in the same field of science can barely keep up in peer review... much less scientists from other disciplines, and much less poorly-paid journalists without dedicated science training. And these days, so many of the findings are subtle an…
I subscribed to Nature magazine, and I don't see that it ,,sucks so much''. The answer is simple: you get what you pay for. Also there are lots of high quality youtube channels for any specific area of science...some of my favourites: - Everyday Astronout (his interviews with Elon were awesome) - CrisprTalk (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8TW2xKYRqbLvfGaT783WQA/videos)... a retired guy with lots of lab experience…
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the news industry needs public investment from all angles. right now the incentives are completely wrong
I mean we have public broadcasters like Canada’s CBC and they still do the same thing. Why? Because they need to justify their budget. If nobody reads/views your reports, why should the government pay for it. The real answer is: the public doesn’t want science reporting unless it’s punchy, simple and exciting.
This behavior needs to be called out and there needs to be accountability. However, there is none. Even when the stories are completely fabricated, as happened at USA Today recently.
What the public wants and what tricks people into giving you attention are different things. Journalists today go for the latter, which is why we have all of these "alternative" news sources now.