Why does science news suck so much?
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Why does science news suck so much?
1–10 of 285 posts
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#2Because the fix is already in, it's not science, it's fundraising to do what you're told to do.
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#3If you're asking this question, to me you're saying you know how science works, maybe, but you have absolutely no clue how newscycles and the news work.
If you'd knew both, you would definitely see the (honestly unsolvable) incompatibility between the pace and approach of science and the need for ephemeral news-able items to make a science publication actually compelling to a larger non-technical audience.
A science publication that wouldn't care about news economics and readership -- therefore maybe only a publicly-funded no-profit -- could maybe approach science news in a way that would solve the problem illustrated here.
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#4I would risk to say that nowadays any news suck which implies that it’s not a problem of science but journalism in general.
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#5It'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.
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#6very good points, especially about focus on 'consensus' which seems to be a consequence of US reception of global warming but has become a standard in discourse about science ...
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#7I would risk to say that nowadays any news suck which implies that it’s not a problem of science but journalism in general.
Science is hard, slow, there's lots of negative results, and also sometimes it's very abstract and how a bit of research connects to a persons lived experience.
Most people who consume the news, consume it online. The attention economy is destroying everything of substance, because substance is also hard, hard to produce and hard consume.
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#8I would risk to say that nowadays any news suck which implies that it’s not a problem of science but journalism in general.
Science is hard, slow, there's lots of negative results, and also sometimes it's very abstract and how a bit of research connects to a persons lived experience. Most people who consume the news, consume it online. The attention economy is destroying everything of substance, because substance is also hard, hard to produce and hard consume.
I don’t disagree that it may be worse in case of science but just pointing out that the problem is possibly broader and science news is just one of the victims. IMO news may be one of the areas where pure capitalism doesn’t work well.
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#9I would risk to say that nowadays any news suck which implies that it’s not a problem of science but journalism in general.
It probably always sucked but it was our only source of information before so we didn't know better
Re: Why does science news suck so much?
#10It'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.
In fact, every point raised by her equally applies to any kind of news. She basically gave a good summary of why news sucks in general.