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How Journalists Distort Science with Balance
The scientist's job is to discover truth about the natural world, and the journalist's is to report the world's events accurately. Why are these two professions so often at odds? Chris Mooney discusses how journalism fails science in this month's Columbia Journalism Review. If you applauded Jon Stewart's plea to "stop hurting America," Mooney's analysis will strike a chord; the he-said-she-said approach to truth fails in all kinds of venues. (via: WorldChanging)
This happens over and over again. You hear it a lot on the news capsules they do on the radio (and a lot of people hear). Any group with who knows what agenda can issue a press release and the media just parrots it.
Another recent case is the report by The Lancet that US troops have killed 100,000 civilians. This number is being reported everywhere as a recorded facts, as if there's a book somewhere with every name dutifully recorded. The Antibushites use it as if it were an article of faith and an unimpeachable fact, despite that every other estimate made everywhere else is an order or two of magnitude lower.
If you download the actual report, however, you see it's just complete bullshit. It was a statistical analysis, extrapolated from 63 (yes, sixty three, and a biased sample of 63 at that) death certificates, and the 95% confidence interval, even with their data massaging, ranges from 8000 to 192,000.
From the report itself:
"We obtained January, 2003, population estimates for each of Iraq's 18 Governorates from the Ministry of Health. No attempt was made to adjust these numbers for recent displacement or immigration."
Translation: our data has no connection with reality at all! In engineering, we call that a "wild ass guess" or, at other times, a "proposal."
Here's further anaylsis: http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/002543.html
So, yeah, it sucks when journalists can't report real science well, but that's a much lesser problem than journalists reporting poor science poorly. I've seen various activists hold press conferences and spout all sorts of fantasy figures, and not a single reporter questions any of them. No one asks "how were these figures obtained". They just scribble it down and regurgitate it later.
This is just one of many reasons I hope for the ELE asteroid. Humanity's capacity for self delusion is depressing.
--- Ban humanity.
Larry Krauss addressed this eight years ago in an excellent editorial for the NYTimes entitled "In Defense of Nonsense," which I reproduce below:
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July 29, 1996
In Defense of Nonsense
By Lawrence Krauss
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Four months ago, when his Presidential campaign still seemed viable, Patrick Buchanan appeared on a national television program and argued in favor of creationism. This, by itself, is not so remarkable, given some of Mr. Buchanan's other views.
What seemed more significant, however, was that the same national media that questioned other Buchanan campaign planks like trade protectionism and limits on immigration did not produce a major article or editorial proclaiming the candidate's views on evolution to be simple nonsense.
Why is this the case? Could it be that the fallacies inherent in a strict creationist viewpoint are so self-evident that they were deemed not to deserve comment? I think not. Indeed, when a serious candidate for the highest office of the most powerful nation on earth holds such views you would think that this commentary would automatically become "newsworthy."
Rather, what seems to have taken hold is a growing hesitancy among both journalists and scholars to state openly that some viewpoints are not subject to debate: they are simply wrong. They might point out flaws, but journalists also feel great pressure to report on both sides of a "debate."
Part of the reason is that few journalists naturally feel comfortable enough on scientific matters to make pronouncements. But there is another good reason for such hesitancy. In a truly democratic society, one might argue, everything is open to debate.
Who has the authority to deem certain ideas incorrect or flawed? Indeed, appeal to authority is as much an anathema to scientists as it is to many on the academic left who worry about the authority of the "scientific establishment."
What is so wonderful about scientific truth, however, is that the authority which determines whether there can be debate or not does not reside in some fraternity of scientists; nor is it divine.
The authority rests with experiment.
It is perhaps the most immutable but most widely misunderstood property of modern science: a proposition can never be proved to be absolutely true. There can always be some experiment lurking around the corner to require alteration of any model of reality.
What is unequivocal, however, is falseness. A theory whose predictions fail the test of experiment is always wrong, period, end of story.
The earth isn't flat, because you can travel around it, period, end of story.
This misunderstanding is at the heart of much scholarly debate in recent months, including the amusing hoax that a New York University physicist, Alan Sokal, played at the expense of the editors of the journal Social Text. The postmodernist journal published a bogus article that Professor Sokal had written as a satire of some social science criticism of the nature of scientific knowledge.
It was aimed at those in the humanities who study the social context of science, but whom he argued could not discern empirically falsifiable models from meaningless nonsense.
The editors, on the other hand, argued that publication was based in part on their notion that the community of scholars depends on the goodwill of the participants -- namely they had assumed Professor Sokal had something to say.
They too have a point.
The great paranormal debunker and magician, the Amazing Randi, has shown time and again that earnest researchers can be duped by those who would have been willing to answer "yes" to the question "are you lying?" but who were never asked.
We must always be skeptical. Being skeptical, however does not get in the way of the search for objective truths.
It merely assists in the uncovering of falsehoods.
Another popular misunderstanding of the nature of truth and falsehood in modern scie
You would think that Fox News's credibility would have been blown to pieces after this came out.
Guess not.
Oh well.
AP wire, Nov. 2, 2004: "Minnesota Republicans failed Tuesday in a bid to push the liberal group MoveOn.org away from polling places..."
ABC News, Oct. 18, 2004: "Hlinko is also one of the people behind the liberal group MoveOn.org..."
San Francisco Chronicle, August 20, 2004: "The liberal group MoveOn.org is airing an ad..."
New York Times, August 18, 2004: "Senator John Kerry denounced an advertisement by the liberal group MoveOn.org..."
Washington Post, August 18, 2004: "...the spot being aired by the liberal group MoveOn.org."
New York Daily News, August 17, 2004: "The liberal group MoveOn.org, meanwhile, airs a new ad today..."
USA Today, August 4, 2004: "Members of the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth accuse Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry of lying about his Vietnam War record. The ad, called 'any questions' is the toughest political ad since an anti-Bush spot called 'Fire Rumsfeld' (showing a hooded Statue of Liberty to remind voters of how U.S. soldiers had abused prisoners in Iraq) was aired by the liberal group MoveOn.org in late May."
What he ignores is that the consensus now says "yes" to all his examples and that's why they're now considered valid science. Breaking with consensus is a tool towards forging a new consensus, it doesn't undermine the principle of consensus.