Slashdot Mirror
Bad Science in the Press
An anonymous reader writes " An editorial in The Guardian presents a good run down of what is wrong with science reporting today and tries to point out why this is. From the article: 'Why is science in the media so often pointless, simplistic, boring, or just plain wrong? Like a proper little Darwin, I've been collecting specimens, making careful observations, and now I'm ready to present my theory.'"
Not only the science, but the interpreting of the results.
The world's bad reporters would have us believe tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people died and are in ill health because of chernobyl, but when it comes down to facts and reality 56 people are known to have died, and there are no profound negative impacts to the surrounding population.
Bad Science is all about getting attention for personal, political or financial gain.
RST
I think the type of publication is a very significant contributor to the prevalance of Bad Science reporting, even more so than the article's thesis of "Humanties Majors run amok."
If you look at many general interest news publications, whether they be monthly magazines or daily papers, you'll find they don't often even have a dedicated science reporter. Even when they claim to, it's really a "Health" reporter, who's often much more likely to cover the latest exercise craze or green tea fad than actual metabolic research from the NIH (incidently, at least one major science journalism prize now specifically excludes "health" articles for this reason.) Even when they do have science reporters, the Guardian's article makes a good point: unlike the financial or politics pages, the science beat reporter must assume no, or very little, prior knowledge of science, and this is enforced by their editors. While this may (sadly) be a perfectly reasonable thing to do, as scientific literacy among the public is appalling, you can see how it's a vicious cycle kind of thing. And it's the rare general interest publication indeed that would have more than one staff reporter or editor dedicated to covering science.
But I think there's still good science journalism out there, in the science and tech magazines, like New Scientist or Discover. Not only can you assume the audience knows what the terms "volt" or "DNA" mean, you can get much more space to give a real explanation of what's going on. While stories are still supposed to be timely, they're not usually tied to the daIly press release cycle either. And this type of publication is much more likley to employ people with science backgrounds. Here I should state my possible bias: I'm a science journalist for a monthly emerging technology magazine with a university education in experimental physics! But I should say that one of our best writers here, if not the best, was an English major in college. But after a few years now on the semiconductor beat he probably knows more about, say, dielectrics, than I ever did, not least because he had the time to learn, time often in short supply when one is the sole science reporter on a newsstand publication, and so have to cover the entire scientific waterfront. Reporters for science/tech publications can usually focus on a few areas at a time and really learn them in depth, and that makes a huge difference.
This is why I feel the publication makes a much bigger difference than some seething secret Romantic resentment from journalists to the quality of science reporting. It's the publishers and editors which set the standards for articles, not individual reporters, after all.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
I would add that The Economist is also usually a very good source for science news, even though it doesn't come with the frequency or pagecount to warrent calling The Economist a scientific publication.
The European Dark Ages were a time of political fragmentation (fall of the Roman Empire), repeated waves of invasion by foreign entities (Vandals, Huns, Vikings, etc), de-urbanization, loss of knowledge and learning (destruction of the Akadamies), religious persecution (Christians wiping out Pagans) and lots of other "Dark" stuff, which is why it is called the Dark Ages. They were followed by the Middle Ages, a time of political unification (rise of proto-national kingdoms), learning (re-introduction of knowledge from strongholds in Muslim Spain and Turkey), introduction of exotic foreign technologies (printing press, astrolabe) establishment of Universities and the rise of new cities. It's relatively recent for some people to differentiate between the Dark and Medieval periods, but the Dark years were indeed Dark.
I'm a longtime and mostly happy subscriber to Science News. It's weekly and seems to hire educated reporters.
Here's a nice analysis of the dubious claims made by Crichton in his speeches and in the footnotes of his novel State of Fear.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74
>Whether "intelligent design" or "global warming", science is being used as a tool of politics - which is something it is not and never should be.
You can't do this by reading the mainstream press, but on the web you can disentangle scientific information from politics by reading what climatologists think. That site draws a sharp line between political questions (should we ratify the Kyoto treaty?) and scientific questions (why do ice ages end before CO2 levels go up?).
Well there's a start to your bad science right there.
That is so true. Darwin is just a trick to remove morality from education. I for one believe in the Intellgent Design theory of Bad Science in the Media. See, there's a few large media conglomerates. "Media gods," if you will. Now these media gods are powerful, but they constantly vie for even more power.
Now, these media gods, are aren't true gods. They're more like lesser gods. So they pay tribute to more powerful gods. These media gods, aren't the only lesser gods. There's also energy gods, gun gods, even church gods, or "god gods" if you will. Now you would think that this pantheon of lesser gods would be self-interested, but they're not, well not completely. Some of the media gods actually subscribe to the same agenda as the other gods and
actively promote it.
This celestrial mutual admiration uses the media and public's ignorance of science to mask their crass manipulation of facts to further their economic and furthering of their sociological agenda.
Now these media gods, along with the with lesser gods, have taken a page out of Baudelaire's book. Using their considerable resources have attempted to convince the world that they don't exist. Of course, they sometimes slip up and admit to the charade.
The saddest thing about this, is that this post didn't come off as crackpotty as I intended.
I like New Scientist but put more faith in Nature and Science. There are also some good narrow focus ".org's" out there such as RealClimate
I also like the Gaurdian. From TFA, "What did you think of this article? Mail your responses to life@guardian.co.uk and include your name and address."
I think every slashdotter who agrees with TFA sentiments should take a couple of minutes to write and suggest that they promote the author to "science editor" (if they have one?). Be sure to include any relevant qualifications (eg:B.Sc, Dr, etc) in your title.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
While Einstein left his secondary school early without qualifications, it was not because of academic slackness. His work in primary school had been excellent. Here his mother writes to her sister:
He went on to a further education college to obtain the qualifications for university entrance. He got fairly high marks here (top in maths and physics, etc).
Some of the "Eintein did badly at school" reputation comes from the difference in Swiss and German marking systems. Switzerland where Einstein studied used 6 as the best grade and 1 as the worst grade. Germany used 1 as the best and 6 as the worst. In time his results of 5 and 6 (good results in Switzerland) were transposed into the German system, making them seem bad. I'm not sure, but I did hear that Switzerland now uses the German system, thus compounding the problem.
Nope, sorry, your chronology is 100% wrong. The traditional date for the fall of Rome is 476, when the last Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by a Gothic chieftan, who instead of putting up another puppet emperor simply crowned himself King of Italy. Conversion of the Northlands to Christianity didn't even *begin* until the 800s, and wasn't completed until the 1100s. The coming of Christianity to the Vikings marks the end of the Dark Ages, not the beginning.
Chris Mattern