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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.'"
Science is complex. More often than not very well-trained and experienced scientists get it completely wrong. That said, somebody with a minimal scientific background (ie. a Journalism major) will very often screw up more complicated scientific articles. But likewise, many scientists dislike writing such articles. So we end up with a situation where those in the know would rather not write, and those not in the know are the ones who do write. And the result is lousy scientific articles.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
There are many efforts directed at educating scientists about the journalistic process, but fewer that aim to educate journalists about science. One of the arguments for the imbalance is that it is more efficient for scientists to learn about media constraints than it would be for journalists to learn about science. Some argue that a lack of scientific knowledge on a journalist's behalf may actually benefit their interpretation of science publications, allowing the author to be less biased when translating the information for public consumption. Others believe that introducing science journalists to the scientific process will help to correct inaccuracies and omissions of important information in the media.
"It is my hypothesis that in their choice of stories, and the way they cover them, the media create a parody of science, for their own means. They then attack this parody as if they were critiquing science. This week we take the gloves off and do some serious typing."
Granted my sample space of random, anecdotal evidence is probably much smaller than his, but he seems to attribute the poor reporting to some sort of grand conspiracy, or at least malice.
From what I've seen of bad science reporting (my professors often give examples in lecture for us to laugh at), the cause is nowhere near as malevolent -- it's simply writers who are not educated enough about science and the methods of discovery that surround it trying to simplify for their readers a scientific breakthrough like they'd simplify a speech or debate.
And they just don't understand it anywhere near enough to avoid cropping out hugely important parts.
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
.. stick with the science journals! At least there the articles will have been written by scientists, rather than mainstream media journalists. Let the everyday individual read the consumer newspaper and magazine articles, while people looking for correctness can go right to the source.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
and that's about it.
You can't handle the truth.
...a scientific article stating that 73.3% of all scientific studies and statistics are wrong...
Reporters who have never touched a rifle report on the military, reporters who grew up in the city report on farming, reporters who never broke a sweat at heavy labor report on construction projects...
Actually, this is a lot like public primary education where teachers without specialties in any field teach specific specialty classes.
"Why is science in the media so often pointless, simplistic, boring, or just plain wrong?"
Because those things get ratings. Nobody wants to hear the truth - to most people it's boring and threatening.
It resolves things. Jornalism is about exciting people into anxiety about whatever important (preferably unsolveable) problems or stupid crap is available at the time to do it with.
On the other hand, I've seen a number of liberals who buy into crystals, magnets, feng shui, chiropracty and all other sorts of nonsense, and that sort of thing is just as harmful as anything any Young Earth Creationist or Intelligent Design advocate is going to pass off as Truth.
Don't you think science education is best served by keeping psuedo-science and barely veiled religious dogma out of the classroom?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Don't worry. Science will still progress. It will just be in places like China and Europe, where actual scientific progress and achievement is considered more important than appealing to everybody's religious belief system.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
About 80% of the zines on the stands are owned by just a half dozen publishers these days. Their job is to sell zines, not benefit scientific understanding, unless their readership has some decided and saleable interest.
Journalists, bless them, aren't often scientifically trained. Look at the poor quality of the computer industry zines of the late 90's and early 00's. Most them are gone, and good riddance, These guys were better at covering sports than bus architectures and burgeoning CPU and OS monopolies. Getting scientists to write cogent articles for people that aren't buying an academic/discipline article is really tough. They get no recognition for that, just some cash. Only a few scientists can cross over to mainstream writing and be successful more than their research career gave them. So, there's a good reason why we don't get good science writing: publishers don't understand the need for quality; researchers are busy publishing in journals within their disciplines, and journalists make rotten scientists-- but better beer drinkers.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I thought we agreed not to worry so much about the difference between "hypothesis" and "theory" so we wouldn't have to use the "hypothesis of evolution" to destroy the "opiate of the people" and create our socialist paradise.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Michael Chricton had an excellent piece on the decline of science reporting in an address at Caltech. His observations should be required reading because they get to the heart of what's wrong with "science" these days. (I use science in quote marks because it's only tangentally related to real science.) A sample:
Hell, I remember as a kid reading "50 Things You Can Do To Save The Earth" or some other such claptrap that argued that some massive amount of the rainforest disappared every day - and a little multiplication found that if such a figure were true the rainforest (and all forests on Earth) would have disappared in a year.
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.
1) 'Breakthroughs' overhyped as if they're about to change everything. We see this all the time on /. 'Breakthrough in quantum-computing/ nanotechnology/ quantum-cryptography' The stories are overhyped 'cause it gets readers. Then here we get a bunch of armchair scientists hypothesising about the terahertz fast, petabyte large, unhackable computer everyone will have next year.
2) The media focusing on one or two scientists as if they have the ultimate say in how things are. Ignoring the fact that scientists aren't some monolithic beast with one scientist at the head.
that the article's author just got dumped by his "humanity graduate student" significant other.
A science reporter doesn't have to know the subject, but they DO need to know how to do critical thinking. (Which, IMHO, is important for any journalist who wants to have integrity.)
Most importantly, they need to know:
Statistics will usually be given with a percentage, which indicates the highest confidence level that can be given to the results. Because of the curious nature of statistics, these are given as the area of the tail on the stats chart, not the body, so the LOWER the percentage the better. A 5% confidence limit is generally regarded as evidence of a total LACK of confidence. You really want 1% or better. You'll see some results, though, with a confidence limit of 10% or even 20%.
The "null hypothesis" (what you are trying to disprove) should be something clearly-defined, with well-known bounds. It's preferable that the "null hypothesis" is whatever would be either whatever the system would naturally gravitate towards, or the norm, whichever you know better.
In non-statistical studies, you use basically the same method. You assume that whatever you are testing shows nothing at all different, and attempt to falsify this hypothesis. It is extremely dangerous to go looking for something specific, because you'll normally find it - even when it's not there.
You can pay a scientist - or anyone else - to say anything you like, if you've enough money. What they say, then, is important only if they have credibility as an impartial observer. As most science, these days, is funded by corporations, this is unbelievably scarce. However, paid-for work has zero credibility unless it can be verified by an impartial observer. At which point, it is still the impartial observer who matters, anyway.
This one is hard to guague, if you're not in the field, but you can look for tell-tale signs of a problem. If you can't see the methods used, if they didn't keep logs or lab notes of what they did, if they are vague about how you get from the data to the conclusions - these should tip off any competent journalist that something isn't right.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Journalists exist to be published. That is their function -- that's what they love, to see their name in print. They don't really care what they say exactly; they only care that their article pleases their editors, which in turn sells more newspapers or magazines.
I got a real education when I lived next door to a fairly high-up Sports Illustrated reporter. In watching him do his work, he would basically try and find an angle, and then shape the facts to fit his angle. Technically, he wouldn't "lie", but he would definitely flake and form things to give the impression that he'd decided to write ahead of time. That was generally for background pieces that he would write, but even for sporting events he followed that formula. He would write his article before the event had even finished, sometimes with multiple endings in case things went for one outcome or another (this is Standard Operating Procedure in the industry).
In realizing his "algorithm" to producing articles, I began to look at other journalist articles. And lo and behold -- I saw the same sort of pattern. When you realize this, you can see the "angle" they've decided to write, and the pattern shows up like a flashing red light. All the successful ones do this. They decide ahead of time what would make an exciting article to write.
This is why people get misquoted all the time. It's because when a journalist talks to someone, they aren't interested in what that person has to say, they want specific quotes that they can use to back up whatever they are writing.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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
...if not malice?
Not to mention that, as the AC above touched on, they serve two masters -- one of whom pays their salary, and it's not you and me. It's not like there's any big backlash against their reporting of science, but as much as some of us may think we've evolved beyond it, there is still a lot of distrust, ignorance, and general animosity towards science in the world. The media exploits this for ratings, it's not a new accusation by any means. And when it keeps people ignorant, it's malicious in my book.
So you've read Darwin's works then. Which parts were you refering to?
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
It may take a second to political belief systems, however. How long did China insinuate the moon landings were a hoax? As for Europe, lots of good research comes out of there...but then, so does lots of bullshit like anti-gravity and zero-point energy.
Ah my, that was good for a laugh.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The real problem is the perpetuation of a war between "science" and "humanities" students/grads/researchers/writers. Even this Guardian article points its (stereotypical) criticism at "humanities" people, implicitly defending "science" people. Humanities writers, including many "social scientists" like historians (and especially the underlooked lawyers in that class), are just as antipathetic.
The division itself is a disservice to each profession. Scientists have to communicate science with humans, even other scientists. And humanities workers, even mere newpaper reporters, are governed by physical laws of evidence, causality, statistics. We're all in it together. And we all have to realize that we've each got our own languages, from mathematics to hiphop, that are just ways of representing the real world we're all struggling to understand and share with each other. Prioritizing one of those aspects is no excuse for neglecting competence in another. And seeing the struggle as scientist against humanist discards the real struggle, against misunderstanding and ignorance, thereby working for the enemy.
--
make install -not war
GOOD scientists don't purposefully make statements that are absolute. Good scientists are guarded and pick their words carefully.
That said, somebody with a minimal scientific background (ie. a Journalism major) will very often screw up more complicated scientific articles.
Quite on the contrary. It is the same reason you only get reports about murders and status updates on Bennifer- media, on all levels (at least in the US) is owned increasingly by large holding groups. Holding groups do one thing well: try to squeeze every penny.
Scientific articles require more legwork, and that means fewer stories per person per day. "Entertainment" stories practically pay for themselves (free plane tickets, free hotel stays, free footage, free access to a popular star). Murders are easy to cover- listen to the scanner, show up and stand there for the live-on-scene footage, maybe interview a hysterical family member or friend. Tada, done. Celebs and blood sell; nerdy stories that are hard to research won't.
Science also doesn't jive with the "cover all viewpoints" they teach in journalism 101 (case and point, "intelligent design" vs. Evolution. Evolution is something the church gave up on decades ago, and the rest of the world knows is fact- but the American press feels "Intelligent Design" deserves presentation on equal grounds and parrots the President when he says it deserves "consideration".)
Please help metamoderate.
I would have to disagree. Science will continue in the US due to the excellent graduate programs, university systems, and corporate relationships between them.
And it will continue where ever it is unabetted by political--as opposed to any moral--influence. China for instance, has much too much political influence over their education systems to be the next springboard of discovery. As a result, Chinese students practically flee to the US after completing university. It is such a problem that in China, if one accepts admission to any graduate school within China all their identification will be seized by the government in an effort to insure you do not emmigrate. This does not help incubate a research community.
As for Europe, of course they are already sustaining a great research community,; however, governmental control is too prevalent to keep the top tier talent there. They simply can not pay enough to keep top tier researchers from emmigrating to US universities. And so their growth is not as great as in the US.
But if we are placing bets on the next large research community to complement the US, I'd have bet on India. IIT is producing, and attracting back to India, top tier talent.
Unfortunately, science via the media is almost worthless, and there is a pretty broad consensus around here from what I can tell. It is even worse when politics are involved. Here is my reasoning as to why.
1: Scientists who work in a particular field are self-selected to work in that field. Of course a cancer researcher thinks fighting cancer is important, or a global warming researcher thinks protecting the environment is important. This is not meant to attack these people, but I hope that you realize that one should take account of this when listening to their opinions. The result of this is one layer of hype for their research.
2. The second layer of hype is funding. If you want money to cure cancer, save the planet, or build better Legos, well, the first step is to scream bloody murder about how big the problem is and how wonderful your solution is. Like it or not, but scientists have every reason to hype their research - and as a research scientist myself, I can assure you that this is the way things really happen. This is a second layer of hype.
3: Then we get to the media, which receives this already-double-hyped information from the scientists. Well, what is the media's job? Selling information...and we all know their basic strategy is....hype!. So the "science" the average Joe reads in the newspaper is now triple-hyped.
4: Finally, we get to the big issue - politics. Most politicians get their information not directly from scientists, but from various media sources, lobby groups, and think tanks. But as noted, this information is already triple-hyped. Do you want to guess what the politician does? He/she then selects the information that best backs his or her position, and then hypes it.
By the time your favorite politician spews anything related to "science", you can be rest assured that it has been hyped so many times that it now bears no resemblance to anything approximating fact, and should be duly ignored. Before you start finger pointing, please get over the fact that both parties do it and are equally as bad (research anything related to Republicans vs Global Warming, or Democrats vs genetics/race/sex for all the anti-science details).
Not so much...what you're talking about is "interior decorating" and "ergonomics." Those are generally art forms, with a few "best practice" rules. Feng shui, on the other hand, is mystical mumbo-jumbo that employs spirits, energy flows, and all kinds of other garbage.
There's a big difference between "let's paint the wall in the dining nook burnt umber to tie it into the cabinets in the kitchen, and hang drapes to match the couches" and "your ancestors will bring you peace because a red-brown dining nook frightens away harmful spirits."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Perhaps it has to do with our daily TV & pop Magazine (Times, Life) and Newspapers that assume we're stupid and write/talk/present things to us as if we're at the 6th grade level.
If that's all you see, read, or hear 90% of the time - it will eventually filter down into your communication unless you actively prevent it. It will eventually spread to all media.
The british newspapers, I'm told, write at a 12th grade level.
If you ever watched the Daily Show where they showed the difference between George Bush's Social Security town hall meetings and the one PM Tony Blair did before his election - you will see the stark contrast in how the media treats it's viewers - intelligent adults vs. idiotic grown children.
(In short, it was 1000000 x more confrontational with people asking intelligent questions versus here where everybody had to kiss GWB's balls to ask a stupid & simplistic question)
I tried to find the clip but I can't find it.
I don't think political leanings are good indicator of scientific knowledge. Operatives on both sides butcher science for their own benefits, and the level headed, again on both sides, shake their heads.
:(
For instance, religionists consult unqualified doctors or anecdotes from relatives to "prove" Terry Shiavo is not a vegetable, because it fits in with their world view that euthanasia is wrong. Other conservatives and libertarians just don't give a fuck.
Some socialists and anti-capitalists far exagerate the dangers and causes of global warming because it fits their world view that capitalists are the bad guys. See the wackos trying to blame hurricane Katrina on GWB, or Ted Danson telling us in 1988 on Entertainment Tonight that the earth would be uninhabitable in 10 years because of overpopulation. Level-headed liberals shake their heads, as the extremists do more harm than good.
Bad science abounds, regardless of politcal affiliation. Not all conservatives are troglodytes, and not all liberals are rhodes scholars. Although I expect to be modded into oblivion for daring to suggest that some conservatives might not be troglodytes on Slashdot
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
As a scientist myself I'm very unhappy about the way the reporting of science has created a vicious circle. Journalists misreport science, the article comes up with some arguments as to why but in the end I'm tempted to think it has a lot to do with trying to summarise very complex things when you don't entirely understand them. But scientists are also to blame here; there is a general lack of both ability and interest in communicating our work more widely (the phrase "media don" is considered pretty offensive in certain circles). Unfortunately the kind of climate the journalists have created for us makes this venture even less appealing than it was in the first place. The eventual result is that people like myself don't like talking to journalists because we don't want to be involved in perpetrating a load of hype and making ourselves look unscrupulous in the eyes of our peers. The answer is probably getting scientists to try to write their own "popular" articles directly and to facilitate this would require that the systems that measure academic performance in terms of publication in impact-rated journals begins to pay some sort of recognition to activities of wider dissemination. Right now, you could be on the news once a week and have your own TV show discussing your work and it would do less (technically at least) to help you keep your academic job than publishing a two-page note in the back of an obscure journal. You might say that an academics job is to produce new research, not go on the TV. I think this is where the real question lies; what role should a scientist be occupying in the 21st century?
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What interests me is how good astronomy reporting seems to be compared to all other science reporting. It faces the same guantlet as other articles, avoids the math and loves to fear-monger possible disasters, but somehow it seems to communicate the more-or-less current theories in a way that seems understandable, interesting, even inspiring.
Is it a difference in how the media approaches the subject? Astronomy seems to have an aura of purity (biology seems to only be reported to create ecological or evolutionary flamewars; medicine research sounds more like infomercials than news; engineering ... well, doesn't exist in the media). Have astronomers learned how to package their data/analysis in nice neat packages?
Let's see if this is right: 1) Michael Crichton's remarks on science in the media should be required reading/hearing. 2) Intelligent design, which is predicated on the assumption that nothing is knowable (the acceptance of extra-natural forces in nature rejects the knowability of all natural science), is of equivalent validity to global warming (as Crichton tried to argue in his last bit of pandering pulp). The difference between the two theories, besides the fact that they are often on different sides of a political divide in America (no doubt the reason you chose them as your examples), is that one of them is science, the other is fundamentally un-science. Intelligent design is not only unproven, it is un-provable and also not dis-provable. Global warming, while still a topic of debate among a certain fringe, is as scientific in its predictions and foundations as any environmental science can be. While many physicists and the like may look down on environmental science, they'll be wishing they'd listended a little more closely when their coastal homes get destroyed.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
It is caused by the Flying Spaghetti Monster as punishment for the fact that too few of us wear pirate regalia in his honor. The evidence on this is very clear.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
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
Theres more to it than money, its a question of the climate in which one does their work. If you are a stem cell researcher for example, it doesn't really matter when Caltech or whoever might put on the table, it simply not worth it to end up on the margins of your field because of uncertain political climate to do with your work. I think you can see that for every inch the present US administration has ratcheted up restrictions, canny European countries have relaxed theirs in reply. In the end being a researcher is a shitty way of earning money. If it was the cash you wanted you'd have left years ago, the thing is getting to do the work you want to do. At the moment people in certain fields don't trust the US government not to interfere.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
astrophysicists who don't know the constellations
Name one reason why an astrophysicist needs to know the constllations to be good at his or her job. Make it a good reason, because I studied astrophysics.
Newspapers hype everything and do their best take things out of context.
A few headlines that would show that this is not the case:
Admittedly there are some things that are big stories, but because every paper every day has to have a headline they look to be less than they actually are.
When a journalism major at my school (large, public university) looks to complete his or her natural science general education requirements, do you suppose that he or she has to take a science class "for majors"? When any non-science majors take science classes, do you suppose they have to take the classes that are "for majors"? No and no. On the other hand, when I as a biology major take, say, a psychology course or an english course, I wind up with a bunch of psychology and english majors in my classes. Instead of taking real science classes, nonmajors take "How things work" or "Technology and Society". I help TA a biology-for-nonmajors class, and the class is basically high school biology. Osmosis? Diffusion? The metric system? These are things they should have learned twice in high school! Instead, we're wasting their time on it in college, when we could be teaching them how to set up an experiment, what the use of controls are and how to tell good data from bad data. And don't think that the so-called "lab courses" required do anything to help. They're basically used to demonstrate a specific principle rather than help develop a scientific sense in students. On any given lab course, a correct hypothesis can easily be made if the student had done the readings. Of course, not all labs even require hypotheses. When you don't require journalists to know anything about science, why is it a surprise that most journalists don't know anything about science? Bad science in jounalism is just a symptom of poor science education throughout the United States.
A mainstream news magazine which can, in fact, get science generally correct.
As well as most of their other reporting. They have a clear editorial bias, but it is at least open, and mostly rational unlike the Wall Street Journal (editorials).
Yes, I am a professional scientist myself, and I have fairly high standards on this. The Economist does well, sometimes the NYTimes science reporter, and few others.
He begins by claiming - and at this point no one familiar with it will argue - that science journalism is in a sorry state. He provides ample evidence of this, should anyone be inclined to disagree, and it is persuasive, as far as that goes.
The article then descends into a completely unsupported, purely imaginary tirade against the humanities, romanticism, "cultural relatvism"(by which he means what exactly?) and the hatred of science.
He ascribes to each and every philosopher, the entire community of writers, artists and historians, and of course journalists, a heart full of secret malice arising from the repressed awareness that they have made a fundamental mistake in turning their back on reason and objectivity, which they reject absolutely.
Does he have any evidence to back this, shall I put it lightly, extreme claim? He seems to believe it follows logically from the existence of bad science journalism, and maybe some anecdotal experiences he may have had (but doesn't much discuss) with jouranlists (N=1?)
While we're making up sinister motivations, he couldn't get anyone in the humanities to sleep with him in college, so they all must hate science. Especially this particular "science communicator" woman, who, despite the fact that he is good-looking, has turned him down. I offer this up purely to demonstrate how ridiculous his assertions are.
The article contributes in some small way to the (already overwhelming) body of evidence for the low quality of science journalism, and promotes a reasonable, but not particularly enlightening, classification scheme for bad science stories.
But does he go through the articles he has collected as "specimens" in any systematic way? Does he actually check the educational background of the authors? Try to find real causal relationships?
No, just like the bad science journalism he lambasts, he presents THE REASON that bad science journalism exists and expects us to believe it's true.
At the very end there is a tantalizing mention of the process by which university press releases are converted into news articles, along with some unsubstantiated claims (which I do not think are true, but I'd like to see some hard numbers) about the qualifications of the individuals involved at various stages of the process. If he'd thoroughly investigated that, reported what he'd found, and then given some kind discussion of that finding, maybe this would be an article worth reading.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
As TFA pointed out:
;P")
1. It's not about articles written by actual scientists, and not about articles published in real scientific journals. It's the mainstream media that makes a mockery of science.
2. There is a group that seems to be on a crusade to present science as just hocus-pocus babble, as some new religion where self-serving high-priests spout obfuscated nonsense, and where if you asked 10 different scientists about any topic you'd get 11 different conflicting theories.
The article blames it on humanities students, but personally I think that's pointing the finger at the wrong group. In my personal limited observation -- but bear in mind that it's no scientific sample or anything, and generally it's just "IMHO" -- it's just a case of the dumb and uneducated feeling a _need_ to drag everyone back to their level, and articles that catter to that dumb and uneducated majority.
The article itself skirts with that answer when it says that those articles treat you like you're dumb and couldn't possibly understand any real scientific terminology or statistics. Well, bingo. Because they're written for people who don't, and who _want_ some positive reinforcement that the muck of mediocrity (and sub-mediocrity) is cool- That any kind of academic achievement, humanities included, is (A) just some nonsense techno-bable, (B) irrelevant in the real world, (C) a scam, and usually (D) all the above.
And a lot of publications are basically just prom-queens. They'll print what sells. That means what their intended audience wants to hear. If that audience wants to hear that the nerds they mocked in school still didn't really achieve anything, and nowadays are a bunch of quacks and witch-doctors bickering over whose techno-babble religion is better, they'll publish just that.
(Before I go any further, let me mention though that by "education", I don't only mean strictly school. I also mean, in fact even _especially_ mean studying on your own, above and beyond just sitting and daydreaming in class. So if you've made the effort to learn something and improve yourself, even without an university degree, you're _not_ the category I'm talking about.)
And outside magazines, it gets even worse. Every single example is taken out of context and polished into shining proof that education is irrelevant, and sitting on your ass in front of the TV is just as good. Examples you occasionally see even on slashdot include:
- Start with the fact IQ test results are irrelevant for a lot of jobs, and indeed many would even question if they measure "intelligence", or that something as complex as the many aspects of human intelligence can be squeezed into a single number. But then extrapolate it to mean that _intelligence_ as such as irrelevant to any real jobs, or indeed a _handicap_ in the real world.
(In the words of a Slashdot poster in a recent post, the less intelligent have more other (presumably better) advantages, like empathising better with each other, since they're the majority. And, I quote, "So the next time, someone praised you for being intelligent and well-off....just bear these in mind.....seriously, it may not be a good thing in my not-so-honorable opinion
- Take some speech of someone rich and successful, e.g., Steve Jobs, and cut out of context the part where he mentioned he quit college. But conveniently ommit that he also says that he went to study on his own the things that interested him. So we're talking someone who still worked hard at improving himself, _not_ an example of a couch-potato that made it bigger.
Or even going as far as making up a fake speech of such a successful person where he calls college students losers again and again. (See the fake Larry Ellison speech being occasionally waved around.)
- That some prominent scientific figure, e.g., Einstein seems to be the favourite poster child, didn't do that well in school either, so it's ok for us to sleep in maths and physics classes too. But conveniently mi
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
One reason (I'll let you decide if it's a good one) is that it can be used as a bridging point to talk to non-astrophysicists about what you do.
You can say you're studing gamma emissions at some location described by a bunch of numbers and letter (I have no idea how it's described, actually), or instead you say, "near the handle of the Big Dipper".
Sure, for the person you're talking to, they don't have any more real/useful information. But you've helped connect what you know to something they know, and from a PR point of view, that's more useful than you might imagine.
Part of the problem described in the article is that lay-people and scientist are separated by media that do a poor job of communicating between the two.
So, for that reason, I would say it's not a bad thing for an astrophysicist to know the constellations. Because while it has no real relevance to their work, it serves as a common context that serves as a bridge between them and everyone else.
I think your problem is at least as much with the editors as with the journalists. I realise what you're saying, but journalists aren't all like that. I have a good friend who's an amateur astronomer, and she's also a freelance science writer. She has things published in daily newspapers and/or weekly magazines about every week or two. She gets paid a commission, but definitely doen't make enough to cover the time she spends on it. Her primary motivation for doing it is to simply try and get some science writing in the media at all.
The irony is that even though she knows exactly what she's talking about when writing something, and she puts a huge amount of effort into being careful and accurate about what she writes, she still has to fight with editors. Probably most of the articles she writes end up getting lazily re-written in some way, even if it's just re-typed for some reason with half the words messed up. (eg. In an article last week, they changed "mass spectrometer" to "massive spectrometer", which is completely different!) It's not uncommon for chunks of writing to be cut without proper consultation, and with no respect for the context, or how they might be changing the message of the article. On a couple of occasions, they've held back time-critical articles and published them weeks after they were actually relevant, as if they didn't even bother to check the content properly.
It's not just the editors in this case, either. It's the whole system that involves deadlines and priorities that the people in the business give themselves. Editors of regular media publications just don't get to be editors by knowing about or having much respect for science. In the cases I've mentioned above, they've made a broad descision to step up and help to publicise science, but in reality they don't really care too much about the specifics of what they're doing -- it's for show as much as anything.
Some journalists "exist to be published", but I think the main ones in that frame are the staff journalists who are being paid a salary. Those people are only a subset of all the writing that you're likely to see in many publications. The problems are likely to come especially at times when they're being asked to write about things they don't find particularly interesting... and there simply aren't many staff journalists out there who find scientific topics anywhere near as interesting as things like politics, crime or business, for instance.
Imagine the fuss if I tried to stick the word "biophoton" on a science page without explaining what it meant. I can tell you, it would never get past the subs or the section editor. But use it on a complementary medicine page, incorrectly, and it sails through.
This touches on one of my pet hates. Cosmetics ads pretending to be science. Stating that their product contains more liposomes, nanosomes, phytosomes, AHA, PHP, SQL and micro fruit complexes than any other - and all of them make your skin 32% smoother (subnote: 32% of people when using it 'felt' their skin was smoother).
Just one little, probably unimportant, thing. I feel that once that stops and the copy writers are tazered a few times for each transgression, then maybe real science will get listened to.
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.
"Evolution is something the church gave up on decades ago, and the rest of the world knows is fact- but the American press feels "Intelligent Design" deserves presentation on equal grounds and parrots the President when he says it deserves "consideration"."
Well, actually here's a link to a poll that contradicts the "the rest of the world knows is fact" assertion:
Natural selection fighting to survive in the US
It's scary, really. Basically only 26% of those polled actually believed Darwin. (Ranging from 27% among the whites to as low as 14% among the blacks.)
To make ignorance even scarier, even in this group, 15% of them said that life existed from day 0 and never changed, and 10% said evolution was guided by some supreme being. Makes me wonder if they even have a clue wtf they're talking about, if they think "evolution" means life staying unchanged.
So, anyway, now let's subtract those 25% (10% + 15%, since both are really are creationists or ID fans in disguise) from that 26% group, and you're left with 26 * 0.75 = 19.5% who actually do believe in the real evolution theory. That's it. Less than 1 person in 5.
So with all due respect, I'd challenge that assertion that "everyone else knows evolution is a fact". It may be so for you and me and our equally nerdy, educated friends, but if we're talking the bulk of the population, less than 1 in 5 are anywhere _near_ sharing that point of view.
Also 64% supported teaching Intelligent Design in schools.
So basically when the press is giving ID equal opportunity, rest assured that it's not just for Dubya's sake. It's really cattering to those 80.5% who actually do believe in creationism or ID, or those 64% who are obviously ignorant enough to not be able to tell the difference between science and pseudo-science babble.
Seriously, whenever I start thinking that maybe we nerds are just elitist with our snotty attitude about the ignorant, uneducated masses... such a study comes along and proves it in hard numbers and percentages that we _are_ right, after all. The majority really _is_ that dumb and uneducated.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...the same sort of article could be written about "bad politics" and "bad economy" and all those other dumbed-down "you, mere mortal, could never understand (But we have a knowing air)" stories we read every day. But yes, I do agree that most everything in its most analytic form could be considered as science.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
I don't dispute that the general media's science reporting is abysmal. The whole "authority figure" aspect alone, that most Americans don't think to question the "authority" of one scientist unless it's at the behest of another scientist, is deeply problematic, as is the endless tendency to say things like "a study PROVED that X is caused by Y," asserting that every hypothesis in every study should be considered true until "proven" otherwise.
However, to be fair to science journalists, they're not as uniformly bad as is suggested. The good ones aren't usually "journalism majors" in college. They're either individuals who have actual experience in science and no formal training in journalism, who decide to go into the science reporting field, or they're enrolled in an actual, specific "Science Journalism" or "Scientific Writing" major, offered at most colleges with good journalism departments. A number of these programs have one particular corequisite to the major that throws a monkey wrench in the criticism of this author's editorial: These programs often require a dual major or at least a minor in one of the school's SCIENCE degrees!
Yes, in order to complete the Science Journalism major, you'd have to also takes lots of courses in biology, or chemistry, or mechanical engineering, or *something* so that you'd have a chance in hell at living up to your name of "Science Communicator." The idea that in order to be a good communicator of science you have to actually have some experience in science, does not fall on deaf ears.
Of course, if your major is in science journalism, your ideal job is with New Scientist, or any of the other science magazines, journals, or publications, because you'll actually get to do serious work there. The lowest option on the totem pole is to work for some big mainstream newspaper where your science-ignorant editor, or your editor's science-ignorant editor, is going to butcher every piece you write, leaving you to waste all your energy fighting to maintain your credibility instead of doing more important things like covering science news.
So do we need more good science reporters to replace the bad ones? Yes. We also need like-minded editors, and mainstream newspapers and TV news broadcasts with an actual interest in giving us good science reports. But let's not pretend this is a hopeless and universal problem. There's a lot of good science reporting going on, just not enough to trickle down to the lowest common denominator -- the mainstream media.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
ID is a hypothesis.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
Think about it. Scientists spend decades figuring out how the universe works, Engineers (and Doctors, and other folks at the application end of things) spend decades figuring out how to apply those rules to create things that do something we could not do before. Lifetimes of research to create... a cell phone a complete moron can use. A pill derived from examining thousands of fly generations with genes knocked out to figure out which ones are crucial in the evolution of a disease... so a moron can live to teach others about Intellegent Design and how Darwin was a godless heathen. Hell, farmers must be pretty irritated at how they are looked at as hayseeds when they produce more food per acre than at any point in history - and I don't know a whole lot about how they do it (and I don't think too many other /.ers do, either - but feel free to enlighten me)
So the problem may boil down to the fact that our science and technology is so advanced that you don't have to have the slightest clue how or why it operates in order to use it. Thus, you can pretty safely ignore why or how it works, and substitue your own suspicions about how the world really works - i.e. human drama stories for many journalists, despite the fact they routinely USE such technological marvels such as cell phones, laptop computers, digital cameras, helicopters, etc. Such tactics would not work well in a endeavor more closely tied to reality, like launching a space shuttle or flying an aircraft. But a journalist only has to keep an editor happy and circulation up.
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.
Most people don't know the names of constellations. You might as well say "that bunch of stars up there".
"Big Dipper" or "The Plough"? WTF? WTH is a "Big Dipper" when it's at home? Most people don't know what a plough looks like - let alone the pre-industrial revolution implement that purports to be Ursa Major. I only know because I studied navigation.
The names of the constellations are useful for Astronomers. That's it.
I agree that there should be a better interface between scientists and lay-people. Introducing archaic descriptions won't help.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
"The names of the constellations are useful for Astronomers. That's it."
I've heard Astrologers can turn them into gold.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Nope, you just use a fallacy without even understanding what it means. To quote from the text on Wikipedia you linked to:
"this is a fallacy if the predicate ("putting sugar on porridge") is not actually contradictory for the accepted definition of the subject ("Scotsman"), or if the definition of the subject is silently adjusted after the fact to make the rebuttal work.
Some elements or actions are exclusively contradictory to the subject, and therefore aren't fallacies. The statement "No true vegetarian would eat a beef steak" is not fallacious because it follows from the accepted definition of "vegetarian""
Same here, lemming. "Science" and "scientist" actually do mean observing a certain mindset and methodology. Science has no absolute truth, and it has nothing that is above being a "theory". Nothing ever in science is beyond being questioned and improved, no matter how old and established it may be.
E.g., even Newton's mechanics aren't absolute, but just approximations that are good enough in a given range. If you move outside that range where the error is small enough, you need something else. E.g., relativist mechanics for high speed, and quantum mechanics for extremely low mass and/or distances.
So yes, science _is_ just as mutually-exclusive to absolute truths, as being a vegetarian is to eatin meat. So, no, that fallacy doesn't apply here.
The only thing I'd challenge is just his use of "GOOD scientists". There is no such thing as "GOOD scientists" and "BAD scientists". You're either a scientist or you aren't. The ones who have absolute unchalengeable truths and 100% certainties aren't "BAD scientists", they're just not scientists at all. They love dressing their dogma in pseudo-science babble and masquerading as "scientists" too, but they just aren't.
"It doesn't matter how overwhelmingly anybody manages to demonstrate that science, as a profession and social institution, has some significant shortcomings (many of which we could improve); you will insist on judging it in terms of your fantasy of what a "good scientist" should be, and not in terms of what scientists are in real life."
I haven't seen any overwhelming demonstration so far, other than some bullshit rants from people that don't even understand what science is. I see a bunch of quacks and charlatans trying to redefine science to mean some bullshit fantasy that they're comfortable fighting against.
And I've yet to see any scientists actually rejecting a logical way to improve. The ones I see rejected are bullshit "improvements" aimed at destroying and perverting it into yet another obedient servant to someone's pet dogma or into marketting for someone's snake-oil.
Invariably it's based on such bullshit, massive ignorance, and fallacies as:
- "It's just a theory!" Classic example of a Verbal Fallacy: it plays on the two different meanings of the word "theory".
- "But science doesn't have the definitive answers to everything!" Yes, of course, by the very definition of science. But that doesn't mean that any bullshit based on _no_ verifiable evidence or logic is automatically equal.
- "But science doesn't describe the real universe, it describes an idealized one." No, actually it does study and describe the real one. What all those idealizations are about is just knowing your intended margin of error, and what influences are too small to get you outside that or even not an influence at all. (E.g., if you're calculating how many hours a train needs between Washington DC and LA at 200 mph, you can safely ignore the train's colour.) But then we'll do an actual experiment and see if that idealization describes reality well enough. If not, it's time to start ignoring less factors or come up with a different theory.
- "But science is just another religion! It's all about believing all those theories and laws instead!" Nope, it's all about reproductible, verifiable evidence to those. Noone asks you to unconditionably believe that the theory of gravit
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Not bad if you are a layman, but often filled with too much sensation reporting.
And I am speaking as a scientist of course
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
"reporters usually avoided math and science"
Yes, but it seems to me that sometimes the scientists themselves give misleading information to journalists, possibly to make their work seem more important. Here's an example: Effort to Create Virtual Brain Begins. Here's another far worse example, in my opinion: Can Cell Phones Damage Our Eyes?. Here's my opinion about Dr. Henry Lai of the University of Washington: Distinguish between real science and junk science.
Also, it seems to me that editors take advantage of readers by encouraging mis-interpretation so that they can get more readers. Here's an example of a story that didn't deserve attention: Report Claims Men More Intelligent Than Women.
"He was comparing Christianity of the past with todays Christianity. Which in case you haven't noticed is different to the past of burnings and inquisitions."
That only means that the scope has reduced, but the ideology is still there.
"Which is evident enough in your post where you link to two of the same news articles and the rest are fringe lunatics. "
Fringe lunatics? FRINGE LUNATICS???!?
Sure, and the Taleban are just a bunch of rowdy college kids!
Give me a break.
"Are those news articles representative of the entire Christian community in today's U.S?"
Yes, because Christian doctrine itself is inherently intolerant.
So is Islamic doctrine, in caseanybody accuses me of defaming christians in favor of those nutjobs.
l'Homme n'est Rien l'Oeuvre Tout: Gustave Flaubert to George Sand
That's a very insightful point, but I don't think the USA has a monopoly on stupidity or anything. It's just that this time we have data from the USA.
You may notice for example that TFA is from "www.guardian.co.uk". There's a reason for that last part of the domain name. And if you browse through their past list of articles in the "Bad Science" category, you'll notice that most of the bad science examples they pick on are from UK tabloids, not USA ones.
And I can tell you first hand that here, that meaning in Germany, there are plenty of dumb and uneducated people too.
And you know how previously I've mentioned having some first-hand experience with the Eastern Block, before the fall of the Iron Curtain? Much as I've commended their education system as IMHO superior to the feel-good education of the western world, the flip side is that they too had their own dumb people. People who argued that the downfall of their communist system was wasting money on having engineers and economists, instead of having everyone get a hammer or a sickle and do some real work already.
So, yes, there will be a lot of variation in what the percentages are among countries, and whether the anti-science gang will be good ol' bible-thumping christians or rally around some other bogus stuff. Yes, maybe the dumb uneducated people in other countries don't rally around ID like in the USA, but they _will_ rally around some other comfortable pseudo-science and/or excuse to mock and ridicule the real science.
Of course, this is all just IMHO. I don't have hard numbers or percentages to base it on.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There's one thing that has me kind of worried. Thanks to my education, I'm good at noticing factual errors in IT reporting, and somewhat decent when it comes to logic errors in general science reporting. The problem is, I don't need the major papers for news in these areas, I have specialized sources, but for the fields in which I don't have expertise, I need to rely on them - I do not have the time to read specialized journals for every possible field.
How in the world can I trust publications to accurately digest news for me in areas where I'm no expert if they obviously do such a bad job in the areas I can detect mistakes?
One beef I have with your (relatively well thought out) post:
Upwords of 90% of the USA claims to be Christian. Many of our national holidays are Christian-based. Christians control all three branches of our federal government, and most state and local governments. Christian symbolism, including churches, crosses, billboards with Christian messages, etc., appear almost everywhere in the country virtually unopposed.
I don't think it's fair to complain about Christians being the butt of a few jokes. I wish my particular religious group was this persecuted.
That's not a scientific proof, that's a random leap into the unknown. Furthermore, there are other proposed solutions that don't involve a diety (but they're not really scientific either as they can't be tested). So the fact of a start doesn't guarantee your fiction is correct.
On Sunday, the Observer, the Sunday version of the Gaurdian, had an article which claimed that Einstein won his Nobel prize, not for relativity (true) but for explaining how light is converted to electricity in plants (false)
That's why it's allowed to be good. These days, no astronomical discovery short of actual interviews with aliens can have any effect on anyone's business or politics.
Biology, chemistry and medicine all affect both huge industries and people's perception of their health and risks to it, and therefore lots of noise is made about those issues which can be reported as science.
Putting aside the time I spent on farms, I learned what a plow looked like in history class and social studies and science class. (This was in suburbia, mind you.) It's a piece of technology that has had profound impact on how we interact with the Earth and each other. Misuse of new plow technology played a large role in creating the Depression-era dust bowl (thus science), which forced a rather important diaspora (history). This is only one small example, though one that Americans are likely to be familiar with.
Lea
obviously feel a lot better after having got that off your chest.
Just to pin my colours to the mast, I'm a nice, white, atheist, middle-class chap from the UK.
The media likes good stories - as that's what people pay them to provide. The media will enforce the stereotypes of their readers - people prefer to pay for views that agree with their own. You reap what you sow (well more precisely you get similar stories to the ones you paid for the last few days)
If a story of a black girl vanishing doesn't get as much coverage of the disappearance of a white girl - then you can be pretty sure that's because the readership don't care as much. Publishers do actually research the correlation between what's in their paper and how many copies they sell. It's not nice, but many things in life aren't - nobody said living was going to be a barrel of laughs.
Right, where was I - oh yes, I've labelled you racist. Well not you personally, just the median media-consumer of your country - I'm sure you're a much nicer bloke.
Maybe it's not strictly racism, it's more just people caring more about stuff they can identify with. If you're a normal white family somewhere in the mid-west, you're unlikely to have your black daughter abducted in Florida - maybe you went to Aruba for your holidays and can see the light of your life playing in the back garden as you read.
What next, erm OK, Christianity. Well on that one, I'm gunning for you along with the media (read on before you get pissy). I personally don't believe it, it doesn't make sense to me. When other people state they're Christians it puts me on edge a little, how did they get fooled when I can see through it? Are they stupid? 99% of Christians you meet are lovely people though, we all have strange ideas, and if there's cause them to help the needy and forgive their neighbour - then in my humanist view of the world they're good people.
What freaks me slightly are the Christians you hear about: Prayer breakfasts in the White House on the eve of war, floods a condemnation on gays, Aids programs denied to any non pro-abstinence organisations, Intelligent Design being taught etc etc.
Christianity has crap PR, the nutters shout and get heard and all the rest of you don't speak out. I'm sure if a few million (you're not short on numbers)of you marched on Washington pointing out that a few billion condoms in Africa might do more good than harm - then maybe you'd get some coverage.
I think the point I was trying to make is that the media is merely a mirror. It prints what people believe and what they buy - sadly it doesn't tell people what to think (well unless it's Murdoch, but he's the exception that proves...oh I'd better stop now).
There are two aspects to journalism - news reporting and analysis. News reporting is supposed to be just that - tell me what happened. Analysis should be separate and present the journalists view of why it happened, what it means, and what's the impact. News reporting should be neutral, analysis is by nature subjective. But for the sake of the consumer - analysis should be identified as such.
Modern journalism doesn't separate the two. Too many journalists let their personal agendas suffuse their articles. Often the agenda finds it's way into the headline. Journalists are told (by their journalism profs) that their mission is to "change the world". That's dead wrong - their mission is to report the news! Then add-in the pressure to be profitable and the corollary of having a large audience. And nothing builds an audience like fear. So instead of reporting "New Near-Earth Asteroid Discovered", you get "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!".
[Insert pithy quote here]
The Discovery channel showing reruns of people building motorcycles?!? or catching crabs? Bah! You're crazy!
Honestly I used to love watching Discovery and actually *gasp* discovering shit! Now it is about as informitive as a monkey on a trycicle with two cymbals.
America is fat, stupid, and lazy. Everything is watered down to such idiot levels that no one knows a damn thing anymore, and they are proud of it!
My fiance is an elementary school teacher, they don't even teach science or history anymore. They simply groom the kids for the test at the end of the year (Math and Reading) so that the do well and the school continues to get funding. What bullshit!
Kids today are morons. I truly would love to see a massive cleansing take place in America. Between Cell-phones, lack of education, and fast-food... I would love to see a lot of them disappear. I have no faith in where this country will be in just 10 years let alone 20 or so when they begin to run it. And it isn't about politics either, I don't care who's side you're on they are splitting this country and ruining it from all sides.
I may have a bleak outlook, but it's my opinion and I don't think it's illegal to have one of those... yet.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Most Anmerican people live in cities. Most American people don't pay attention in History class, and most don't have any idea what most of those things on the farm are for. Granted, I do, but I grew up on a farm. Most of the people who live in the cities with 75K+ people and who I've spoken to about farm implements of some type, those people generally don't have any idea what a plow is for (or a plough, if you wanna use eaxtrae lettears and have me read it to myself as "plawf"). I went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago recently, and most of the people around the farm exhibit had no idea what the Combine was. I've actualy spoken to people who have no idea what a cow or a pig is, or where meat comes from.
:p
So yeah, referring to "the plow in the sky" (never mind that it's probably a moldboard v/s a chisel plow) probably is gonna confuse as many Americans as it helps.
The Guardian is one of the biggest perpetraters of bad science for a major newspaper.
And it is not only science. I have seen outright errors in Guardian articles that even the most basic first-level fact-checking (i.e. a Google search) should have found.
Carl Sagan wrote a great book about this phenomenon, called The Demon Haunted World. It systematically debunks many of the popular "scientific" myths widely believed by the public and perpetuated by the media (ghosts, UFO abductions, psychics, etc). It talks in depth about how real science gets filtered out by the media, in favor of junk science. I can't recommend this book enough!
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
Jon Stewart totally skewered the "Oh, we Christians are so persecuted myth" when mock-opined, "and maybe someday we'll have a Christian president. Or 43 of them consecutively."
Maybe if Christians aren't smart enough to realize that they are the government and they are the media, they deserve some persecution.
The second question was the location of Mount Olympus. I thought it was a little wierd that they did not use the proper latin Olympus Mons but it couldn't be anywhere but mars. Again thinking I had just won the game for the males of the family yelled "Tharsis Planitia! Yeah baby!" To which my non-martian-topography-knowing-mom said "No it's Greece even I know that.
I guess knowing too much can be bad too.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
The media does a poor job of reporting on any subject requiring specialist knowledge. A few years ago at the height of the Corporate governance scandals, accountants were rolling their eyes at the sheer incompetence of the coverage. I have seen dozens of stories about spikes in gas prices related to Katrina but none of them explain that gas stations set prices based on the replacement cost of gas already in their tanks.
The basic problem is that reporters are just like the rest of us in that we all have an limited area of specialization within which we are experts but outside of that area we revert to morons. Journalist differ in that they try to convinces themselves that they understand any subject well enough to explain it to anyone else.
New Scientist articles are continually overhyping 'the next great breakthrough' by some unknown physicist at some unknown university in some as yet unpublished paper. It is well known to anybody above phd level that these are the physics equivalent of vapourware, and yet it seems New Scientist are either unaware or don't care about this. On the plus side, these articles are usually fairly easy to weed out, even if you don't have any specialist knowledge in the subject. For example, if the strapline is something like "Could Einstein Be Wrong?" with some random computer generated picture of nothing in particular then you have a very good candidate.
Just like 'good science' is often built on assumptions. And as Godel 'proved' with his Incompleteness Theorem, we all make assumptions that we build our science/math/logic on--whether it be hysterical media warning us of the dangers of MMR jabs or cynical drug companies/worried govt. agencies convincing us all of the greater disaster that awaits us if we don't all rush along and stick live viruses into little children(albeit small amounts). The main assumption made in BOTH sides of that particular war of (pseudo?) scientific research was that only a single cause was responsible for autism. The pro 'MMR gives you autism' lobby believed(and possibly still do) that MMR was solely responsible whilst the pro 'MMR does not give you autism' did not even consider the issue of whether it could be just a contributing fact OF MANY. Both 'sides' made this logical mistake in their fight to be right and in my view, missed out on the complexity of the issues. What if certain children are just built to develop autism from jabs and others have the kind of physiology that prevents this? Control experiments aren't always the answer. I always thought that science was about considering possibilities and then filtering them down. Unfortunately, we still equate science and truth with this woefully inadequate binary view of the universe when it is patently more than this.
I'm obviously not a great "communicator", I only meant I trust Nature & Science more because of their "journal" status. I agree New Scientist is more suited to a general audience and is also widely available on the newstands as is Scientific American. Both are good mags.
:)
Why bad science reporting pisses me off:
I am a recovered victim of bad science reporting. Until the age of 30 I did not have any science education to speak except good marks for science at high school. In my late teens I belived all sorts of crap (especially phycic stuff). In my early twenties I read many books and magazines (from the science section in the newsagent!), I had been convinced that Uri Geller was genuine since I was 16! I picked up a second-hand book by The Great Randi and found out I had been reading science fiction as science fact.
After that I became more selective and started reading Scientific American and found a copy in the Library that contained J. Conway's "Game of Life". Like a true nerd I spent hours hand drawing grids to see what would happen. I got frustrated with the tedious drawings and taught myself programming on a secondhand Apple IIE. About 8yrs later I ended up with a Computer Science degree and a healthy pay-pack.
The first thing that people need to learn about science is the scientific method, ie:what is science. Unfortunately my high-school science class was absorbed in the experiments and results that flowed from the method, I can't remember it ever being mentioned. We were told to write our "reports" as Hypothesis, Method, Results, Conclusion. We did, but we didn't know why, most of the time we knew what we were suposed to "prove" and simply worked backwards. In hindsight the teachers either just assumed everybody knew about it or had no idea themselves. A magician taught me more about science in one thin book than the public school system had in ten years. I still get sucked in by bad science but at least it doesn't happen every day now.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.