News Of SETI Signal Just Bad Reporting

The Bad Astronomer writes "Rumors have been flying in recent days that the SETI project has received a strong signal from space, indicating the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Bad Astronomy breaks down the origins of this (false) claim, which mostly amounts to a heaping helping of shoddy journalism. 'I just talked to Dan Wertheimer, the astronomer quoted in the article. He told me that the original interview was about sending signals into space (so-called active SETI) as opposed to just listening for aliens. After the interview, he talked to the reporter about some of the astronomy he does, including looking at what are called radio transients: bursts of radio waves that are seen once and never repeat. These may come from one-off events like colliding neutron stars, exploding stars, and so on. Somehow, in the article the reporter mixed up the observation of the transient signals with detecting a signal from E.T.'"

Comments

The original article

[hugecabbage]

Here's the cached article: Has E.T. Made A Call? [Google]

links to cached article

[The Bad Astronomer]

At the bottom of the blog post I put a link to the cached article, and I took a snapshot of it which is on my Flickr account. It's all linked on the blog.

Re:Journalism

[The Bad Astronomer]

I agree. It's very easy now to find, for example, astronomy news on blogs where the author knows what they are talking about (cough cough). Universe Today is a great example, and there are many others. The mainstream media have shot themselves in the foot over the past few years; very few have any dedicated science reporters, but the public *likes* science stories. So folks turn to teh intertoobs, and I for one welcome our new public overlords.

Re:Journalism

[Jherek Carnelian]

Sweet! Can you point me to those? Here are some:

http://www.crypto.com/blog/
http://www.badscience.net/
http://www.schneier.com/blog/

Re:No wonder

[Bombula]

I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill here (imagine a journalist doing that...). This guy said he referred back to his sources for accuracy in data-collection, which is tantamount to accuracy in reporting. Yes, it's great if you can do this all during the interview, but going to press afterwards with reckless disregard for the facts is hardly "letting a source control the story." Moreover, the idea that the journalist 'controls' the story is asinine in itself. In the parent article about SETI, the journalist was obviously 'controlling' the story - thanks to his own moronic misunderstanding of the facts of the situation. I don't know about most readers here, but that's not my idea of quality journalism. Get the facts straight, understand what you're talking about, and fact-check your goddamn articles before you go to press. If that means clarifying a source's information after the interview, whether it's their quotations or the concepts behind them, then so be it: the telephone and wikipedia are your friends.

A good journalist reports the facts accurately and objectively, even if it means going back to get something you missed or muddied during the interview. And the only thing controlling the story should be the truth. If you believe anything else, you're nothing but a hack whose willing to peddle any old dogshit for a moment in the limelight - the world doesn't need any more of those kinds of people.