Slashdot Mirror
This Is a News Website Article About a Scientific Paper
jamie passes along a humorous article at The Guardian which pokes fun at the shallow and formulaic science journalism typical of many mainstream news outlets. Quoting:
In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of 'scare quotes' to ensure that it's clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever. ... If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims. This paragraph elaborates on the claim, adding weasel-words like 'the scientists say' to shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist. ... 'Basically, this is a brief soundbite,' the scientist will say, from a department and university that I will give brief credit to. 'The existing science is a bit dodgy, whereas my conclusion seems bang on,' she or he will continue."
The first of many identical to this one that will follow in these Slashdot comments.
First of all, who edited this article? This is where I viciously attack the Slashdot editor for punctuation, spelling, grammar, etc. Once we clear your elementary faux pas, we can move on.
I recall some of the very basics of this in college but I just skimmed the Wikipedia article on this research and now I'm an expert ready to rip this paper to shreds.
I'm also handy with Google and just found out that their quoted researcher is viewed as a charlatan by another camp of peers in his field. Character assassination and ad hominem attacks follow.
If there was a survey, I question the sample size, method of the survey and diversity. If this is correlation and not causation, I state the obvious and take potshots at my country's shitty educational system. If this is a classification I question the recall rate. If there's any political or monetary incentive for this research to be published then I state it and have immediately won the argument. At that point I can decide who lives and who dies. My comments have leveled whole cities!
The small part of this research that I cannot disprove was already known to me. My Google Fu provides you another link to an article here where this was preliminarily discussed in 2004. And I assure you I was already on top of that this whole time. At this point, I resubtitle Slashdot in a derogatory manner for having stale news. I might even threaten to move on to a superior news aggregator but in reality will spend the rest of my life on Slashdot.
I interpreted my standoffish attitude and tone as asserting my superiority when in actuality I'm a psychologist's wet dream. Done with my post I consider the final word spoken save for one thing. I spin a wheel on my desk and it lands on an internet meme somewhere between "In Soviet Russia" and "All Your Base." I modify a noun or verb to make it potentially funny and insert it at the end.
Since I'm the expert, I might come back and read your responses -- if you're lucky. But the odds are high that I said something incredibly stupid or shortsighted (what with me being outside of my fucking element and all) so I'll probably just ignore you.
My work here is dung.
I think your research is bogus. You didn't back it up with a single goatse or tubgirl link.
Trolling is a art,
I modify a noun or verb to make it almost certainly not funny and insert it at the end.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Not only that, but as a seasoned slashdotter he should know better than to bother with all this google and wikipedia junk and just go based off of the story summary, if not the title alone.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
No, it's not a humorous article, given that it's exactly how mainstream science reporting looks like.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
There are plenty of reasons to mock news coverage of scientific papers; but how exactly do you have a complaint when a journalist clearly states that someone else (not the journalist) is making an assertion when that is, in fact, true?
Yeah, let's mock them for that until they start omitting the "according to so-and-so" qualifications, and then we can mock them for pretending to be in a position to make definitive claims about topics they don't understand.
Give me a break.
No, wait, it was actually http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174
-=Maggie Leber=-
I firmly believe that such a scathing indictment of the current state of scientific journalism deserves, no, nay, DEMANDS front-page presence!
You know, I'm not even sure if I'm joking. It's always nice to point out mainstream journalism's failings, but it's really only useful if it has a message attached. Some suggestion on how to fix the system, other wise it's simply mockery. The closest this comes to being satire is pointing out that journalists fail to take any sort of real stand in or credit for their pieces any more, and framing it as a bad thing. It'd be nice if it had some sort of analysis of where the problem lies. Is it that journalists just can't be bothered to put in some actual research on stories any more, so they just take what they're told and throw it in a standard framing device? Is it an editorial failing due to demanding stories that assist in SEO and are constrained by word count? Is it an audience failing in that people simply aren't interested in a deeper analysis, or lack the baseline knowledge required to fully grasp a story that was more indepth? Blame multiple sources? How can this be fixed? Piece doesn't say, so it's pretty much just mocking the status quo.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Begins with unwarranted boast as to the timeliness of submitting comment before prior posters, claiming victory for failing to achieve first place. Follows a more or less to-the-point observation aided by unrelated metaphore substanciated with a red herring logical fallacy. Additional straw man fallacy regarding possible critical replies. Conclusion with attempted witty signature line cleverly "borrowed" from another more obscure forum user's better post.
If there's any political or monetary incentive for this research to be published then I state it and have immediately won the argument.
Immediate attack on the parent poster's political affiliation... obviously the party that he belongs to (judging by this one issue, even though I don't know where he stands on others) is absolutely full of complete psychos and want to do all kinds of other bad things that will destroy civilization as we know it. And they completely fulfill the most extreme version of every stereotype about them.
So of course, my party is full of level-headed reasonable people--every single one of them. Everything that we say is perfect and correct, we're as innocent as a newborn baby's ass, and if only our candidate had been elected last time we lost, the world would be full of unicorns that fart rainbows and save children from horrible deaths.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
This is where I complain about how the previous comment was moderated, and hijack the thread for an off-topic discussion of /.'s moderation system while making broad assertions about the obvious biases of all readers of this site.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
This reminds me of how news networks, after bombarding the public with stories about unimportant or sensationalized garbage, will air a navel-gazing piece where they raise the question whether or not they went to far. Not that it keeps them from doing the same thing over and over again.
How did you first post such a long comment? Did you see this in the hose, pre-write your comment and wait? Anyhow, best comment ever, thanks for the laugh.
INSULT
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
I'm down with that, stupid mods (AC for a reason). I mean, insightful? How many contributors to /. are insightful?
Go back downstairs and get off my lawn!
This is where I type "DOUBLE RAINBOWS!" in a vain attempt to jump on a bandwagon I barely understand and am slightly fearful of
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
This is where I back your assumptions with the oblig. xkcd.
and so am I, it's a funny article and an easy target. But when the science being reported on turns out to be dodgy (sugar causes diabetes, salt causes high blood pressure, high fructose corn syrup causes etc), the write-by-numbers approach with its rote opposing opinions and seemingly spineless journalistic waffling can remind readers not to get too caught up in the latest theory du jour.
Sure, I love the exuberant decisiveness and manic clarity of the Weekly World News (who doesn't?) but all in all I think major us newspapers do a pretty good job in presenting this admittedly complicated and theoretical stuff, particularly when read with a bit of skepticism.
- js.
You see that asterisk next to eldavojohn's name?
They forgot to add that treatments/products/services using this fantastic discovery should be commercially available within 5 years.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Here I insert a reference to the parent's 7-digit ID number, with obligatory "get off my lawn" parallelisms.
The article isn't even pointing out journalism's failings. It is mocking the very purpose of journalism; to simplify and misrepresent events so that they form an attention grabbing narrative.
This task is especially difficult for science journalism as the events they have to report on are usually small developments in quite narrow fields. These can be used to present a vague idea of progress but getting much else out the events requires some "creativity". In this situation most journalists fall back on familiar for and against template.
I'm not sure if much can be done to change the situation as journalism doesn't require accuracy. Instead, it thrives on emotion (sensation?) and narrative. Always has, always will.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. I agree that we should do it more, but I don't think we should do it "instead," as you say. I prefer linking to both. The vast majority of people do not want to download a PDF and spend an hour reading through an academic paper when there's a (reasonably well-informed) news article available. But, for those who do, it should be an option.
The other big problem is that many of these scientific papers are paywalled -- and we're not talking about a mickey-mouse Rupert Murdoch paywall. A 1-year subscription to Nature, for example, is $200. Reading only an abstract doesn't tell you much about the quality of the research or potential applications.
As always, if you read something linked from here and think coverage is better elsewhere, you're more than welcome to hit us with an email saying so.
Here I insert a reference to the parent's 6-digit ID number, with obligatory "get off my lawn" parallelisms.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
This meme is starting to sound like an Old Spice parody.
Look at this article. This is the article you could have written if you had known anything about science. Look at the article that you wrote, now back at this article. I'm holding a peer review, signed by several interesting scientists in the field that you know nothing about. Look at the article you wrote, now back at this article, the peer review is full of discussion and criticism, the likes which you could not understand unless you had the briefest notion of how the review process works. The kind of discussion your article could have had if your article was written with any actual knowledge of science. Now look again. I'm on the internet.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
This is where I post as an AC.
I take the obvious route of calling attention to your low user number and bash you for karma whoring.
What the GP meant to say is that "This is the part where I reply to a post without thoroughly reading it first; making myself look like an ass in the process."
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
It's always nice to point out mainstream journalism's failings,
Yes.
but it's really only useful if it has a message attached.
No.
Some suggestion on how to fix the system, other wise it's simply mockery.
Mockery is useful. Bare naked ridicule of the status quo can be useful. Bonus if it's funny, as TFA is.
The problem with adding how to fix the system is that you could be dead wrong. Or shortsided. Or partisan, or dumb. Just clearly pointing out what the problem is is extremely important.
This guy isn't saying he has the answer. I respect that. He's helping shape the debate. I respect that too.
This is where I mock you for posting as an AC and contradict everything in your post, knowing you'll have to manually scroll to find it again and probably won't bother.
This is the comment where I inform you that if I hadn't used all my mod points just a few minutes ago, your post would have gotten one, but don't specify whether that's good or bad for you.
(Not posting AC, just because I don't wanna).
Who is John Cabal?
Slashdot Posting Form v0.4 BETA. Automatically creates typical slashdot post.
/. dupe from last year /dev/null /.'s modding system
[ ] IANAL but ____
[ ] Obligatory XKCD ___
[ ] In soviet russia the _____'s YOU
[ ] There, fixed that for you
[ ] link to
[ ] sudo _____ >
[ ] Queue _____ in 3.. 2..
[ ] Bitch about
[ ] Get off my lawn
[ ] You insensitive clod!
[ ] RTFM
[ ] RTTFA
[x] Reuse my posting form joke
[x] Don't hide "Reuse my posting form joke" checkbox
Invoke:
[ ] Cory Doctrow
[ ] Richard Stallman
[ ] kdawson
[ ] Steve Jobs
[ ] Natalie Portman
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Here's the guy with the 4-digit number saying that the person with the 5-digit number has no business talking about ID numbers.
What is more, by describing the pattern of a formulaic article he is encouraging writers to experiment and not give us hack work. It also encourages readers to criticize such poor quality when they come across it.
Bitter and proud of it.
You read the title ? I just look at the number of comments.
Anything over 800 automatically means a really derogatory Apple or Microsoft story.
Anything under 50 is most probably actual news for nerds and stuff that really matters.
Here I question why the parent post got modded insightful, when it was funny, prompting a lecture about Slashdot's karma system. My post will, ironically, be modded funny, and in doing so, will start a flame-war about the proper use of "ironic".
UTF-8: There and Back Again
This reminds me of: Charlie Brooker Reports the News
NONSENSICAL STATEMENT INVOLVING PLANKTON
(Also, the lameness filter can bite me. C'mon. How many lowercase letters do you need?)
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.