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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,
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, 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.
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."
INSULT
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
This is where I back your assumptions with the oblig. xkcd.
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.
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