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Why Is So Much Reported Science Wrong (berkeley.edu)
An anonymous reader writes: An article from Berkeley's California Magazine explains some of the reasons science reporting is often at odds with actual science. Quoting: "Where journalism favors neat story arcs, science progresses jerkily, with false starts and misdirections in a long, uneven path to the truth—or at least to scientific consensus. The types of stories that reporters choose to pursue can also be a problem, says Peter Aldhous, [lecturer and reporter]. 'As journalists, we tend to gravitate to the counterintuitive, the surprising, the man-bites-dog story,' he explains. 'In science, that can lead us into highlighting stuff that's less likely to be correct.' If a finding is surprising or anomalous, in other words, there's a good chance that it's wrong.
On the flip side, when good findings do get published, they're often not as earth shattering as a writer might hope. ... So journalists and their editors might spice up a study's findings a bit, stick the caveats at the end, and write an eye-catching, snappy headline—not necessarily with the intent to mislead, but making it that much more likely for readers to misinterpret the results." The article also makes suggestions for both journalists and the scientific community to keep science reporting interesting while being more accurate.
On the flip side, when good findings do get published, they're often not as earth shattering as a writer might hope. ... So journalists and their editors might spice up a study's findings a bit, stick the caveats at the end, and write an eye-catching, snappy headline—not necessarily with the intent to mislead, but making it that much more likely for readers to misinterpret the results." The article also makes suggestions for both journalists and the scientific community to keep science reporting interesting while being more accurate.
...our generation has largely given up on science. We all reap the benefits but I find the level of science education to be abysmal. People can't distinguish between fact and fiction in news reporting and our wonderful government (many of them) don't want to believe *actual data* about things like global warming, etc. - because it's not "convenient" for their economic or religious beliefs. And of course some of those people become the reporters that report on these things, and they are ignorant, too.
It's really quite sad. We got to #1 in this world because of science, but we are turning into a society of cultish freaks who don't wan't to believe anything they don't like, regardless of the actual evidence.
"Scientific consensus" is an oxymoron. If you don't understand why, then you are not following the scientific method.
I use to have a job editing and translating news pieces from a well-known American newspaper into an Asian language for the local readers. Due to my science background, I was frequently assigned the science news. I didn't need to deal with the journalists directly but I worked with the editors.
Those guys were good and intelligent people to work with, but most of them lacked a science background. I had to do rounds of push and pull with the scientific bits. Translating the English word "space" as in relativistic space-time was not the same as translating it in the context of flying to the earth orbit, and I needed to tell them about it. And while I sometimes added my tiny clarifications to the originally unclear message (read: journalist crap), I had to write much longer notes for them.
Also, they were more concerned with the readers' psychological response than scientific rigor. I might have preferred a technically correct way of saying things, but they pointed out that it didn't fit very nicely into the general tone and style of the whole website (not just the article's, but their "overall" style). Very good points, but at first both of us were surprised by each other. We learned to work it out, taking compromises, and I tried to influence them, with limited success.
The moral was that journalists have vastly different priorities compared with a science/tech writer. They may do a good job of notifying the public, but informing, not so much. They paint an image of what it looks and feels like, in a kinda impressionist way, but reading it for education is like studying Monet's lilyponds for botany. The good ones will provide link to sources so the interested reader can dig deeper and judge by himself. The poor ones sell clickbaits.