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Over hyped science reporting

 
 
 
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lostone

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The collision between Andromeda and the Milky Way. Based on what we read from many science writers, we would think that doom is looming any minute now. Is that really mainline thought, among the scientific community, or just sensationalism? My view is that it is just sensationalism that sells in the shot term but damages the credibility of science as a whole in the longer term. After all, this event is 4-5 billion years away, and no one now alive, or even our very remote descendants, will feel any impact from it. At the worst, the back holes from the two galaxies will merge, and with a huge burst of energy, do a lot of damage a few million light years away. Stars very far apart, most will pass on by each other, and the worst threat they pose is causing a few stray comets to impact a few planets. Four or five billions years from now. Gimme a break Jake, but I fail to see how this is a problem that can't be dealt with then, if anyone is alive to want to deal with it.
 
lostone said:
The collision between Andromeda and the Milky Way. Based on what we read from many science writers, we would think that doom is looming any minute now. Is that really mainline thought, among the scientific community, or just sensationalism? My view is that it is just sensationalism that sells in the shot term but damages the credibility of science as a whole in the longer term. After all, this event is 4-5 billion years away, and no one now alive, or even our very remote descendants, will feel any impact from it. At the worst, the back holes from the two galaxies will merge, and with a huge burst of energy, do a lot of damage a few million light years away. Stars very far apart, most will pass on by each other, and the worst threat they pose is causing a few stray comets to impact a few planets. Four or five billions years from now. Gimme a break Jake, but I fail to see how this is a problem that can't be dealt with then, if anyone is alive to want to deal with it.
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Sorry, are you suggesting that anyone is saying we need to do something about it?

Or even that we could do anything, even if we wanted to?

I have not heard any such hype.

And obviously we can't plan billions of years ahead. Humans have only existed for perhaps 0.0001 billion years so far, and the number of plans, formulated by our prehistoric ancestors, that are still in play today can be counted on the fingers of one foot.

The probability that any currently extant vertebrate species (including humans) will still exist in a billion years (much less 4-5 billion) is roughly zero.
 
It used to be TV stations shut down at midnight. In the evening there was a half our of local and a half hour of national network news. That was it.

News shows were not profit centers, they wire deemed a public service.

24 hour news and hours of local news has to fill air tie. It is entertainment. And sell adverting to make money. Now commercials and promoting a p0roduct has become merged with a newscast.

Recently I watched a news segment with a PHD student talking about her thesis and an 'amazing' discovery. There is an endless stream of reported amazing discoveries. I have heard years old science news reported as breaking news.
 
DBT said:
Clickbait on news feeds appears to be getting out of hand, where the stories don't live up to the hype of the headlines.
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Is it? It has been out there for a while. It isn't hard to identify clickbait if you have a few operating brain cells.

I'd say there are about five easy ways to tell, the fifth will... link
 
The misunderstandings I see are more things like "we were supposed to have flying cars by now!" Really? Who exactly was saying we were? It wasn't the scientists.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
DBT said:
Clickbait on news feeds appears to be getting out of hand, where the stories don't live up to the hype of the headlines.
Click to expand...
Is it? It has been out there for a while. It isn't hard to identify clickbait if you have a few operating brain cells.

I'd say there are about five easy ways to tell, the fifth will... link
Click to expand...

Brain cells are hardly needed when it's practically all click bait.
 
Shadowy Man said:
I’m sorry, were we under the impression there was another kind of science reporting other than over hyped?
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I generally see more people misinterpreting reporting, not actually reading anything, or just outright making stuff up, than reporting being overhyped. Scientific understanding is generally abysmal too, many people seem to prefer pseudoscience, conspiracy theories or both. And if it's not those things it's just pure speculation (see for example the simulation hypothesis which is fairly popular for some reason). Not at all scientifically confirmed, in the sense that "reality is a computer simulation", but people act as though it's the best explanation for reality.
 
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It doesn't help that almost zero science journalists have any scientific qualifications at all.

Most science stories are written by people with degrees in English Literature or History, and whose last formal training in any kind of science was before the age of eighteen.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean they don't know what they are on about. But it's hardly confidence inspiring. On the other hand, who wants to read an article written by somebody what don't write proper?
 
lostone said:
The collision between Andromeda and the Milky Way. Based on what we read from many science writers, we would think that doom is looming any minute now. Is that really mainline thought, among the scientific community, or just sensationalism? My view is that it is just sensationalism that sells in the shot term but damages the credibility of science as a whole in the longer term. After all, this event is 4-5 billion years away, and no one now alive, or even our very remote descendants, will feel any impact from it. At the worst, the back holes from the two galaxies will merge, and with a huge burst of energy, do a lot of damage a few million light years away. Stars very far apart, most will pass on by each other, and the worst threat they pose is causing a few stray comets to impact a few planets. Four or five billions years from now. Gimme a break Jake, but I fail to see how this is a problem that can't be dealt with then, if anyone is alive to want to deal with it.
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Andromeda and TMW colliding is going to be a very strange event, and will not happen for a quote long time.

This event will be notable because we woll probably see a number of impact events, and if other life exists elsewhere in the universe, every life form capable of it in BOTH galaxies is going to take this as an opportunity for intergalactic cross-pollination.

This means we might be flinging HUNDREDS or even THOUSANDS of space rocks at passer-by stars, and trying to catch every one that moves through with a chance to tag it with earth life.

I expect that this will trigger wars, and I call them that because I do not know what else to call such a brutal exchange of life and organisms across such a vast area in such a vast competition for real estate, at a scale that is hard for me to imagine.
 
Shadowy Man said:
I’m sorry, were we under the impression there was another kind of science reporting other than over hyped?
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The New York Times does not hype science reporting.

It devotes an entire section once a week to science reporting. I worked now and then on the Times science desk as an editor, though mainly I was on the foreign/national desk. I dealt with articles on climate change, astronomy, physics, biology, and more.

We once devoted an entire section to evolution and biology. In Carl Zimmer the Times has probably the best science reporter in the business.

But in general science reporting isn’t very good, and online news of all kinds is mostly about bullshit clickbait headlines. It makes me sick. But I did my part.
 
pood said:
Shadowy Man said:
I’m sorry, were we under the impression there was another kind of science reporting other than over hyped?
Click to expand...

The New York Times does not hype science reporting.

It devotes an entire section once a week to science reporting. I worked now and then on the Times science desk as an editor, though mainly I was on the foreign/national desk. I dealt with articles on climate change, astronomy, physics, biology, and more.

We once devoted an entire section to evolution and biology. In Carl Zimmer the Times has probably the best science reporter in the business.

But in general science reporting isn’t very good, and online news of all kinds is mostly about bullshit clickbait headlines. It makes me sick. But I did my part.
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Thank you for your service. My comment was partly tongue in cheek. But I have read more than my fair share of bad science reporting.
 
The thing is to read the original peer-reviewed work, to which you can always get a link in an online news article about some science story.
 
pood said:
The thing is to read the original peer-reviewed work, to which you can always get a link in an online news article about some science story.
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Not always unfortunately. I do try to find the original articles when I can.
 
Shadowy Man said:
pood said:
The thing is to read the original peer-reviewed work, to which you can always get a link in an online news article about some science story.
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Not always unfortunately. I do try to find the original articles when I can.
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Usually the only parts of original research I can usually half understand are the abstracts and the conclusions, but not being a professional that's often enough to give a glimmer. Shoulda stayed in school?
 
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