Over hyped science reporting

[pood]

Here is a bunch of bullshit from the Guardian about bored aliens, But I don’t blame the Guardian for publishing it. It’s probably an accurate summation of the non-peer reviewed article that is linked. What I question is whether it was worth reporting on at all.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Here's a recent example that Gutsick Gibbon goes into: No, this New Fossil does NOT mean the Human Species is Over a Million Years Old

She also goes into a lot about how the Homo Naledi discovery has been overhyped in other videos like this one (I am aware the time length may be too much for some, but the tl;dr is there are a lot unjustified assumptions in Lee Berger's research, and much of it amounts to speculation).

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Here is a bunch of bullshit from the Guardian about bored aliens, But I don’t blame the Guardian for publishing it. It’s probably an accurate summation of the non-peer reviewed article that is linked. What I question is whether it was worth reporting on at all.

Maybe aliens simply just don't know about us? Seems arrogant to assume they do. And if they do know about us, why would they want to contact us in the first place? Also seems arrogant to assume they would want to. It's really not that mystifying in my opinion. And we're assuming they would be interested in any contact at all whatsoever, but that's simply what we would want and we're projecting what we would do onto them, when we have no idea what they would do, especially if they are much more intelligent than we are.

 

[DBT]

Who knows, we may come across as being a vicious, warlike species....not something you'd want to associate with.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Who knows, we may come across as being a vicious, warlike species....not something you'd want to associate with.

I don’t think they’d know those things about us unless they’ve already visited.

 

[DBT]

Who knows, we may come across as being a vicious, warlike species....not something you'd want to associate with.

I don’t think they’d know those things about us unless they’ve already visited.

Detecting our transmissions, news, movies, etc?

 

[Shadowy Man]

Who knows, we may come across as being a vicious, warlike species....not something you'd want to associate with.

I don’t think they’d know those things about us unless they’ve already visited.

Detecting our transmissions, news, movies, etc?

Any radio emissions they could pick up would be a mishmash of signals because it’s not like all tv/radio channels are showing the same thing at the same time. And that’s assuming they could pick out these signals against the background of the strong radio signals from the Sun and Jupiter’s magnetosphere.

 

[DBT]

Who knows, we may come across as being a vicious, warlike species....not something you'd want to associate with.

I don’t think they’d know those things about us unless they’ve already visited.

Detecting our transmissions, news, movies, etc?

Any radio emissions they could pick up would be a mishmash of signals because it’s not like all tv/radio channels are showing the same thing at the same time. And that’s assuming they could pick out these signals against the background of the strong radio signals from the Sun and Jupiter’s magnetosphere.

Rather than aliens or physics, it was more a tongue in cheek comment on the human condition....but who knows what a super advanced species is capable of.

 

[lostone]

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.

Not always unfortunately. I do try to find the original articles when I can.

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?

Even if you were a PhD, some science reporting outside of your area of expertise would reduce you to a layman's understanding in that discipline Maybe an educated layman, but still a layman.

 

[lostone]

I suspect that most science news reporters are either very good writers with limited academic science credentials or people with a bachelor's degree knowledge and/or credentials in one STEM field or another trying to cover areas beyond their limited credentials to do so. OTOH, who else out there would or could qualify to do the job? The problem lies in the public's blind acceptance of what these writer's say.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

Not always unfortunately. I do try to find the original articles when I can.

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?

We saw quite a bit of stuff with the Great Yuck where looking at the body you could see where they were making major errors to "prove" their bogus conclusions. Figuring out if a science paper is good pretty much takes a knowledge of the field, but we've seen all too much bad stuff that you don't need to be an expert to see.