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At this point, I'll openly admit it. I despise these types of robotic university press releases, and I fucking despise the patterns of reaction these types of r

by dluan 11y ago

At this point, I'll openly admit it. I despise these types of robotic university press releases, and I fucking despise the patterns of reaction these types of releases are designed to generate. Where is the questioning that's fundamental to learning? Where is the interaction with the audience? Where is the feedback? How the hell am I supposed to wade through this bullshit? A sentence like this: > For example, the “brainy mice” showed a better ability than ordinary mice to recognise another mouse that they had been introduced to the day before. Who is the brainy mouse? Why is he meeting this other mouse? Are they meeting in a bar? At Dolores Park? Are they fighting? Are they being given a standardized state administered quiz? Can I see a picture of this Morris maze? How am I even supposed to unpack this and why would I even care? Science communication is supposed to be a two-way street, not an unexpectant ejaculation of "data" for someone else to "comprehend", "digest", "understand". Show me what's cool about this. Show the process, the failures, the papertrail, that would be cool. The prestige of the journal, the authors multitude of titles or affiliations, and some generic stock imagery is not cool. And for god sake, at least make the primary source accessible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_deficit_model#Deficit_model_of_science_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_deficit_model#Defi... [2] I'm intimate to this problem because we've created a robotic press release generator for Experiment's users. PRs serve a purpose, which is not public outreach, it's a journalist to journalist protocol. [3] trying to solve this problem of science communication for funders - http://experiment.com/vanek http://experiment.com/vanek

deleted 11y ago
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Roodgorf 11y ago
I have to say, I don't really understand your criticisms as you've presented them, perhaps I'm missing something. The "brainy mice" are pretty clearly the ones with the inhibited PDE4B enzyme. What is it you're mocking here, the use of the buzzwordy phrase? > at least make the primary source available. They give the contact information of the researcher and cite the paper, mentioning that it is available upon request. How does its open availability fall under the responsibility of the journalist?
- dluan 11y ago
  What bothers me about lazy science communication is that it assumes the reader is dumb. It assumes that the reader won't desire to know the inefficient details, or the context, or why the scientist chose one approach over another. It assumes that I'm incapable of coming to my own conclusions. Sure, PDE4B-inhibited mice might be less scared than cats, and sure, even if it's p-hacking I'll let that statement fly. But you know what other ways you can get mice to be less scared of cats? Brain parasites. Sleep deprivation. Probably meth or something like that. Or, I'm sure there's other genes that knock out fear. But they probably also knock out teeth. The point is that if the goal of the outreach is understanding, it doesn't provide the tools for the context of that understanding. A link to the paper is one such tool. Infographics, video interviews, lab protocols, primary observations, and source code are all valuable tools that help achieve this goal.

by dluan 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Roodgorf 11y ago

I have to say, I don't really understand your criticisms as you've presented them, perhaps I'm missing something. The "brainy mice" are pretty clearly the ones with the inhibited PDE4B enzyme. What is it you're mocking here, the use of the buzzwordy phrase? > at least make the primary source available. They give the contact information of the researcher and cite the paper, mentioning that it is available upon request. How does its open availability fall under the responsibility of the journalist?

dluan 11y ago
What bothers me about lazy science communication is that it assumes the reader is dumb. It assumes that the reader won't desire to know the inefficient details, or the context, or why the scientist chose one approach over another. It assumes that I'm incapable of coming to my own conclusions. Sure, PDE4B-inhibited mice might be less scared than cats, and sure, even if it's p-hacking I'll let that statement fly. But you know what other ways you can get mice to be less scared of cats? Brain parasites. Sleep deprivation. Probably meth or something like that. Or, I'm sure there's other genes that knock out fear. But they probably also knock out teeth. The point is that if the goal of the outreach is understanding, it doesn't provide the tools for the context of that understanding. A link to the paper is one such tool. Infographics, video interviews, lab protocols, primary observations, and source code are all valuable tools that help achieve this goal.