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This is not just limited to science articles, and it's very serious because it leads to people walking around with incorrect and often very dangerous ideas abou

This is not just limited to science articles, and it's very serious because it leads to people walking around with incorrect and often very dangerous ideas about fitness, diet, politics, and just about every aspect of the world. I think the solution will be media outlets that not only insist on honest reporting, maintain high standards, and admit mistakes, but that dedicate a lot of their space to directly and savagely mocking unscrupulous reporters from other outlets for their shoddy reporting or purposeful disinformation.

dredmorbius 10y ago
So much this. I've been looking at a slew of issues, starting from the question "what are the big problems?". Without getting into what I've concluded (and find considerable agreement, as well as some disagreement) on what the big problems are, there's the dynamics behind these. The slogan I'm blogging behind is "Progress, Models, Institutions, Technology, Limits. Interactions thereof". It's the interactions especially between Institutions, including the media, politics, commerce, religion, and education, and our Models -- the theories and frames we carry with us as to how the world works -- that strike me as most critical. I'm not limiting this to scientific models, but every crazy idea people have as to how and why the Universe is the way it is and does what it does. But yes: one consequence is that we end up with people who have very incorrect and very dangerous ideas. In positions of extreme power -- heads of companies, leading popular movements, on radio and television, as heads of state. The history of the concept of "the marketplace of ideas" is an interesting one (as well as its own interplay with concepts of free markets, and of "free market" as "completely unregulated market"). It's a tangled, tangled, tangled web. We also find many of the same people and organisations turning up. Adam Smith. John Stuart Mill. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Mont Pelerin Society. And more. Makes you wonder.
gozur88 10y ago
Reporters generally don't mock each other. It's a tough business, and you never know who can help you get a job. Heck, after Dan Rather got caught peddling obviously phony documents to the public his colleagues gave him an award.

dredmorbius 10y ago

So much this. I've been looking at a slew of issues, starting from the question "what are the big problems?". Without getting into what I've concluded (and find considerable agreement, as well as some disagreement) on what the big problems are, there's the dynamics behind these. The slogan I'm blogging behind is "Progress, Models, Institutions, Technology, Limits. Interactions thereof". It's the interactions especially between Institutions, including the media, politics, commerce, religion, and education, and our Models -- the theories and frames we carry with us as to how the world works -- that strike me as most critical. I'm not limiting this to scientific models, but every crazy idea people have as to how and why the Universe is the way it is and does what it does. But yes: one consequence is that we end up with people who have very incorrect and very dangerous ideas. In positions of extreme power -- heads of companies, leading popular movements, on radio and television, as heads of state. The history of the concept of "the marketplace of ideas" is an interesting one (as well as its own interplay with concepts of free markets, and of "free market" as "completely unregulated market"). It's a tangled, tangled, tangled web. We also find many of the same people and organisations turning up. Adam Smith. John Stuart Mill. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Mont Pelerin Society. And more. Makes you wonder.

gozur88 10y ago

Reporters generally don't mock each other. It's a tough business, and you never know who can help you get a job. Heck, after Dan Rather got caught peddling obviously phony documents to the public his colleagues gave him an award.