5 ms·
Study finds correlation. Article mentions caveat that correlation is not causation. Headline explicitly states causation. This is certainly a very interestin
by mortenjorck 9y ago
Study finds correlation.
Article mentions caveat that correlation is not causation.
Headline explicitly states causation.
This is certainly a very interesting correlation, and demands further study. Perhaps there is a causal link. But it's just (predictably) irresponsible journalism to head such a piece with a factually incorrect headline.
- swsieber 9y agoThey've probably been drinking (moderately)
- jksmith 9y agoAs long as we all drink the same amount, I don't care. Two shots Makers, one shot Noilly Pratt, splash of orange bitters. Shake in a jigger of ice. Pour it up and break out a RP box pressed Decade and one of Richardson's Trawler Trash series of books for accompaniment. Enjoy.
- ams6110 9y agoPopular news is all clickbait now. I've just opted out.
- baq 9y agodesperately seeking non-popular news with non-clickbait articles. got any referrals?
- sp332 9y agoA print newspaper? Edit: I'm not being sarcastic. Even if you read the online version of a print paper, you're getting articles that weren't optimized for clicks.
- DanBC 9y agoThe Daily Mail is an example of a newspaper that has a very different online offering to the print version.
- buckbova 9y agoCS Monitor shoots pretty straight https://www.csmonitor.com/ https://www.csmonitor.com/.
- enraged_camel 9y agoLest people think The Christian Science Monitor is a religiously biased pseudoscience outlet, it isn't. In fact it is one of the best news sources available internationally if you are looking for a fact-based news outlet with excellent reporting and minimal bias. This Reddit thread has more info: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/cuun9/what_do_you_mean_the_christian_science_monitor/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/cuun9/what_do_yo...
- derekp7 9y agoAlso, Christian Science is not the same thing as Scientology.
- marmaduke 9y agoTrueReddit and TrueTrueReddit?
- chris_va 9y agoThe Economist
- eecc 9y agoNeoliberal bias... but yeah, for a while I read it for the quality of the English writing
- jonathansizz 9y agoThe Financial Times largely avoids editorializing its news sections, and employs real journalists (maybe because executives need accurate information and are willing and able to pay for it). Notice how even big stories often appear significantly later on the FT website compared to other outlets, but when they do appear they've generally got the facts straight. Their subscription fees are substantial, but if we don't want everything reduced to ad-based sensationalism we're going to need to pay actual money.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- abawany 9y agoI also find that the recent cuts in editorial staff at various newspapers is having a noticeable effect on quality. I subscribe to the NYT and noticed that after their recent editorial layoff, some of the articles had some egregious spelling and syntax errors.
- unethical_ban 9y agoI have noticed it too. I also believe some of the "hard news" articles have opinion on them in a manner that puts me off. WaPo isn't even trying to hide it.
- leggomylibro 9y agoStudy also looks at adults of average age 43 over 30 years; its subjects are heavily weighted in terms of age.
- swiley 9y agoAs someone who's young and only drank a couple of times it definitely feels permanent. Your thinking gets very cloudy very fast and then the cloudiness seems to have this exponential decay. Even days afterward I don't feel quite right.
- philipov 9y agoDoes that qualify it as fake news?
- drngdds 9y agoYup. This is par-for-the-course for science journalism.
- grandalf 9y ago> Study finds correlation. Article mentions caveat that correlation is not causation. Headline explicitly states causation. Welcome to the Washington Post. In cases like this it's fairly obvious but across the board there is such a low standard for journalism that I can't bring myself to pay the $1 to subscribe. When Bezos bought it I had hoped we'd see a new era of high quality American journalism, but the opposite trend has occurred.
- opportune 9y agoWaPo is 50% Trump and 50% a moderately better version of buzzfeed.
- grandalf 9y agoAgreed. It's truly amazing that one of the world's richest men would buy one of America's great papers and allow it to abandon basic journalistic standards. In a sense this amounts to an act of sabotage. At first, I thought it was meant to be an insurance policy against politicians turning against Amazon, but now I have doubts about whether Bezos wishes the paper to do actual journalism.
- chris_va 9y agoInterestingly, titles are generally written by a different person than the articles, and often a matter of contention with journalists.
- gabrielgoh 9y agoSure, counterfactual causation is the gold standard in science, but it is extremely difficult to pin down experimentally (in this case it requires an experiment, or a natural experiment, where people are forced to drink 2 drinks daily over a span of 30 years. This is not only impossible but unethical.). The judgement of causation from correlation is usually an art not a science, with the use of such things as instrumental variables or other such "soft" techniques, which boil down to opinion and expert knowledge. The article itself states that the authors believe there is an element of causation in the study "Alcohol might represent a modifiable risk factor for cognitive impairment, and primary prevention interventions targeted to later life could be too late." The "may" is, of course a kind of scientific hedging, but I do not think the journalists made an unfair reading of the paper. Bear in mind many of these articles are made in consultation with the authors themselves. If you have any problems with the conclusions of the article, you should take it to the authors of the paper itself, not the journalists
- epistasis 9y agoI think the request here isn't to change this paper, or the article, but for the headline to be "Even moderate drinking correlated with atrophy in brain areas..." This is on the editor's heads.
- gabrielgoh 9y agoi'm saying that headline says too little. The authors of the paper strongly suggest that there is a causative effect in the paper, and I think its very reasonable this is reflected in the title of the headline. [edit] Even the title of the original paper is "Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline" which suggest causation. why should the headline be weaker than the title of the paper itself?
- epistasis 9y agoIn this setting, "risk factor" means "associated." It does not mean causes, and it really misinforms the public to jump to that. Even if the authors strongly suggest causation, but stop short, the most that should go in the headline is "Study strong suggests that moderate drinking causes.." Jumping to conclusions in the popular press hurts the reputation of scientists. Journalists and editors have been doing this for years, especially on topics that sell papers, specifically what to eat and what to not eat, how to gain or lose weight, or how to live longer.
- dang 9y agoOk, we replaced 'causes' with 'associated with' above.