8 ms·
Five Corrections to The New York Times
- dajohnson89 8y agoThe article's title says "New York Times", but the article itself says "New York Times Magazine". They're completely different publications...
- geetee 8y agoI think the magazine is a Sunday insert from the same company.
- mattynice 8y agoI think completely different publications is a bit exaggerated. According to wiki: "The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors." I also was curious as to how supplement was defined within the context of publishing and again according to wiki: "A supplement is a publication that has a role secondary to that of another preceding or concurrent publication. A follow-on publication complements its predecessor, either by bringing it up to date (e.g. the Index Catalogue), or by otherwise enhancing the predecessor's coverage of a particular topic or subject matter, as in the Tosefta." In my opinion the difference is insignificant.
- SiempreViernes 8y agoThey don't seem to share staff though, at least not on the editor level, compare: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/admin/the-new-york-times-masthead.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/admin/the-new-york-... and https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/magazine/masthead.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/magazine/masthead.html There's also the obvious difference that one is a newspaper and the other is a magazine; I think it's just a bit unclear what is being meant when they claimed they are "different publications".
- dekhn 8y agouhhhhh.... it's an insert in the sunday times. served up alongside the times on the website. created by the publisher of the times. I suppose you could get technical and say it's an independent publication that is housed within another publication... but that would be pedantic to the point of meaninglessness.
- SiempreViernes 8y agoWhy? There are a host of obvious physical and content differences between a newspaper and a magazine, with the newspaper broadsheet being about twice as wide as the magazine for example[1]. I suppose if you ignore the differences between the print versions you get closer to a purely pedantic distinction, but really I think the problem is that the measure of difference is unclear. 1: https://nytmediakit.com/index.php?p=specs/magazine/standard-sizes https://nytmediakit.com/index.php?p=specs/magazine/standard-...
- dekhn 8y agothe magazine is only delivered within the NY Times Sunday issue. it can't be purchased inpendently. In the URL on the NY Times site, it's listed as a section: https://www.nytimes.com/section/magazine https://www.nytimes.com/section/magazine
- porpoisely 8y agoWhen I had a subscription to the NYTimes, the NYTimes Magazine was included in every sunday paper. So not quite "different publications".
- carbocation 8y agoIn person, David Reich is an extremely thoughtful and kind guy. I have no reason to doubt his version of events. Population genetics is a remarkably subtle field, and it's not surprising that a journalist would understand it 95% correctly, with the missing 5% being devastating for their article.
- rossdavidh 8y agoIn addition, his recently published book says plenty that does not jibe with the version of his ideas presented in the NYT article. In other words, if he were really as the NYT article suggests, he wouldn't have published that book, which contradicts some of the things the NYT article says he asserts.
- dekhn 8y agoyou should always be skeptical, even of nice experts. But in this case, he backed up his arguments with fairly good data (some of this stuff is still in open disagreement when he claims it's fact) so anybody in competent in the field (like a fact checker) could verify his claims. But make no mistake: this was a carefully written rebuttal by a master of the scientific arts, designed to maximize impact and make the Times look like they were unfair to him.
- jessriedel 8y ago> by a master of the scientific arts, designed to maximize impact and make the Times look like they were unfair to him. As opposed to the journalists who wrote the initial article, who are not masters of their own profession and do not have incentives besides impartially reporting the truth? Is anyone under the impression that when someone believes they have been falsely represented by a major news outlet and issue a rebuttal that they are trying to maximize impact and make it look like -- i.e., show -- that the outlet was unfair to them?
- briandear 8y ago>... do not have incentives besides impartially reporting the truth? That’s a very big assumption and a rather naïve view of modern journalism. Impartially reporting the truth is what we like to think journalists do, but it isn’t safe to suggest that’s what they actually do.
- floatingatoll 8y agoThis seems to be in reply to: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-paleogenomics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-pale...
- bergoid 8y agoPrevious HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18960718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18960718
- skosuri 8y agoTo be clear, the link you posted is a discussion on the previous letter sent to a more general audience.
- aresant 8y agoSeeing an informed rebuttle like this always reminds me of the "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect as illustrated by Michael Crichton: "You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. . . In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."
- mturmon 8y agoOTOH, reading between the lines, it seems like there was contention between the story author and the rebuttal author all through fact-checking. This hints that there is another side to this story.
- analog31 8y agoThe story could be told in a variety of ways: "You see a subordinate making a mistake." "Your cab driver took a wrong turn." I suspect that some form of the amnesia effect is necessary for us to function in a complex society.
- x3tm 8y agoI had to google to see what M. Gell-Mann had to do with this ... and it turns out he has nothing to do with it. Crichton just used his name to name an effect. Is there a better name for this though? from behavioral sciences or psychology?
- tanickaway 8y agoGell-Mann and Crichton are friends (acquaintances?) who have different expertises and notice different wrong stories in the paper. The parent quote is missing the reference to Gell-Mann, it goes "You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business." I think the name is pretty good as is?
- jackallis 8y agocan someonepost the link to the main article in question?
- bsmitty5000 8y agoMaybe this- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-paleogenomics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-pale... ?
- treis 8y agoEdit: I was looking at a corrected article. Ignore this post. I don't know a whole lot about this, but I do know that if you write something to show that you were misrepresented in an article you need to be extremely careful to not misrepresent the article. He says: >The article wrongly states that in 2015 my colleagues I argued that the population of Europe was “almost entirely” replaced by people from the Eastern Europe Steppe When the article says: >Almost entirely replaced existing commmunities [snip] in Central and Northern Europe.
- b1gnasty 8y ago" Correction: Jan. 25, 2019 An earlier version of this article misstated the number of peer reviewers who evaluated the 2016 Nature paper “Genomic Insights Into the Peopling of the Southwest Pacific” before publication. It was four, not three; a fourth reviewer was added to evaluate the paper after the original submission was revised. The article also misstated the geographical area where migrants from the steppes of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia significantly replaced existing communities of hunter-gatherers and early farmers, as reported in an academic paper on the migration. It was Central and Northern Europe, not the entire continent. "
- treis 8y agoWhoops! Fooled by the edit
- he0001 8y agoI don’t understand that people are still surprised that articles, particularly about complex issues, mess things up or gets facts wrong. I think a journalist context switches a lot (even in the same field) and it’s hard to get everything right. I don’t read news as facts, more like indications that something have happened and if it’s sounds interesting I do some reasearch about it or check reports or follow numbers on my own. I never assume that news reporters gets the whole story. It perplexes me when people scream “fake news” or something. “Fake news” doesn’t exist because the opposite doesn’t either. When we talk about news, Plato got it right.
- resters 8y agoIt's not that mistakes happen, it's that retractions are usually hidden and do not contain the same level of effort to educate the reader as the initial incorrect reporting.
- njarboe 8y agoI have not read through the whole article yet, but it seems strange and it is unfortunate that this Harvard published request for corrections has no links at the start to the paper in question[1], the nytimes article[2], or David Reich's response he sent to the nytimes[3]. Here are some links. [1]Skoglund et al. (2016) paper "Genomic insights into the peopling of the Southwest Pacific.", doi: 10.1038/nature19844, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27698418 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27698418 [2]"Is Ancient DNA Research Revealing New Truths — or Falling Into Old Traps?", https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-paleogenomics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-pale... [3]Never printed by the nytimes, but it would have been nice if he had linked to a personal copy.
- jessriedel 8y agoMostly agree, but is this really sensible to consider this "Harvard published"? This is just a Harvard PI putting up a letter on his own personal website, albeit one he probably had assistance setting up.
- njarboe 8y agoI did not notice that it was just his personal site. I just looked at the HN URL. If HN had given the full address (reich.hms.harvard.edu) it's less likely I would have made that mistake. Better stated would have been "published by a Harvard Medical Researcher on his website". It is a pretty polished piece and if he was hoping it gets picked up by someone (like HN), then adding links would have been more professional and make the piece more creditable and useful.
- njarboe 8y agoPast the edit time limit. Here is his the letter to The New York Times on his personal website[1]. [1] https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/letter-response-jan-17-article-new-york-times https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/letter-response-jan-17-article...
- Svip 8y agoDoes the US not have a Press Complaint Authority? In Denmark, we have Pressenævnet[0] which handles complaints against media outlets. If an article is found to be at fault, the publishing outlet will be required to publish a retraction/correction/apology, depending on the offence. During the review, the outlet can make their case against the complaint. Does the US not have something similar? Because these complaints sound like the perfect fit for something like this. [0] https://www.pressenaevnet.dk/ https://www.pressenaevnet.dk/
- davidp 8y agoI certainly hope we don't. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and the press, including the freedom to make mistakes and even outright lie. There is no godlike authority that can tell truth from fiction without fail, and having government censors telling people what they can say (especially w.r.t. political speech) would invert the relationship between the people and their government, making government the master instead of the servant. Instead, we rely on an educated readership to identify bias and mistakes and call them out, as has been done here. People get the journalism they deserve. To the extent we're failing to teach our children critical thinking skills, we're putting our democracy at risk. The NY Times and other resources currently considered "credible" have earned that credibility from the people not through government permission but by generally providing a useful service to its consumers, despite all the mistakes they make and biases they present. The NY Times in particular has unfortunately been burning through that hard-earned credibility capital at an alarming rate, even long before the current last few years, with the result that there are large portions of the country that no longer trust it like they did, with good reason. More recently they have taken the bait proffered by Trump and his ilk and lowered themselves to his level, spinning most articles I've seen with more political or oppositional bias than in the past. I can only hope this is a cyclical phenomenon, where the citizenry/readership becomes ignorant of the related history and its challenges, simply because we've lived through a period where the battles were won and we could take such things for granted. Just like our predecessors, this generation is going to painfully relearn that everything printed (or typed) should be taken with a grain of salt and cross-checked against multiple sources.
- 8y ago