4 ms·
Off topic but does anyone else automatically filter out any headline that has "may" in it? Literally anything can be true if you add "may". Eating dirt may cau
by camjohnson26 7y ago
Off topic but does anyone else automatically filter out any headline that has "may" in it? Literally anything can be true if you add "may".
Eating dirt may cause cancer.
Eating dirt may cure cancer.
Earth may sit on the back of a giant, invisible tortoise.
It feels like a lazy way to pump out blog articles when there's no real information available.
- fghtr 7y ago"In scientific and academic language, may is often used to talk about typical occurrences - things that can happen in certain situations." https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/22134/can-could-vs-may-might-expressing-typical-occurrences https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/22134/can-could-vs-m...
- casefields 7y agoI would love a huge study done on say NY Times/Wapo and a few other sources and going back through their science reporting through 2000-2010. Focusing on articles like this and see if how wrong/right they were. Or, if it's so inconclusive, that we really shouldn't be letting scientists push out their work willy nilly without establishing better data/proof. Science journalists seem to take these education PR departments at their word a bit too often.
- Stronico 7y agoI'm working on something to track stuff like that. What would you consider evidence of a study being disproved?
- ZeroFries 7y agoMay usually means 'has some evidence behind it'. Heuristic: the probability of it being true should be high enough to be worth talking about.
- trilinearnz 7y agoReminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...