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I feel like they should just teach more statistics. Learn about bias, sampling and significance. > Students reportedly got a lot better at spotting questionabl

I feel like they should just teach more statistics. Learn about bias, sampling and significance. > Students reportedly got a lot better at spotting questionable sources. Like that's definitely a step in the right direction, i.e., don't just blindly trust what you see on Insta or FB, but I worry it'll just teach kids to blindly trust mainstream media like the NYTimes, which are not without their own biases.

lancesells 5y ago
Statistics and probability are two things that I think everyone should know. They help so much with understanding the news and whether or not something is actually relevant.
Lendal 5y ago
They should do that. They should also teach about actual journalism and not just information found online. I realize now that I had a great advantage in dating for several years someone who was in the College of Journalism at my University. I learned a great deal about what journalists do and why they do it that way. It gave me a lot of insight about why it's unlikely someone who's invested a lifetime into a career would intentionally jeopardize all of it by not following the journalistic standards and ethics they had learned and studied for so long. About the difference between a factual statement and a biased statement. The purpose of an editor. What are the consequences when an editor makes a mistake. And so on. At that time a lot of it was also how to develop film and run a darkroom, but that's obviously not taught anymore!
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  > unlikely someone who's invested a lifetime into a career would intentionally jeopardize all of it by not following the journalistic standards and ethics they had learned and studied for so long This form of journalism is pretty much dead in America. Moreover, journalists violate journalistic "ethics" all the time and there is very little risk to your career unless you do something really bad and obvious like plagiarism. Even then, you can often stage a comeback if people like your writing.
  - Lendal 5y ago
    > This form of journalism is pretty much dead in America Nearly, but we need it to come back. We can't depend on every citizen having loads of spare personal time to spend doing their own journalistic research on every topic. It's impossible. And we can't just let "entertainment news" become the standard. The current chaos will just keep ramping up and up until the collapse of democracy. Yeah I know, many democracies have collapsed over human history. But we need to do something to bring back journalism, not just educate people about how to do their own journalism. That's about as sustainable as having everyone grow their own food. Which is to say, not sustainable at all.
vincent-toups 5y ago
The epistemological relevance of statistics at the level of daily news is almost non-existent. Heck, professional scientists routinely fail (for various reasons) to apply statistics correctly to very controlled circumstances. News reporting is quite far from the controlled experimental context in which statistics would be applicable. Seems like a weird suggestion.
- avs733 5y ago
  I teach statistics to undergraduates...you are correct it is a VERY weird suggestion that presumes many things. I'm trying to craft a more coherent and unfortunately long response to this whole conversation...HN is making some wild practical epistemic swings at this that are largely without merit.
forz877 5y ago
Institutions have some level of accountability that Facebook memes don't. The NYT is not an arbiter of truth. However I am much more likely to pay attention to a piece of journalism from them moreso than my neighbor who can't read saying vaccines are just microchips. At the very least there is a credibility factor that they have. The US has always had biased media - people forget the famous newspapers of the federalists and the republicans as early as the birth of our country - however at times it was able to align with certain truths between factions. It seems this is what was really lost. Journalism has taken a huge hit in this country and the effects are widespread. I'm not against hearing an argument for something. I am against hearing an argument based on an unsubstantiated rumor and "we don't know if it's true but WHAT IF IT IS true" reporting that exists today.
avs733 5y ago
I'll tell you something...I teach undergraduate statistics. One of the projects I give students is to find a news article that talks about a research study and then find the research study. They have to analyze and compare them. It's a hard project, students largely presume that news sources have bias, and some clearly do. But telling apart bias from good faith misunderstanding and sincere attempts at simplification of a message for an audience is really hard. The issue isn't just 'statistics' its audience, its communication, its argumentation, its pre-existing knowledge...its a lot of factors. Part of this is human nature and, frankly, our evolutionary brains inability to process the amount of information now available. There is some good research...I'll find it and add it...with undergraduates that shows something really itneresting about information seeking and use behaviors: * undergraduate engineering students often treat the act of searching for information on ther internet and getting results as directly akin to understanding the information their search returned. * said differently, they think that the act of googling something is the same as understanding the results - even if they don't click on the results.
itsyaboi 5y ago
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." - Mark Twain

lancesells 5y ago

Statistics and probability are two things that I think everyone should know. They help so much with understanding the news and whether or not something is actually relevant.

Lendal 5y ago

They should do that. They should also teach about actual journalism and not just information found online. I realize now that I had a great advantage in dating for several years someone who was in the College of Journalism at my University. I learned a great deal about what journalists do and why they do it that way. It gave me a lot of insight about why it's unlikely someone who's invested a lifetime into a career would intentionally jeopardize all of it by not following the journalistic standards and ethics they had learned and studied for so long. About the difference between a factual statement and a biased statement. The purpose of an editor. What are the consequences when an editor makes a mistake. And so on. At that time a lot of it was also how to develop film and run a darkroom, but that's obviously not taught anymore!

whimsicalism 5y ago
> unlikely someone who's invested a lifetime into a career would intentionally jeopardize all of it by not following the journalistic standards and ethics they had learned and studied for so long This form of journalism is pretty much dead in America. Moreover, journalists violate journalistic "ethics" all the time and there is very little risk to your career unless you do something really bad and obvious like plagiarism. Even then, you can often stage a comeback if people like your writing.
- Lendal 5y ago
  > This form of journalism is pretty much dead in America Nearly, but we need it to come back. We can't depend on every citizen having loads of spare personal time to spend doing their own journalistic research on every topic. It's impossible. And we can't just let "entertainment news" become the standard. The current chaos will just keep ramping up and up until the collapse of democracy. Yeah I know, many democracies have collapsed over human history. But we need to do something to bring back journalism, not just educate people about how to do their own journalism. That's about as sustainable as having everyone grow their own food. Which is to say, not sustainable at all.

vincent-toups 5y ago

The epistemological relevance of statistics at the level of daily news is almost non-existent. Heck, professional scientists routinely fail (for various reasons) to apply statistics correctly to very controlled circumstances. News reporting is quite far from the controlled experimental context in which statistics would be applicable. Seems like a weird suggestion.

avs733 5y ago
I teach statistics to undergraduates...you are correct it is a VERY weird suggestion that presumes many things. I'm trying to craft a more coherent and unfortunately long response to this whole conversation...HN is making some wild practical epistemic swings at this that are largely without merit.

forz877 5y ago

Institutions have some level of accountability that Facebook memes don't. The NYT is not an arbiter of truth. However I am much more likely to pay attention to a piece of journalism from them moreso than my neighbor who can't read saying vaccines are just microchips. At the very least there is a credibility factor that they have. The US has always had biased media - people forget the famous newspapers of the federalists and the republicans as early as the birth of our country - however at times it was able to align with certain truths between factions. It seems this is what was really lost. Journalism has taken a huge hit in this country and the effects are widespread. I'm not against hearing an argument for something. I am against hearing an argument based on an unsubstantiated rumor and "we don't know if it's true but WHAT IF IT IS true" reporting that exists today.

avs733 5y ago

I'll tell you something...I teach undergraduate statistics. One of the projects I give students is to find a news article that talks about a research study and then find the research study. They have to analyze and compare them. It's a hard project, students largely presume that news sources have bias, and some clearly do. But telling apart bias from good faith misunderstanding and sincere attempts at simplification of a message for an audience is really hard. The issue isn't just 'statistics' its audience, its communication, its argumentation, its pre-existing knowledge...its a lot of factors. Part of this is human nature and, frankly, our evolutionary brains inability to process the amount of information now available. There is some good research...I'll find it and add it...with undergraduates that shows something really itneresting about information seeking and use behaviors: * undergraduate engineering students often treat the act of searching for information on ther internet and getting results as directly akin to understanding the information their search returned. * said differently, they think that the act of googling something is the same as understanding the results - even if they don't click on the results.

itsyaboi 5y ago

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." - Mark Twain