7 ms·

> I stand by the fact that an academic press office isn't linking to the original paper is absurd. Academic here. I agree with you that there should be a link

> I stand by the fact that an academic press office isn't linking to the original paper is absurd. Academic here. I agree with you that there should be a link to the original paper, but I can kinda sorta explain this. For one, unfortunately (very unfortunately), the papers are often behind paywalls or otherwise inaccessible. This one isn't, but it might explain the bad habit. Also, and again unfortunately, scientists are often not in the habit of presenting their results to the general public. It's not really part of our training, or something we're expected to do. My own interactions with my university's communication staff have been a little bit tense; faculty often have utilitarian web pages aimed mostly at students and colleagues in the discipline, whereas communication staff seem to mostly want to drive publicity for the university as a whole. It can be worse. Here is a 2018 USC press release in my discipline: https://news.usc.edu/144995/visiting-professor-solves-math-mystery-lindelof-hypothesis/ https://news.usc.edu/144995/visiting-professor-solves-math-m... The Lindelof Hypothesis was not proved, the paper was not peer reviewed, nobody prominent in the field ever endorsed the result, and the claim was later retracted. The press release remains up.

worik 4y ago
> scientists are often not in the habit of presenting their results to the general public That is true. Here in Ōtepoti there is a university department of "Scientific Communication" trying to address that. Good luck to them, and hopefully this is changing.
jefurii 4y ago
> Also, and again unfortunately, scientists are often not in the habit of presenting their results to the general public. It's not really part of our training, or something we're expected to do. In my opinion, a professional who can't explain the work they do to a normal human is not really a professional. I've heard so many scientists complain about the quality of science reporting but they might be partly to blame. I know not every scientist can be a Carl Sagan of course.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  Outreach has an unlimited ability to soak time away from doing actual science. Sometimes it's a net benefit, but sometimes not. See: scientists beefing with flat earthers, who will never be convinced of anything.
- impendia 4y ago
  In my opinion, the explanation isn't the hard part. What's harder is: attracting an audience in the first place; being able to entertain them in addition to explaining the science; understanding how the media works; making the right connections; knowing how to pitch a reporter; etc.
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  The amount of foundational knowledge it takes to make heads or tails of a lot of research is well outside what can be reasonably assumed of a lay person. For example, let's say you found something interesting in Particle Physics. You figured out the mass of the W boson to another 3 decimal places or some such. To make that result at all interesting to a lay person, you need to pile on enough background information to establish context. What's a W boson? Well it's part of a symmetry group in the Standard Model -> Symmetry Groups? Quantum mechanics? -> etc etc. Know what they call enough background information to be able to begin to appreciate the research in a given field? A bachelors degree.
samstave 4y ago
>>(very unfortunately), the papers are often behind paywalls or otherwise inaccessible This is what Aaron Swartz was suicided for (allegedly) (I have my own theory on why he died, but I would never share that on HN. --- Its a complex problem though - ESPECIALLY when said papers/research are fully funded by public tax payer dollars, then de-facto those papers should be public... but it IS also a matter of national security... If [ENEMY STATE] can just harvest all the academic research of the US, then why do it themselves. So there is that. Though, one could take a CIA route, and change aspects of the papers which are public such that the gist comes across, but methodologies are either tampered with or omitted such that one would still have to do the remaining work to succeed. This was what was really interesting to me about DUQU/StuxNet. But yeah, Swartz was not killed for JSTOR access/theft... (or maybe he was to prevent enemy states getting all these papers?)
- felurx 4y ago
  [ENEMY STATE], as you put it, can already harvest most of everyone's (including the US') published research via Sci-Hub, and probably some similar projects. A nation-state actor could probably run their own internal Sci-Hub equivalent that uses stolen credentials etc if they wanted/needed to. Published research already is de facto public, the question is just about whether we want to make those people who access it criminals, to oversimplify a bit. I'm a bit worried by your semi-nationalist attitude, but I suppose that is besides the point of this comment.
  - xg15 4y ago
    In addition, if you're a foreign intelligence agency, it would probably not be that hard to create a shell company and just purchase a regular subscription. Paywalls keep out all kinds of people, but I find it hard to believe they keep out foreign agents.
  - samstave 4y ago
    [flagged]

worik 4y ago

> scientists are often not in the habit of presenting their results to the general public That is true. Here in Ōtepoti there is a university department of "Scientific Communication" trying to address that. Good luck to them, and hopefully this is changing.

jefurii 4y ago

> Also, and again unfortunately, scientists are often not in the habit of presenting their results to the general public. It's not really part of our training, or something we're expected to do. In my opinion, a professional who can't explain the work they do to a normal human is not really a professional. I've heard so many scientists complain about the quality of science reporting but they might be partly to blame. I know not every scientist can be a Carl Sagan of course.

jjoonathan 4y ago
Outreach has an unlimited ability to soak time away from doing actual science. Sometimes it's a net benefit, but sometimes not. See: scientists beefing with flat earthers, who will never be convinced of anything.
impendia 4y ago
In my opinion, the explanation isn't the hard part. What's harder is: attracting an audience in the first place; being able to entertain them in addition to explaining the science; understanding how the media works; making the right connections; knowing how to pitch a reporter; etc.
OkayPhysicist 4y ago
The amount of foundational knowledge it takes to make heads or tails of a lot of research is well outside what can be reasonably assumed of a lay person. For example, let's say you found something interesting in Particle Physics. You figured out the mass of the W boson to another 3 decimal places or some such. To make that result at all interesting to a lay person, you need to pile on enough background information to establish context. What's a W boson? Well it's part of a symmetry group in the Standard Model -> Symmetry Groups? Quantum mechanics? -> etc etc. Know what they call enough background information to be able to begin to appreciate the research in a given field? A bachelors degree.

samstave 4y ago

>>(very unfortunately), the papers are often behind paywalls or otherwise inaccessible This is what Aaron Swartz was suicided for (allegedly) (I have my own theory on why he died, but I would never share that on HN. --- Its a complex problem though - ESPECIALLY when said papers/research are fully funded by public tax payer dollars, then de-facto those papers should be public... but it IS also a matter of national security... If [ENEMY STATE] can just harvest all the academic research of the US, then why do it themselves. So there is that. Though, one could take a CIA route, and change aspects of the papers which are public such that the gist comes across, but methodologies are either tampered with or omitted such that one would still have to do the remaining work to succeed. This was what was really interesting to me about DUQU/StuxNet. But yeah, Swartz was not killed for JSTOR access/theft... (or maybe he was to prevent enemy states getting all these papers?)

felurx 4y ago
[ENEMY STATE], as you put it, can already harvest most of everyone's (including the US') published research via Sci-Hub, and probably some similar projects. A nation-state actor could probably run their own internal Sci-Hub equivalent that uses stolen credentials etc if they wanted/needed to. Published research already is de facto public, the question is just about whether we want to make those people who access it criminals, to oversimplify a bit. I'm a bit worried by your semi-nationalist attitude, but I suppose that is besides the point of this comment.
- xg15 4y ago
  In addition, if you're a foreign intelligence agency, it would probably not be that hard to create a shell company and just purchase a regular subscription. Paywalls keep out all kinds of people, but I find it hard to believe they keep out foreign agents.
- samstave 4y ago
  [flagged]