GP probably meant young people deciding to go into physics after reading these articles. I'm a physicist and many of us were massively influenced by the pop-sci

GP probably meant young people deciding to go into physics after reading these articles. I'm a physicist and many of us were massively influenced by the pop-sci books we read as kids before we knew better. You don't get specific research directions from NYT but you do get educated in what kind of ideas will get media attention, and that is as bad as the hypothetical big troubles you allude to.