4 ms·

I agree with your prescriptions, but worry the point might've slipped by. > READ the papers The point of my original comment is that most journalists don't ha

by ke88y 3y ago

I agree with your prescriptions, but worry the point might've slipped by. > READ the papers The point of my original comment is that most journalists don't have the educational background required to do this. And everything else flows downstream of that problem.

mike_hearn 3y ago
The issue is not that they can't do it, they just don't want to. Journalists with no science background are happy to write quite technical fact checks of articles - even articles written by scientists - when those articles are contradicting something the journalists are already invested in. And often the problems don't need specialist knowledge to spot. The before/after images purporting to be of surgery in this article can be detected as fraud by anyone: https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-i-7e9764571422 https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-i-7e9764571422 No expertise needed. Blatant stuff like that is more obvious than we'd hope.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  The issue is that journalists could do better if they wanted to, but they don't want to and there's no system of incentives in place that would make them want to. There's no such thing as a journalism license they could lose, and publishing nonsensical science articles doesn't hurt their careers in any way because nobody expects better of them. After all, they're just journalists with no STEM education... Even if you somehow forced science journalists to all get STEM dual majors, it still wouldn't make them care. They'd still take the path of least resistance and pump out slop. The only way to make them care is to put them under editors that enforce standards. But how do you make a publication care enough to hire editors that care? Even state funded university press departments notoriously sloppy. If they can't uphold standards, I doubt any organization can.
  - _djo_ 3y ago
    I don't think you have any idea of the kind of time pressures journalists are under, and how little time they have to devote hours or days of deep research to each and every story they work on. At best you can get that for a large story if you're an investigative journalist, but very few have that privilege. All of the journalists I know personally would love to have more time to dig into stories, to do more background research, to spend more time following them up, and to get to understand a subject more deeply. None are given that opportunity in today's high pressure, short-staffed, and cut-to-the-bones newsrooms.

by ke88y 3y ago

mike_hearn 3y ago

The issue is not that they can't do it, they just don't want to. Journalists with no science background are happy to write quite technical fact checks of articles - even articles written by scientists - when those articles are contradicting something the journalists are already invested in. And often the problems don't need specialist knowledge to spot. The before/after images purporting to be of surgery in this article can be detected as fraud by anyone: https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-i-7e9764571422 https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-i-7e9764571422 No expertise needed. Blatant stuff like that is more obvious than we'd hope.

mcpackieh 3y ago
The issue is that journalists could do better if they wanted to, but they don't want to and there's no system of incentives in place that would make them want to. There's no such thing as a journalism license they could lose, and publishing nonsensical science articles doesn't hurt their careers in any way because nobody expects better of them. After all, they're just journalists with no STEM education... Even if you somehow forced science journalists to all get STEM dual majors, it still wouldn't make them care. They'd still take the path of least resistance and pump out slop. The only way to make them care is to put them under editors that enforce standards. But how do you make a publication care enough to hire editors that care? Even state funded university press departments notoriously sloppy. If they can't uphold standards, I doubt any organization can.
- _djo_ 3y ago
  I don't think you have any idea of the kind of time pressures journalists are under, and how little time they have to devote hours or days of deep research to each and every story they work on. At best you can get that for a large story if you're an investigative journalist, but very few have that privilege. All of the journalists I know personally would love to have more time to dig into stories, to do more background research, to spend more time following them up, and to get to understand a subject more deeply. None are given that opportunity in today's high pressure, short-staffed, and cut-to-the-bones newsrooms.