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"Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories which gain attention and make ‘impact’" Asserted without evidence in an opinion piec

"Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories which gain attention and make ‘impact’" Asserted without evidence in an opinion piece arguing for the use of evidence. Not super compelling. Historian's have had incentives for dramatic narratives since the age of Homer.

asu_thomas 3y ago
See: increasingly strong
raxxorraxor 3y ago
I wouldn't know how you would be able to present evidence of this, but the economic realities of liberals arts and niche fields of research is a pretty well known circumstance. Funding arctic expeditions and research tends to be easier if you find some man-eating killer penguins that were frozen in the ice and now resurface due to climate change. Getting funding is politics and politics needs to make headlines. Since headlines do get more sensationalist due to the attention economy, it could be concluded that scientific claims have to follow the trend. The example given about the iron inventions was likewise asserted without evidence and purely from conjecture (at least that is how it is described). This is no empirical evidence to prove a systemic effect, but nevertheless interesting.
mihaaly 3y ago
The writing is reporting on a sensationalist article praised by peers and famed by media debunked perhaps completely by an other article with a potential motive picked that is not too far from what we all experience in the sensationalist world around us but now sweeping into peer reviewed articles too. What sort of evidentic proof you need that measures the incresing (observe the meaning of this word please when referring to Homer) incentives for being sensationalist exactly? Is there some sort of objectic measurement for dramatic storitelling you miss? Isn't enough considering this piece what it is as an educated speculation on what has happened here? Must not come up with a theory before have all the empirically evidence forming an ironclad around it?

asu_thomas 3y ago

See: increasingly strong

raxxorraxor 3y ago

I wouldn't know how you would be able to present evidence of this, but the economic realities of liberals arts and niche fields of research is a pretty well known circumstance. Funding arctic expeditions and research tends to be easier if you find some man-eating killer penguins that were frozen in the ice and now resurface due to climate change. Getting funding is politics and politics needs to make headlines. Since headlines do get more sensationalist due to the attention economy, it could be concluded that scientific claims have to follow the trend. The example given about the iron inventions was likewise asserted without evidence and purely from conjecture (at least that is how it is described). This is no empirical evidence to prove a systemic effect, but nevertheless interesting.

mihaaly 3y ago

The writing is reporting on a sensationalist article praised by peers and famed by media debunked perhaps completely by an other article with a potential motive picked that is not too far from what we all experience in the sensationalist world around us but now sweeping into peer reviewed articles too. What sort of evidentic proof you need that measures the incresing (observe the meaning of this word please when referring to Homer) incentives for being sensationalist exactly? Is there some sort of objectic measurement for dramatic storitelling you miss? Isn't enough considering this piece what it is as an educated speculation on what has happened here? Must not come up with a theory before have all the empirically evidence forming an ironclad around it?