5 ms·

you should just assume that any reporting you see on almost any topic is at a minimum biased, if not a complete fabrication by either an individual with a perso

• bsenftner 3y ago
  I've had my work in the press about a half dozen times in my career, and every single time the factual aspect of their reporting was so wildly incorrect, after the third time I just began to assume they, the press, are terrible exaggerating liars. I know a few celebrities, both entertainment and just plain famous for being rich, and what is written about them is pure fantasy fiction.
• kurthr 3y ago
  They discuss the economic and social incentives (even the cognitive dissonance that what I'm writing must be important if a lot of people read it) of the writers. However, the readers are also turning off their BS detectors. I'm not a great proponent of the so called "Gell-Mann Amnesia", if only because it's been reported about in Wired Magazine and I know how much they get wrong, but some of these academics and reporters have real responsibilities and reputations. They deserve to be publicly criticized, because only shame or lost income will change the behavior. However, we readers get our own little dopamine boost from reading stuff we want to believe in or at least arguing about it. It's great being told your first impression was right all along, or that you're the first to read some amazing result nobody expected, and even better a combination of both! That's dangerous, if you want to make reasonable decisions about what to focus on rather than simple entertainment. I'll propose a solution: fix the link headline! Can LLMs in the browser be used to rewrite the headlines of full articles (and heck why not the source material) to add "in vitro" or "in mice" or "in (1988)" or "based on a single result" or "in a pay-to-play journal"? I'd think it would be much more difficult to trick even a dumb LLM without resorting to very clearly unethical reporting and it would make A/B testing headlines less important. LLMs don't have dopamine.
  • skmurphy 3y ago
    I think you are on to something with a checklist for benchmarking how solid a research claim is: Where was it conducted: in silico (simulation only) in vitro (test tube only) in mice (or other animal study) how old is it: what earlier research does it build on what other research has been done that replicates or disproves it. Are you aware of other checklists like this?
• remarkEon 3y ago
  >but it is the world we live in now It has always been like this. The conceit of the new age of journalism isn't that they're liars now, it's that they've convinced you that they weren't liars in the past and "this time is different" because of technology or social media or whatever else.
  • redcobra762 3y ago
    Fair enough to claim journalism tries to perch itself on the moral high ground, but I don’t think it’s entirely fair to call the general work of the average journalist as “lies”.
    • remarkEon 3y ago
      Every distribution has a tale.