10 ms·

Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test

86 points by rrreese 14y ago

kintamanimatt 14y ago
"I could recite chapter and verse of the test drive, the decisions made along the way, the cabin temperature of the car, the cruise control setting and so on. I don’t think that’s useful here." Yes, yes it would be, especially when addressing the integrity of one of their journalists! She wore kid gloves when she rendered the comments regarding his "mistakes". Kid gloves are not appropriate. It appears the sentiment of this editor's blog post is essentially "we'll defend our journalists even when their articles have been exposed as unfairly biased." It feels like the journalistic equivalent of the thin blue line.
- wpietri 14y ago
  I was blown away by that as well. She might as well have written, "I have come to my conclusion, which is that we are fine, but since you people on the internet are meanies who are just going to argue your preconceived conclusions, I'm not going to tell you how I got there." The weird thing is, I think she's probably right. But I think the job of the public editor is precisely to address controversies of their reporters in sufficient detail that we don't have to trust her. Ombudsmen have to be seen as scrupulously fair to outsiders or there's no point in having them.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    Well, to be fair, from the POV of an insider, I could see how it's a gray area when you get to the point of saying someone thought they were doing a good job, but it looks like he's incompetent at getting facts right and curbing his own bias. Sometimes you have to stop short of even being close to saying a colleague needs to be fired, and let those matters play out quietly later on.
    - wpietri 14y ago
      That is understandable in any other employee at the Times, but it's a total failure in an ombudsman. They don't have to recommend firing; they can just say what happened and characterize is honestly. But they do have to always take the public's side, and they have to do it visibly. This particular position was created after the Jayson Blair scandal, so it's particularly important that they are frank in calling out bad reporting. Or, in this case, explaining why they think it wasn't bad reporting.
tunesmith 14y ago
Well, that said just about nothing at all.
- fiendsan 14y ago
  absolutely... especially for an editor! she talked a lot and said nothing! she has no opinion and leaves it absolutely open, aparently there is no fault by anyone? ... well at least the CEO of Tesla gave facts and not just his opinion (like the new york time journalist and editor)!
  - taligent 14y ago
    So which is it ? Does the editor have an opinion or not have an opinion. Also Musk gave his interpretation of the facts. One person's deliberate deceit is another's innocent mistake.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      Innocent, misleading, and pernicious -- none of those are mutually exclusive.
    - fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
      The editor has an opinion. She knows that Broder is full of it, and condemns him in the strongest allowable terms. She can't flog Broder outright (absent some glaring evidence of fraud or something), so she needs to smooth the waters. If there had been an angle to attack Musk with, I think there's a good chance that she'd have wailed on him.
tlrobinson 14y ago
Elon Musk seems satisfied: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/statuses/303585941304537090 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/statuses/303585941304537090
- jug6ernaut 14y ago
  Of course he is, he is as happy as the NYTimes is to put this fiasco to a close. Disregarding opinions on the matter this was not good PR for ether of them.
  - taligent 14y ago
    Problem is that the battle scars from this little fight lie almost exclusively with Musk and are going to persist for years to come. Tesla now has a reputation as being unusually aggressive in defending its position. Which has to be making media institutions wonder why on earth they would bother to review this ?
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      Given that several publications have already reviewed the car in the aftermath of this brouhaha, I doubt very seriously that anyone will avoid reviewing Tesla automobiles in the future.
      - taligent 14y ago
        Well it's pretty clear that some exploited the situation because of all the attention around it. But long term I would be very curious to see why anyone would review it knowing that any inaccuracies could result in a PR storm.
        stcredzero 14y ago
        > But long term I would be very curious to see why anyone would review it knowing that any inaccuracies could result in a PR storm. I should sincerely hope that future reviews would be devoid of under/over-reporting of numbers by 7 or 15%, all consistently in a single direction of bias, and combined with a lot of WTF decisions which cause people to wonder. I, too, am sincerely curious to see if media outlets will shy away from empirically based reviews, because they'll need to be done competently.
stcredzero 14y ago
> Mr. Broder and The Times have maintained that the article was done in good faith, and that it is an honest account of what happened So, in our public discourse, "honesty and good faith," have drifted down to the level of "deniably but somehow consistently fudged." In the words of Richard Feynman, there is: "a specific, extra type of integrity that is not [just not] lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong." It's this level of integrity that is needed in our public discourse concerning the complex and technically sophisticated world of today. If the NYTimes can't manage this in a simple car review, I wonder how they do with complex political and social issues.
- niggler 14y ago
  You must have your blinders on. Musk is not a god, and you have been eating up Tesla's story rather than looking at the data. Even Tesla's data corroborates most of Broder's account (heat was turned off, battery dropoff overnight, etc), and the only thing that remains is the question of the call logs. It's interesting that Tesla has the logs yet isn't revealing them. I suspect the logs will show that Tesla engineers didn't properly advise Broder on what to do, which is Tesla's fault, not any sort of fraudulence on NYT's part.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    > Even Tesla's data corroborates most of Broder's account I see you have it all wrong. I'm not in disagreement with that. (And there goes the basis for your comment.) Either you are willfully misreading my comment, or you're trying a subtle sleight of hand. The facts mostly fit Broder's account. I'm calling attention to the fact that all of the inaccuracies and bad decisions were pointedly in one direction. A reporter should have some facility in curbing his own bias. Apparently, Broder has insufficient competence in figures and self awareness for this. This is precisely what Feynmann is talking about in the quote.
    - niggler 14y ago
      "I'm calling attention to the fact that all of the inaccuracies and bad decisions were pointedly in one direction" They are not, though. From Broder's account (you should read the original article), most of the bad decisions and inaccuracies can be attributed to advice that Tesla gave Broder. That is the crux of the problem: Broder makes a claim based on Tesla engineer advice, and Musk denies and attributes that to malice. I am arguing against your implicit assertion that NYT is at fault at each point of divergence between NYT's and Tesla's account. It's still up in the air, and as I said: "only thing that remains is the question of the call logs. "
monsterix 14y ago
Don't how many of you'd seen this coming, but @homosaur and I'd discussed exactly this discourse [1] a week ago. Personally I think that entrepreneurs working on products that solve immensely challenging problems should always be given a benefit of doubt. Or two or three or may be even five times. Clearly this did not happen in Tesla's case. And yet in the original post from OP this part still seems a bit questionable: Mr. Broder’s irresponsibility in fuel management was in hope that something beyond “inconvenience” would happen to make the story more interesting. (Otherwise, no one, including me, would have paid much attention to his article.) [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5203207 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5203207
- jug6ernaut 14y ago
  "Personally, I think that a hard working entrepreneur, particularly those working on immensely challenging problems, must always be given a benefit of doubt in early reviews." Products should be reviewed based on there merit, "given a benefit of a doubt" is left up to the consumer. A reviewer should review every product the same, else the reviews are worthless because there is no continuity to compare the reviews. Do you want your reviews from some person you have never heard of or from someone well established? The answer is obvious.
  - monsterix 14y ago
    You're right. Reviewer must always be objective and review every product the same. Or at least be careful about the process used to arrive at the reportable opinion (which NYT seems to confess having missed completely! Strange?). However, here is a beautiful piece from Anton Ego of Ratatouille: "In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau’s, who is, in this critic’s opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau’s soon, hungry for more."
busterarm 14y ago
Everyone is really ignoring the real impact of this mess here. The NYT published something that is absolutely impossible to fact-check outside of an op-ed column. This wasn't even fit for publication to begin with. Print journalism is in no way superior to the bloggers they are in competition with - in fact, most journalists have to keep their own blogs now just to compete. Margaret's reply basically dances around saying that Broder failed to do his due diligence as a journalist. If you need any clearer sign that newspapers are not just declining but dead, this is it.
- tbrownaw 14y ago
  So newspapers are not permitted to perform original research?
  - busterarm 14y ago
    That's not really the job of newspapers. Newspapers are supposed to accurately and impartially report the news. Op-Ed work needs to be clearly marked as such. Now, it would be fair to say that the Automotive section, specifically the reviews, contains a fair bit more opinion than the rest of the paper, but there needs to be clear distinction. Going by the headline and the way the article was written, this clearly isn't the case. It was reported as news...as in it was about the car and neglected the fine personal detail that a review would have. It turns out though that the story here is more about Broder and how he drove the car. The way he drove it was more important than anything he reported about the car - it's not news. Broder writes other stories for the NYT that are genuine news. It's shocking to me that the current editorial format of the NYT allows crap like that to be published in the same venue. I'm basically saying that if this weren't written by an NYT staff reporter, it would have been an Op-Ed (or similarly labeled) if they allowed it for publication at all. They should not have.
    - crazygringo 14y ago
      > That's not really the job of newspapers. Newspapers are supposed to accurately and impartially report the news. I think you just made that up. According to who? I read newspapers with movie reviews, play reviews, comics pages, advertising, news analysis, car reviews, industry analysis, foreign affairs analysis, etc etc etc. Newspaper reporters win Pulitzers for their original research, investigation and analysis. God forbid if newspapers should ever merely "report the news", it would be a sad day.
jellicle 14y ago
> Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test Oddly, I would write the exact opposite headline. The NYT review has minor problems with precision and judgment, but major problems with integrity. Imagine a gasoline car review: "I'm here at a gas station with an empty tank, and I have 61 miles to the next gas station. I'm going to put in half a gallon of gasoline, hang up the nozzle and start driving to the next station. Oh no, I ran out of gas! Well, this proves the technology is still immature and that gas cars suck." Can you imagine this being a publishable review to the NYT editors?
- makomk 14y ago
  At a gas station, the time difference between putting in half a gallon and filling the tank is about 5 minutes. At the charging station he'd stopped off at, the difference between the charge he did and a full charge is about 9-12 hours. This is a fundamental, and currently inescapable, difference between gas and electric cars. Edit: Also, in a gas car your tank doesn't empty itself overnight unless you park in a really rough neighbourhood. He didn't have any reason to disbelieve his contact at Tesla when they said the lost range would return - hell, I've had Tesla fans tell me that their cars don't really lose range overnight, it's just calculated wrong, and I'm spreading FUD by pointing the range loss out. I bet they'd be going after Broder for that too if he'd waited for more of a charge.
  - jellicle 14y ago
    Yep, and he could have talked about that as an issue. That would have been absolutely legitimate - discussing the overall time to complete this trip, including charging time on the way, and comparing it to gasoline. Intentionally draining the battery, refusing to charge it up at any of the numerous opportunities to do so, and then blaming the car is not.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    > Edit: Also, in a gas car your tank doesn't empty itself overnight No, but your fuel could gel in a diesel car. Your battery could die. Your cooling system might freeze. I lived in a part of the country where people routinely plug in their gas powered cars for the night.
gizmo 14y ago
A few thoughts: 1. so it looks like the editor concedes that the truth is somewhere in between the original review and Musk's rebuttal. But the original review is up as is. It's not amended, not corrected in any way. 2. Elon Musk said his faith in the NYTimes is restored over twitter. This to me looks like Elon made a deliberate decision to pick a fight with a single contributor and not with the entire newspaper. Besides, Elon knows other people will continue fighting on his behalf, so he can now take the high road and back off. Good tactics here. 3. The spin by the NYT editor is really clever. By quoting another person who mostly sides with Tesla and agreeing with that person she comes across as responding to the conflict with substance. But because the words aren't her own she can keep her status as a mostly impartial arbiter. And because she didn't say which parts of the quoted response she agreed with she can deny any part of it if needed! What she did here is equivalent to composing a list of 7 statements and adding to the bottom "I agree with 4 out of the 7 statements above". Sneaky sneaky. 4. Her final conclusion is that "people will go on contesting these points" but ultimately "few conclusions are unassailable". That's pretty much a classic "it's all relative" sort of response. The fact that people are in vocal disagreement doesn't mean you can just wave your hands and say essentially "well, the situation is just complex" and use that to justify keeping the original article up unchanged.
- knowtheory 14y ago
  Okay. I'll bite. What corrections would you like them to make? Seems like a lot of this is a matter of degree and a bit of embellishment. But I would hardly call the original article a hit piece or anything. I suppose if i had my druthers it'd be nice for the original piece link to the public editor's post, or some other compendium of the saga.
  - cma 14y ago
    I'd like them to correct "freezing toes"... look at the cabin temperature graph
    - stouset 14y ago
      My toes practically go numb at prolonged exposure to temperatures in the low sixties.
tokenadult 14y ago
This statement by the New York Times public editor certainly reads like a rebuke of reporter John Broder for how thoroughly he (didn't) take notes during his reporting drive, and suggests that reporters will have a responsibility to bring along more electronic data-recording devices in future reporting. The latest blog post by Bruce Schneier http://schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/02/automobile_data.html http://schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/02/automobile_data.ht... (just submitted to HN, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5241508 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5241508 moments ago) suggests that even with a journalist leading a quantified life to submit quantified stories, there will still be issues of interpretation of the data that will be very hard to resolves, especially when a corporation wants to sell cars with a public subsidy while a news organization wants to preserve a reputation of hard-hitting, non-toadying journalism.
- fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
  >...especially when a corporation wants to sell cars with a public subsidy Know a lot of domestic car companies who aren't on the dole?
teyc 14y ago
I would have thought that a Tesla's fancy trip computer would be able to account for, among other things - elevation changes, cold weather performance and provide smarter advice than what a human support agent would. Instead, the range estimator seems to project current usage over the remainder of the entire trip.
gfodor 14y ago
The problem with this "wrap-up" of the drama is that it fails to leave the reader with a clearer understanding of if the Tesla Model S is an automobile that has serious engineering problems. Instead, it dives deeper into the "controversy" which isn't really the point. Politics and Musk/Broder egos aside, any competent third party observer can come to the conclusion that the review was flawed and hence should not should influence the buying decision of a potential Model S customer one way or the other. This is the entire role of the NYT in this issue: to inform the consumer. Instead of providing clarity for the consumer the NYT continues to prefer to dive into meta-talk about itself and its story (as the media loves to do, report on itself) and fails to call a spade a spade. Pathetic.
jwatte 14y ago
So, Broder had admitted to braking the law by going 85 to "keep up with traffic." That's the most bizarre omission here -- we don't get to pick and choose which laws we decide to follow!
headbiznatch 14y ago
Funny - I feel precision and good judgement are the primary qualities by which the integrity of a journalist should be measured.
Osiris 14y ago
The good thing to come out of this is that the next time someone is given a test drive for a review that they'll be very aware that everything is being electronically monitored. At least that should help keep people honest.
ignostic 14y ago
Here's what seems clear from the whole thing: 1. Musk jumped to conclusions. For example, he claimed the car was driven in circles with the intent of running it out of battery. I think the innocent, "I was looking for the charger" explanation made sense. He concocted his own narrow explanations without verifying the facts or asking questions. 2. Broder failed to understand the car and the advice given to him. We can only speculate on the quality of that advice. What Tesla didn't log were the conversations. Broder also trusted the "one hour charge" despite failing to confirm he was good to go, or listen to common sense. Broder published the article with emotion and without further consulting with Tesla on the cause of his bad experience. Musk immediately claimed the article was done in bad faith rather than checking the facts and opening a dialog like an adult. The resulting situation is almost poetic. Both Mr. Musk and Mr. Broder's mistakes provide their own unique insights on the importance of understand human communication. I know the crowd I'm talking to puts a lot of stock in the vehicle logs, but we're missing the communication logs we'd need to know what really happened or who said what to whom. Maybe next time Tesla should log the conversations, too.
- niggler 14y ago
  "I know the crowd I'm talking to puts a lot of stock in the vehicle logs, but we're missing the communication logs we'd need to know what really happened or who said what to whom." You should read the discussions. I brought this up many times: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240527 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240527 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240237 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240237 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5228442 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5228442 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5223681 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5223681 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5223448 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5223448 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5222275 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5222275 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5220019 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5220019 You can find these by searching for call logs niggler in the HN Search
- cube13 14y ago
  >Broder published the article with emotion and without further consulting with Tesla on the cause of his bad experience. Musk immediately claimed the article was done in bad faith rather than checking the facts and opening a dialog like an adult. Broder claimed in his first response that Musk had reached out to him for another go at the trip, once more stations are up. Musk has not denied that that took place, so I don't see any reason to believe that this isn't the case.
OGinparadise 14y ago
A little red notebook in the front seat is no match for digitally recorded driving logs, which Mr. Musk has used, in the most damaging (and sometimes quite misleading) ways possible, as he defended his vehicle’s reputation. Personally I agree, and to the suggestion that people read the manual and blah blah blah...how many people in the real read it in detail? So this is /was more of real person test drive. Moral of the story: buy an electric car or a Tesla only for short term drives and if you are willing to go through a series of hoops to charge and care for it. From the review--and especially from Musk's attitude--Tesla would not be for me, even if I had the money. Elon needs a rule, like holding off any comments for 24-48 hours, he needs to calm down. Driving 0.6 miles is not grounds for "he was trying to run the battery down on purpose to fake the interview." He is a loose cannon and does his company no service.

86 points by rrreese 14y ago

"I could recite chapter and verse of the test drive, the decisions made along the way, the cabin temperature of the car, the cruise control setting and so on. I don’t think that’s useful here." Yes, yes it would be, especially when addressing the integrity of one of their journalists! She wore kid gloves when she rendered the comments regarding his "mistakes". Kid gloves are not appropriate. It appears the sentiment of this editor's blog post is essentially "we'll defend our journalists even when their articles have been exposed as unfairly biased." It feels like the journalistic equivalent of the thin blue line.

wpietri 14y ago
I was blown away by that as well. She might as well have written, "I have come to my conclusion, which is that we are fine, but since you people on the internet are meanies who are just going to argue your preconceived conclusions, I'm not going to tell you how I got there." The weird thing is, I think she's probably right. But I think the job of the public editor is precisely to address controversies of their reporters in sufficient detail that we don't have to trust her. Ombudsmen have to be seen as scrupulously fair to outsiders or there's no point in having them.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  Well, to be fair, from the POV of an insider, I could see how it's a gray area when you get to the point of saying someone thought they were doing a good job, but it looks like he's incompetent at getting facts right and curbing his own bias. Sometimes you have to stop short of even being close to saying a colleague needs to be fired, and let those matters play out quietly later on.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    That is understandable in any other employee at the Times, but it's a total failure in an ombudsman. They don't have to recommend firing; they can just say what happened and characterize is honestly. But they do have to always take the public's side, and they have to do it visibly. This particular position was created after the Jayson Blair scandal, so it's particularly important that they are frank in calling out bad reporting. Or, in this case, explaining why they think it wasn't bad reporting.

tunesmith 14y ago

Well, that said just about nothing at all.

fiendsan 14y ago
absolutely... especially for an editor! she talked a lot and said nothing! she has no opinion and leaves it absolutely open, aparently there is no fault by anyone? ... well at least the CEO of Tesla gave facts and not just his opinion (like the new york time journalist and editor)!
- taligent 14y ago
  So which is it ? Does the editor have an opinion or not have an opinion. Also Musk gave his interpretation of the facts. One person's deliberate deceit is another's innocent mistake.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    Innocent, misleading, and pernicious -- none of those are mutually exclusive.
  - fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
    The editor has an opinion. She knows that Broder is full of it, and condemns him in the strongest allowable terms. She can't flog Broder outright (absent some glaring evidence of fraud or something), so she needs to smooth the waters. If there had been an angle to attack Musk with, I think there's a good chance that she'd have wailed on him.

tlrobinson 14y ago

Elon Musk seems satisfied: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/statuses/303585941304537090 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/statuses/303585941304537090

jug6ernaut 14y ago
Of course he is, he is as happy as the NYTimes is to put this fiasco to a close. Disregarding opinions on the matter this was not good PR for ether of them.
- taligent 14y ago
  Problem is that the battle scars from this little fight lie almost exclusively with Musk and are going to persist for years to come. Tesla now has a reputation as being unusually aggressive in defending its position. Which has to be making media institutions wonder why on earth they would bother to review this ?
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    Given that several publications have already reviewed the car in the aftermath of this brouhaha, I doubt very seriously that anyone will avoid reviewing Tesla automobiles in the future.
    - taligent 14y ago
      Well it's pretty clear that some exploited the situation because of all the attention around it. But long term I would be very curious to see why anyone would review it knowing that any inaccuracies could result in a PR storm.
      - stcredzero 14y ago
        > But long term I would be very curious to see why anyone would review it knowing that any inaccuracies could result in a PR storm. I should sincerely hope that future reviews would be devoid of under/over-reporting of numbers by 7 or 15%, all consistently in a single direction of bias, and combined with a lot of WTF decisions which cause people to wonder. I, too, am sincerely curious to see if media outlets will shy away from empirically based reviews, because they'll need to be done competently.

stcredzero 14y ago

> Mr. Broder and The Times have maintained that the article was done in good faith, and that it is an honest account of what happened So, in our public discourse, "honesty and good faith," have drifted down to the level of "deniably but somehow consistently fudged." In the words of Richard Feynman, there is: "a specific, extra type of integrity that is not [just not] lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong." It's this level of integrity that is needed in our public discourse concerning the complex and technically sophisticated world of today. If the NYTimes can't manage this in a simple car review, I wonder how they do with complex political and social issues.

niggler 14y ago
You must have your blinders on. Musk is not a god, and you have been eating up Tesla's story rather than looking at the data. Even Tesla's data corroborates most of Broder's account (heat was turned off, battery dropoff overnight, etc), and the only thing that remains is the question of the call logs. It's interesting that Tesla has the logs yet isn't revealing them. I suspect the logs will show that Tesla engineers didn't properly advise Broder on what to do, which is Tesla's fault, not any sort of fraudulence on NYT's part.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > Even Tesla's data corroborates most of Broder's account I see you have it all wrong. I'm not in disagreement with that. (And there goes the basis for your comment.) Either you are willfully misreading my comment, or you're trying a subtle sleight of hand. The facts mostly fit Broder's account. I'm calling attention to the fact that all of the inaccuracies and bad decisions were pointedly in one direction. A reporter should have some facility in curbing his own bias. Apparently, Broder has insufficient competence in figures and self awareness for this. This is precisely what Feynmann is talking about in the quote.
  - niggler 14y ago
    "I'm calling attention to the fact that all of the inaccuracies and bad decisions were pointedly in one direction" They are not, though. From Broder's account (you should read the original article), most of the bad decisions and inaccuracies can be attributed to advice that Tesla gave Broder. That is the crux of the problem: Broder makes a claim based on Tesla engineer advice, and Musk denies and attributes that to malice. I am arguing against your implicit assertion that NYT is at fault at each point of divergence between NYT's and Tesla's account. It's still up in the air, and as I said: "only thing that remains is the question of the call logs. "

monsterix 14y ago

Don't how many of you'd seen this coming, but @homosaur and I'd discussed exactly this discourse [1] a week ago. Personally I think that entrepreneurs working on products that solve immensely challenging problems should always be given a benefit of doubt. Or two or three or may be even five times. Clearly this did not happen in Tesla's case. And yet in the original post from OP this part still seems a bit questionable: Mr. Broder’s irresponsibility in fuel management was in hope that something beyond “inconvenience” would happen to make the story more interesting. (Otherwise, no one, including me, would have paid much attention to his article.) [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5203207 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5203207

jug6ernaut 14y ago
"Personally, I think that a hard working entrepreneur, particularly those working on immensely challenging problems, must always be given a benefit of doubt in early reviews." Products should be reviewed based on there merit, "given a benefit of a doubt" is left up to the consumer. A reviewer should review every product the same, else the reviews are worthless because there is no continuity to compare the reviews. Do you want your reviews from some person you have never heard of or from someone well established? The answer is obvious.
- monsterix 14y ago
  You're right. Reviewer must always be objective and review every product the same. Or at least be careful about the process used to arrive at the reportable opinion (which NYT seems to confess having missed completely! Strange?). However, here is a beautiful piece from Anton Ego of Ratatouille: "In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau’s, who is, in this critic’s opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau’s soon, hungry for more."

busterarm 14y ago

Everyone is really ignoring the real impact of this mess here. The NYT published something that is absolutely impossible to fact-check outside of an op-ed column. This wasn't even fit for publication to begin with. Print journalism is in no way superior to the bloggers they are in competition with - in fact, most journalists have to keep their own blogs now just to compete. Margaret's reply basically dances around saying that Broder failed to do his due diligence as a journalist. If you need any clearer sign that newspapers are not just declining but dead, this is it.

tbrownaw 14y ago
So newspapers are not permitted to perform original research?
- busterarm 14y ago
  That's not really the job of newspapers. Newspapers are supposed to accurately and impartially report the news. Op-Ed work needs to be clearly marked as such. Now, it would be fair to say that the Automotive section, specifically the reviews, contains a fair bit more opinion than the rest of the paper, but there needs to be clear distinction. Going by the headline and the way the article was written, this clearly isn't the case. It was reported as news...as in it was about the car and neglected the fine personal detail that a review would have. It turns out though that the story here is more about Broder and how he drove the car. The way he drove it was more important than anything he reported about the car - it's not news. Broder writes other stories for the NYT that are genuine news. It's shocking to me that the current editorial format of the NYT allows crap like that to be published in the same venue. I'm basically saying that if this weren't written by an NYT staff reporter, it would have been an Op-Ed (or similarly labeled) if they allowed it for publication at all. They should not have.
  - crazygringo 14y ago
    > That's not really the job of newspapers. Newspapers are supposed to accurately and impartially report the news. I think you just made that up. According to who? I read newspapers with movie reviews, play reviews, comics pages, advertising, news analysis, car reviews, industry analysis, foreign affairs analysis, etc etc etc. Newspaper reporters win Pulitzers for their original research, investigation and analysis. God forbid if newspapers should ever merely "report the news", it would be a sad day.

jellicle 14y ago

> Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test Oddly, I would write the exact opposite headline. The NYT review has minor problems with precision and judgment, but major problems with integrity. Imagine a gasoline car review: "I'm here at a gas station with an empty tank, and I have 61 miles to the next gas station. I'm going to put in half a gallon of gasoline, hang up the nozzle and start driving to the next station. Oh no, I ran out of gas! Well, this proves the technology is still immature and that gas cars suck." Can you imagine this being a publishable review to the NYT editors?

makomk 14y ago
At a gas station, the time difference between putting in half a gallon and filling the tank is about 5 minutes. At the charging station he'd stopped off at, the difference between the charge he did and a full charge is about 9-12 hours. This is a fundamental, and currently inescapable, difference between gas and electric cars. Edit: Also, in a gas car your tank doesn't empty itself overnight unless you park in a really rough neighbourhood. He didn't have any reason to disbelieve his contact at Tesla when they said the lost range would return - hell, I've had Tesla fans tell me that their cars don't really lose range overnight, it's just calculated wrong, and I'm spreading FUD by pointing the range loss out. I bet they'd be going after Broder for that too if he'd waited for more of a charge.
- jellicle 14y ago
  Yep, and he could have talked about that as an issue. That would have been absolutely legitimate - discussing the overall time to complete this trip, including charging time on the way, and comparing it to gasoline. Intentionally draining the battery, refusing to charge it up at any of the numerous opportunities to do so, and then blaming the car is not.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > Edit: Also, in a gas car your tank doesn't empty itself overnight No, but your fuel could gel in a diesel car. Your battery could die. Your cooling system might freeze. I lived in a part of the country where people routinely plug in their gas powered cars for the night.

gizmo 14y ago

A few thoughts: 1. so it looks like the editor concedes that the truth is somewhere in between the original review and Musk's rebuttal. But the original review is up as is. It's not amended, not corrected in any way. 2. Elon Musk said his faith in the NYTimes is restored over twitter. This to me looks like Elon made a deliberate decision to pick a fight with a single contributor and not with the entire newspaper. Besides, Elon knows other people will continue fighting on his behalf, so he can now take the high road and back off. Good tactics here. 3. The spin by the NYT editor is really clever. By quoting another person who mostly sides with Tesla and agreeing with that person she comes across as responding to the conflict with substance. But because the words aren't her own she can keep her status as a mostly impartial arbiter. And because she didn't say which parts of the quoted response she agreed with she can deny any part of it if needed! What she did here is equivalent to composing a list of 7 statements and adding to the bottom "I agree with 4 out of the 7 statements above". Sneaky sneaky. 4. Her final conclusion is that "people will go on contesting these points" but ultimately "few conclusions are unassailable". That's pretty much a classic "it's all relative" sort of response. The fact that people are in vocal disagreement doesn't mean you can just wave your hands and say essentially "well, the situation is just complex" and use that to justify keeping the original article up unchanged.

knowtheory 14y ago
Okay. I'll bite. What corrections would you like them to make? Seems like a lot of this is a matter of degree and a bit of embellishment. But I would hardly call the original article a hit piece or anything. I suppose if i had my druthers it'd be nice for the original piece link to the public editor's post, or some other compendium of the saga.
- cma 14y ago
  I'd like them to correct "freezing toes"... look at the cabin temperature graph
  - stouset 14y ago
    My toes practically go numb at prolonged exposure to temperatures in the low sixties.

tokenadult 14y ago

This statement by the New York Times public editor certainly reads like a rebuke of reporter John Broder for how thoroughly he (didn't) take notes during his reporting drive, and suggests that reporters will have a responsibility to bring along more electronic data-recording devices in future reporting. The latest blog post by Bruce Schneier http://schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/02/automobile_data.html http://schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/02/automobile_data.ht... (just submitted to HN, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5241508 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5241508 moments ago) suggests that even with a journalist leading a quantified life to submit quantified stories, there will still be issues of interpretation of the data that will be very hard to resolves, especially when a corporation wants to sell cars with a public subsidy while a news organization wants to preserve a reputation of hard-hitting, non-toadying journalism.

fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
>...especially when a corporation wants to sell cars with a public subsidy Know a lot of domestic car companies who aren't on the dole?

teyc 14y ago

I would have thought that a Tesla's fancy trip computer would be able to account for, among other things - elevation changes, cold weather performance and provide smarter advice than what a human support agent would. Instead, the range estimator seems to project current usage over the remainder of the entire trip.

gfodor 14y ago

The problem with this "wrap-up" of the drama is that it fails to leave the reader with a clearer understanding of if the Tesla Model S is an automobile that has serious engineering problems. Instead, it dives deeper into the "controversy" which isn't really the point. Politics and Musk/Broder egos aside, any competent third party observer can come to the conclusion that the review was flawed and hence should not should influence the buying decision of a potential Model S customer one way or the other. This is the entire role of the NYT in this issue: to inform the consumer. Instead of providing clarity for the consumer the NYT continues to prefer to dive into meta-talk about itself and its story (as the media loves to do, report on itself) and fails to call a spade a spade. Pathetic.

jwatte 14y ago

So, Broder had admitted to braking the law by going 85 to "keep up with traffic." That's the most bizarre omission here -- we don't get to pick and choose which laws we decide to follow!

headbiznatch 14y ago

Funny - I feel precision and good judgement are the primary qualities by which the integrity of a journalist should be measured.

Osiris 14y ago

The good thing to come out of this is that the next time someone is given a test drive for a review that they'll be very aware that everything is being electronically monitored. At least that should help keep people honest.

ignostic 14y ago

Here's what seems clear from the whole thing: 1. Musk jumped to conclusions. For example, he claimed the car was driven in circles with the intent of running it out of battery. I think the innocent, "I was looking for the charger" explanation made sense. He concocted his own narrow explanations without verifying the facts or asking questions. 2. Broder failed to understand the car and the advice given to him. We can only speculate on the quality of that advice. What Tesla didn't log were the conversations. Broder also trusted the "one hour charge" despite failing to confirm he was good to go, or listen to common sense. Broder published the article with emotion and without further consulting with Tesla on the cause of his bad experience. Musk immediately claimed the article was done in bad faith rather than checking the facts and opening a dialog like an adult. The resulting situation is almost poetic. Both Mr. Musk and Mr. Broder's mistakes provide their own unique insights on the importance of understand human communication. I know the crowd I'm talking to puts a lot of stock in the vehicle logs, but we're missing the communication logs we'd need to know what really happened or who said what to whom. Maybe next time Tesla should log the conversations, too.

niggler 14y ago
"I know the crowd I'm talking to puts a lot of stock in the vehicle logs, but we're missing the communication logs we'd need to know what really happened or who said what to whom." You should read the discussions. I brought this up many times: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240527 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240527 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240237 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240237 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5228442 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5228442 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5223681 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5223681 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5223448 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5223448 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5222275 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5222275 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5220019 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5220019 You can find these by searching for call logs niggler in the HN Search
cube13 14y ago
>Broder published the article with emotion and without further consulting with Tesla on the cause of his bad experience. Musk immediately claimed the article was done in bad faith rather than checking the facts and opening a dialog like an adult. Broder claimed in his first response that Musk had reached out to him for another go at the trip, once more stations are up. Musk has not denied that that took place, so I don't see any reason to believe that this isn't the case.

OGinparadise 14y ago

A little red notebook in the front seat is no match for digitally recorded driving logs, which Mr. Musk has used, in the most damaging (and sometimes quite misleading) ways possible, as he defended his vehicle’s reputation. Personally I agree, and to the suggestion that people read the manual and blah blah blah...how many people in the real read it in detail? So this is /was more of real person test drive. Moral of the story: buy an electric car or a Tesla only for short term drives and if you are willing to go through a series of hoops to charge and care for it. From the review--and especially from Musk's attitude--Tesla would not be for me, even if I had the money. Elon needs a rule, like holding off any comments for 24-48 hours, he needs to calm down. Driving 0.6 miles is not grounds for "he was trying to run the battery down on purpose to fake the interview." He is a loose cannon and does his company no service.