Incredibly bad science journalism

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The discussion highlights a range of poor science writing examples, emphasizing the negative impact on public understanding of science. Contributors share specific instances, such as a Harvard article that misrepresents the focus of research on human cells, and a local TV report on global warming that incorrectly explains the reflective properties of snow and water. Other examples include a misinformed AP article on ethanol production and a New York Times piece that presents a "balanced" view of Intelligent Design by equating it with Darwinian evolution, showcasing a lack of depth in understanding. The conversation also touches on a bizarre article from the Indian Express claiming to find an unlimited energy source from galaxies, which is criticized as nonsensical. Overall, the thread serves as a "wall of shame" for egregious science journalism, calling attention to the need for better standards in reporting scientific topics.
Rach3
I've been inadvertently running into some truly abysmal science writing recently. The purpose of this thread is to highlight the most egregious, or hilarious, examples. A "wall of shame". Anyone can contribute! Let's try to enjoy this as much as possible... and not dwell on the depressing reprecussions this has on the public's awareness of science...

Here's exhibit A: an excerpt from an article about biotech at Harvard.

During his 5-year tenure as the university's president, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers worked to put Harvard at the forefront of research on how the human cell works, a question the school's founders and the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Puritan leaders would have kept in the province of religion alone.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=inDepthNews&storyID=2006-06-02T145110Z_01_N31211645_RTRUKOC_0_US-HARVARD.xml
 
Physics news on Phys.org
I feel like I am going to laugh at the wrong things...
 
Great idea for a post, and I do agree that science coverage in the media is abysmal (and I say that being ex-media) but it is also abysmal in everything not featuring a movie star or "musician".
 
"The human cell"? Is he reffering to the planet on which we are imprisoned?!

Gives me a whole new image of NASA and the ESA;

- "Yeah, me n' Mugsy, we're goin' over da wall, see?"
 
On my local TV station, they reported about Global Warming and the Arctic Ice Sheets.

According to them, snow - being white - reflects sunlight, while open water - being dark ... apparently "attracts" sunlight.


(Yes, I remember going to the ocean when I was a boy, standing on the beach and watching all the sunlight bend away from land toward the water...)
 
DaveC426913 said:
(Yes, I remember going to the ocean when I was a boy, standing on the beach and watching all the sunlight bend away from land toward the water...)
You too? :biggrin:
 
From a feel-good AP article about ethanol:
The 40-acre distillery turns corn into alcohol in quantities that would make a moonshiner drool. Instead of white lightnin', the brew is converted to ethanol, a fuel that makes money for farmers and is seen as a possible solution to today's high oil and gas prices.
 
Rach3 said:
From a feel-good AP article about ethanol:
I've heard a number of reports about ethanol as a fuel for vehicles that have similarly come across as if the reporter was clueless that ethanol is the drinkable alcohol, because of course we don't have other ethanol production facilities in the US, right? :smile: They also have come across sounding like nobody has ever thought of using ethanol as a fuel before, that it's something brand new. I guess they get confused because the idea was originally presented to the consumer market as "gasohol" and now it's called "ethanol." Gosh, and I thought the lesson on alcohols was the one chemistry class everyone actually paid attention to. :rolleyes:
 
This one isn't science writing as much as statistics, oh well. A US General tries to look on the bright side of the Haditha killings:

"Regardless of the outcome of these investigations, 99.9 percent of the servicemen and service women are doing what we expect them to do," he said.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060604/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq_haditha_2;_ylt=AoUWAyrUOmkcnZOXTBcQdphX6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl )

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean... :confused:
 
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  • #10
I'm a bit late on this one - here's an atrocity from the New York Times last August, by Kenneth Chang. In which a very lazy science writer does his version of a "balanced" presentation of Intelligent Design, balanced in the moronic sense of throwing together equal numbers of quotes from either side, and letting the reader choose:

In Explaining Life's Complexity, Darwinists and Doubters Clash

Note the use of the word "Darwinists" in the title. :bugeye: Here's an illustrative excerpt from page 4:
Dr. Axe calculated that of the plausible amino acid sequences, only one in 100,000 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion - a number written as 1 followed by 77 zeroes - would provide resistance to penicillin.

In other words, the probability was essentially zero.

Dr. Axe's research appeared last year in The Journal of Molecular Biology, a peer-reviewed scientific publication.

Dr. Kenneth R. Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University and a frequent sparring partner of design proponents, said that in his study, Dr. Axe did not look at penicillinase "the way evolution looks at the protein."

Natural selection, he said, is not random. A small number of mutations, sometimes just one, can change the function of a protein, allowing it to diverge along new evolutionary paths and eventually form a new shape or fold.

:smile: :smile: :smile: :smile: :smile:

(uncovered by Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance)
 
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  • #11
DaveC426913 said:
On my local TV station, they reported about Global Warming and the Arctic Ice Sheets.
These things are much funnier when it's the New York Times screwing up, rather than some two-bit local station. It's understandable that small-town writers are often illiterate dolts. But when the editors at the NYTimes or BBC let something like pass, it's totally bizarre and inexucsable. I find it amusing. Others prefer to cry.
 
  • #12
About a year ago, this article was published in the Educational Express, a supplement of the Indian Express newspaper

Scientists are finally finding clues to the unlimited source of alternate energy. It is not hydrogen, not solar, not nuclear and not something that you hear from alternate energy source specailists. It is something that runs the universe, causes gravitation and so on. It is the continuous generation and emmision of electromagnetic waves that requires continuous supply of energy. And the galaxies supply that energy all the time. If this energy can be captured and used, it will solve our energy needs forever.

The energy is all around us. We just need to learn to capture and use it. The energy source is the galactic bodies all around the universe. However, the conversion of planetary bodies into pure energy is an inevitable event at the inner region of galatic spiral, because sooner or later masses traveling closer and closer with increasing gravitation and acceleration towards each other must crash together. Only in the galactic center, they will be ground, milled as well, until all atomic binding energies, ie, Strong and Weak forces are completely released or decoupled from atomic bondage.

Spiralling pure energy flux through the angular divisions of force field symmetry from the outer region of galactic fields towards the inner center, therefore, generates a seamless spectrum of energy waves. And because there is a continuous conversion of galactic mass to energy, this is the enormus steady force that repel the galaxies to recede from each other, a phenomenon called the expansion of the universe. Scientists and Engineers are working on harnessing this energy that will solve the alternate energy needs forever. It will also make bending space and time. Interestingly, with a proper breakthrough it may move our human civilisation by thousands of years.

(http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/2843.asp")

They even put a picture with the article.
http://img273.imageshack.us/img273/5290/bull1tb.jpg

Can't get worse than that :biggrin:
 
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  • #13
Rach3 said:
These things are much funnier when it's the New York Times screwing up, rather than some two-bit local station. It's understandable that small-town writers are often illiterate dolts. But when the editors at the NYTimes or BBC let something like pass, it's totally bizarre and inexucsable. I find it amusing. Others prefer to cry.
Sorry, not two-bit local. CTV News - Toronto's main news station.
 
  • #14
siddharth - That's not journalism, that's crackpottery!
 
  • #15
DaveC426913 said:
Sorry, not two-bit local. CTV News - Toronto's main news station.

Yes, that's what "local" means.
 
  • #16
siddharth said:
About a year ago, this article was published in the Educational Express, a supplement of the Indian Express newspaper


...

Can't get worse than that :biggrin:

I see the technical writers for Star Trek have found new jobs...

Did the article mention the Crimson Force Field too? :smile:
 
  • #17
Rach3 said:
siddharth - That's not journalism, that's crackpottery!

It's crackpottery, but it was published in a national newspaper!
 
  • #18
siddharth said:
About a year ago, this article was published in the Educational Express, a supplement of the Indian Express newspaper



(http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/2843.asp")

They even put a picture with the article.


Can't get worse than that :biggrin:


I truly feel dumber having read that. I'm pretty sure they just drew words out of a hat and hoped for the best. I need advil now.
 
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  • #19
franznietzsche said:
I truly feel dumber having read that. I'm pretty sure they just drew words out of a hat and hoped for the best. I need advil now.

I wonder who these "scientists" are and what does htis "technology team" smoke?
 
  • #20
From post#10 by Rach:

NYTimes said:
In other words, the probability was essentially zero.
With this one, I hope it's just bad science journalism. If that line is the journalist's addition, then it's okay that a mistake in assuming that the underlying probability distribution be uniform is made. However, if he was merely repeating something said by Dr. Axe, that line becomes truly criminal.
 
  • #21
Gokul43201 said:
However, if he was merely repeating something said by Dr. Axe, that line becomes truly criminal.

That's exactly what he does, throughout the article. This is shockingly lazy 'journalism' indeed.
 
  • #22
Here's a bizarre statement from some other planet with one-tenth our gravity:

Big-leaf mahogany, grown in Central and South America is listed under the CITES treaty as endangered, requiring regulation through export permits. But the lawsuit contends Peruvian authorities have not been able to control illegal harvesting of the huge trees that grow to 500 feet or more and take 60 years to mature.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060606/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/peruvian_mahogany

With a bit of careful reading and research, I figured out that this [utterly irresponsible] journalist lifted this factoid, unchecked, from an environmental "action organization":

http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/habitat/esa/international03p.asp

Who knows why they needed to make up unreasonable, physically impossible numbers. Who knows why some journalists (an AP writer, no less!) don't know a 'source' from a hole in the ground. Anyway, actual numbers are - 30-35m or 100-110 feet is an upper end for macrophylla, numbers which our journalist's uncorroborated source multiplied by a factor of five.

http://www.dfsc.dk/pdf/Seedleaflets/Swietenia%20macrophylla_int.pdf
 
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  • #23
Shame on the AP for hiring this dolt!
 
  • #24
PF members - be on the lookout for irresponsible science journalism! Post it here.
 

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