PF'ers Against Bad Science In Journalism

[Rach3]

There was a thread like this a while ago, I think it deserves a second chance. This is devoted to hilarious and depressing examples of lazy journalism misrepresnting basic science to the public. Only reputable, established news sources may be entered - otherwise it's not much of a challenge, is it?

I'll start off with this entry, a recent article from two AP writers:

By BO-MI LIM and CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer

...Many experts believe the North has enough radioactive material to build at least a half-dozen or more nuclear weapons.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061004/ap_on_re_as/nkorea_nuclear"

I think this example is pretty illustrative of what this is all about. You see the lazy writers who don't check their research. You see the public being grossly misinformed, seeing yet another basic misconception ("radioactive materials means nuclear-weapons materials"), and probably becoming more fearful and ignorant as a result. "Treating cancer with radiation??! What if it blows up and levels the whole city!?"

Shame on the AP writers, and the editors who released this nonsense to the trusting public! Yes, this is also a contest! The best entry will win a special award - five " " smilies from me.

 

[Cyrus]

You read too much.

Just because Pengwuino is gone does not mean you have to make pointless threads.

 

[Danger]

You see the lazy writers who don't check their research...

Many experts believe the North has enough radioactive material to build at least a half-dozen or more nuclear weapons.

Not to mention their grammar. Seems a bit redundant, don't it?

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

I hate it when I see stuff like that. I also dislike the use of ambiguous metaphors to explain amounts of something like the common use of "could fill a football stadium" etc.

 

[Kalimaa23]

You read too much.

Just because Pengwuino is gone does not mean you have to make pointless threads.

I've been out of the loop lately. Pengwuino's gone? What happened?

 

[Cyrus]

Drug Overdose, tragic.

 

[Smurf]

You need a better name. PFABSJ just doesn't ring.

Are you serious about pengwuino?

 

[JamesU]

Drug Overdose, tragic.

lol...

 

[russ_watters]

Not science, but I heard a report on the Lancaster school shooting today that went something like 'one of the worst school mass murders in lancaster county history'... as if it has happened before.

 

[Cyrus]

You need a better name. PFABSJ just doesn't ring.

Are you serious about pengwuino?

Are you calling me a liar?

 

[Moonbear]

Not science, but I heard a report on the Lancaster school shooting today that went something like 'one of the worst school mass murders in lancaster county history'... as if it has happened before.

Makes you wonder...only "one" of the worst, and not "the" worst? Are they reserving the title for someone still planning their massacre?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

That reminds me of a radio news blooper about a terrible multi-car accident on the I-5 in which three people were killed; two seriously!

Better yet was the special report on the local news that cited the price of energy and how much money can be saved by insulating and such, in $/Kilowatt.

A local investigative reporter did a special series in which he busted auto repair shops taking advantage of their customers. In one example, a fuse for the fuel system was replaced with a blown fuse and the car towed to repair facilities. When one mechanic tried to charge for additional investigation as to why the fuse blew and didn't just replace it as other mechanics had, the reporter labeled this a scam. The problem: Fuses usually blow for reason. The correct course of action was to check things out. And for doing this the guy was labeld a crook on the evening news.

 

[Rach3]

I don't know where else to post this: apparently, global warming will cause increased stress on air conditioners in ~100 years, resulting in increased energy consumption and possibly blackouts:

By LINDA A. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Wed Oct 4, 7:06 PM ET

TRENTON, N.J. - Global warming could strain the Northeast's power grid, farms, forests and marine fisheries by the next century unless carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by 3 percent each year, according to a report released Wednesday.

The climate in the nine states — from New Jersey and Pennsylvania up to Maine — could become like that of the South with longer, much hotter summers and warmer winters with less snow, the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists said.

"This has enormous implications for human health. It puts a lot of stress on the energy system. It could lead to blackouts," said Katherine Hayhoe, an associate professor of geosciences at Texas Tech University and a lead author of the two-year study.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061004/ap_on_sc/global_warming

Defintely one of the more speculative assessments of global warming...

 

[Astronuc]

much hotter summers and warmer winters with less snow

We've already had that in NY - two summers ago, we had temperatures hotter than the south, and we had a warm winter with very little snow. We've also had a significant period of drought followed by a significant period of precipitation, and the past summer the area was under mandatory energy conservation so as to prevent blackouts.

We do notice considerable 'variability' in the weather, and we seem to have more extreme weather events - i.e. strong storms.

I think that article on GW is rather lame. There is nothing new and it seems to be written for an elementary school audience.

In general, I am often disappointed with scientific articles in the major newspapers and magazines. That's why I prefer scientific and technical journals and websites. I prefer to go to the source.

 

[Rach3]

The point is that they think they're predicting energy consumption at a timescale of a century...

 

[Rach3]

Another capuchin monkey at the editor's keyboard: (emphasis mine)

Ker Than
Staff Writer
SPACE.COM

...Called active galactic nuclei, or AGN, these black holes have masses of up to billions of tons compressed into a region about the size of our solar system.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20061005/sc_space/nasacompletessurveyofnearbysupermassiveblackholes

Wow, a billion tons! What an unimaginably large astrophysical number... comparable to our annual production of iron ore.

 

[Gokul43201]

You hear something like this almost every other day on some news station or the other:

(paraphrase)The Dow suffered a 100 point fall today, while the NASDAQ closed lower by only 60 points.

 

[Mk]

I think the Associated Press delievers some of the worst science articles.

 

[Rach3]

Here's a bizarre rebuttal to criticism that rf wireless credit cards are, unsuprisingly, extremely insecure:

Researchers See Privacy Pitfalls in No-Swipe Credit Cards

...The companies, however, argue that testing just 20 cards does not provide an accurate picture of the card market, which generally uses higher security standards than the cards that were tested. “It’s a small sample,” said Art Kranzley, an executive with MasterCard. “This is almost akin to somebody standing up in the theater and yelling, ‘Fire!’ because somebody lit a cigarette.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/b...&en=980372016bff62cb&ei=5094&partner=homepage

 

[Rach3]

Vampires a Mathematical Impossibility, Scientist Says

A researcher has come up with some simple math that sucks the life out of the vampire myth, proving that these highly popular creatures can't exist.
...
Efthimiou's debunking logic: On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was 536,870,911. If the first vampire came into existence that day and bit one person a month, there would have been two vampires by Feb. 1, 1600. A month later there would have been four, and so on. In just two-and-a-half years the original human population would all have become vampires with nobody left to feed on.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20061025/sc_space/vampiresamathematicalimpossibilityscientistsays

When this kind of fallacious nonsense passes as "mathematical proof", it's no wonder the general public has no respect for math.

(I'm not arguing with the conclusion, mind, I'm ashamed that it's passing as a "mathematical proof", when it's nothing more than a simple model that makes some major assumptions without discussion.)

 

[Rach3]

Oh yeah, and:

On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was 536,870,911

What, only nine significant digits? Might as well throw in a few decimals while you're at it...

 

[Gokul43201]

Oh yeah, and:

On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was 536,870,911

What, only nine significant digits? Might as well throw in a few decimals while you're at it...

Hey, that's 2^29 - 1...might even be a Mersenne Prime!

 

[Rach3]

Hey, that's 2^29 - 1...might even be a Mersenne Prime!

Nope:

536870911 = 233 x 1103 x 2089

http://www.alpertron.com.ar/ECM.HTM

 

[Rach3]

This one bests them all!

The Best Science Show on Television?

The TV show “Mythbusters”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/s...&en=6f2fbb6bd77a4750&ei=5094&partner=homepage

 

[jim mcnamara]

Did you mean "worsts" them all?

Since they mad suage of it all, I guess "wursts" is even closer...

 

[Moonbear]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20061025/sc_space/vampiresamathematicalimpossibilityscientistsays

When this kind of fallacious nonsense passes as "mathematical proof", it's no wonder the general public has no respect for math.

(I'm not arguing with the conclusion, mind, I'm ashamed that it's passing as a "mathematical proof", when it's nothing more than a simple model that makes some major assumptions without discussion.)

That article appeared around Halloween. I don't think it was intended to be taken seriously, but more a light-hearted piece for the holiday, sort of like the joke story that goes around every year for Christmas disproving the existence of Santa.

If you want to fix the problem, get a job as a journalist. It's hard to get people with no science background to report science very accurately.

 

[Rach3]

If you want to fix the problem, get a job as a journalist. It's hard to get people with no science background to report science very accurately.

And it's hard for people with strong science backgrounds to give up a life of research to type articles and write essays. Besides, it's not like anyone bothers reading these things.

 

[Rach3]

Here's a typical piece of scaremongering in the wake of the Litvinenko assassination. Note that this entire freakin' article has not a single number or quantitative statement. Not one! It's all "some of..." or "a metal rod..." or "a small, but nonzero dose...", and similar useless garbage. Because when you're a fearmongerer, when you're a TERRORIST journalist who scares people into getting a readership, with no regard to basic journalistic integrity, well, you write junk like this:

CHICAGO - A physics teacher was taking inventory of chemicals in a storage room at Tri-City High School when she noticed a container that looked a little strange.

She peered closer and worried that it was radioactive. It turns out, it was.

"She was very alert about realizing that it could be a hazard," said Randy Dwyer, principal of the central Illinois school.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061123/ap_on_re_us/radioactive_schools

And that's all they tell you about that. Never mind that the isotope samples used in schools, the ones in little NRC-exempt http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm (yes, they sell to the public! Don't waste your money, though. ), aren't exactly a threat sitting on a shelf. In those microcurie quantities, there is really no point in having shielding at all. Heck, you could probably EAT one of those things (I'll check the math later when I'm awake). But these hyperactive administrators don't care one ounce about performing honest risk assessments (and it shows); they're want to look good in the national media, so politics trumps reality. And the journalists they're teeming up with are too lazy and stupid to do any research (or else they're withholding information to hype up the threat). And so it is, that yet another content-free article comes into being. (How can anyone stand to read something that has no content?)

"It's a low hazard but they want no hazard," Thompson said.

They don't give you any information the article, but one of the objects (the Cs137 "gammator") mentioned was actually a MAJOR hazard - 400 Curies' worth (!), which you have to do you your own research to discover:

http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/6412

I'm rather amused, that they mention that one right next to samples that are 9 orders of magnitude smaller. It's amazing what kinds of false impressions you can make, by erasing all the tangible numbers and replacing them with meaningless buzzwords.

9 orders of magnitude...

 

[Rach3]

Is anyone else confused as to how ordinary colloidal solutions are suddenly called "nanotechnology"?

EPA to regulate form of nanotechnology

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Consumer products using extremely small particles of silver to kill germs will need
Environmental Protection Agency approval, part of the government's first move to regulate the burgeoning nanotechnology industry

Further down in this article is a truly breathtaking passage:

EPA officials decided a year ago that a major pesticide law, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, should not apply to washing machines because they were considered devices.

But after re-examining its decision and regulations, agency officials reversed course and decided "that the release of silver ions in the washing machines is a pesticide, because it is a substance released into the laundry for the purpose of killing pests," EPA spokeswoman Jennifer Wood said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"This is now being considered a pesticide," Wood said. "So it does have to be regulated under FIFRA."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061123/ap_on_go_ot/epa_nanotechnology

So now bacteria are "pests". So I guess that makes erythromycin a "pesticide". Hmm.

Note the obvious discrepancy between colloidal silver and silver ions (silver salts) - the author confused two TOTALLY different things. The washing machine part has nothing to do with the topic of the article, colloidal silver (which itself has nothing to do with the title of the article).

 

[Rach3]

Let me emphasize that again - the "INSECTicide, FUNGIcide, and "RODENTicide" act is being applied to washing machines. Which as everyone knows are machines used to wash the voles out of t-shirts.