FallenApple said:
What is amazing is that they simply could have run it by a physicist, before publishing it. They could have even run it by the physicists on this forum, free of cost, and got quick feedback if they don't have an in house one. They could have also used Stackexchange or Quora. If they are really crunched for time, they could just wiki entanglement. It's baffling that Time would be so reckless.
TIME is not being reckless. They are following (1) a tradition which they would say is justified by the need to meet deadline (remember they are digital these days and not just a weekly pub) rather than get beaten by the competition, and (2) sound business strategy for any mainstream publishing company these days given dwindling advertising/subscriptions. Moreover, there are few if any consequences for print companies in following this strategy. In fact, you can argue they would be reckless to follow
your suggested strategy!
If you haven't already, see the list of reasons in my post #4 and
@phinds's followup in post #5. I will go further now & respond to your comment specifically:
Before all else, one reason TIME would not start a thread on a place like PF to ask about a story - still less ask members here to
review the text of a draft story, God forbid - is that this places part of the editorial process outside of their control, in public view. Forget it. They won't want the loss of control; they won't want to publicize a draft so that all their competition etc. can see it also.
Now let's imagine that PF starts a new service wherein publications such as TIME can place private threads w/ restricted access, so that only some members w/ review privileges can see & comment on TIME's threads asking for comments on drafts or even just what a new development means. So we avoid the problem described above. Even so, there are still more problems that would make this untenable, having to do with resources and editorial control.
To start with, someone at TIME (let's say the reporter, or a copyeditor) must initially start a thread to get input. Problem 1: Because of the nature of asynchronous forums and volunteer reviewing, comments will often take at least a day or two, possibly longer. Waiting even the minimum day or two to get these comments means TIME has to push back on its deadline - not good in a competitive news environment. Problem 2: Even if comments come quickly, some of these comments may be confusing or contradictory; which means that the reporter or copyeditor must now put in further time sorting things out. Problem 3: Suppose the comments mean part of the draft must be rewritten and possibly even re-reviewed; more deadline time seeps away.
Problem 4: All of this extra time for tech review translates into time taken away from the reporter doing reporting or the copyeditor doing copyediting. This means a staff that can't crank out as much copy; which means hiring more staff to compensate. But the news budget doesn't
have money for more staff. If they are like most shops, they rely entirely on a small staff of over-burdened copyeditors to do both fact-checking and proof-reading.
Problem 5: Using outside reviewers means having less than total control of the editorial production process - and this is out of the question for a shop like TIME. There is no way top editors are going to put "go/no go" story decisions, or even "um, wait until I think about it some more" decisions into the hands of outside reviewers except under very rare circumstances. Keep in mind that for most ordinary stories, e.g. the entanglement story in question, even persons being quoted won't be allowed to see their quotes until after publication! (The exception is with highly confrontational or investigative stories, where reporters, if they have a chance, will often read quotes to the subject to give them the chance to comment.)
And bear in mind that there is nothing unique to do with physics that can result in errors creeping into a story: It can and does happen for all stories, on all topics. Which means if TIME were to follow your strategy of trying to identify free review resources, it would have to do the same for
all its stories regardless of topic: politics, psychology, health, etc. etc. And do this every week. Again, where is the money coming from to pay staff for these extra administrative duties? Even worse, what happens to deadlines? This story about entanglement was already being released elsewhere; why would TIME want to be late on it, just to be accurate to the nth degree? Its readers don't care about accuracy to that degree; they are not physicists, but ordinary persons. How does TIME gain from this strategy?
As for your suggestion that reporters can just look at Wikipedia etc., this presumes (a) the reporter knows enough to understand the subject in the first place and thus understand an article about it, clearly not the case here; and (b) that Wikipedia and similar online sources can always be trusted, also not the case.
So the problem, as we define it, isn't solvable by seemingly simple, common sense measures. It is an industry wide problem not specific to TIME or to stories on science. The industry itself needs financial help and/or radical change, includes changes to paradigms about deadlines etc. Tough sell in today's nasty marketplace, with mass audiences encouraged by the train wreck that is social media and TV to become increasingly partisan and impatient.
Scientific journals and scientific or technical books employ technical review editors because their reading audiences are quite different: they consist of experts in these fields who are much more likely to complain (and to vote with their feet) if technical review isn't done & articles or books contain obvious errors. Errors occur even with technical review, but at least the publisher can say an effort is being made. And specialty publishers (excluding open source) typically can and do charge much higher prices for content, albeit to much smaller audiences.
P.S. See my next post for questions about how all this might apply, or not, to WikiTribune.
