It's not only science news. Everytime I read about topics I'm at least somewhat well informed it's just frustrating to realize how many mistakes are made.
And it's usually the simple thing they SHOULD be getting right! (My pet hate... News readers referring to a divers 'oxygen' tank. I literally scream at the TV, "IT'S AN *AIR* TANK!!!)
Indeed! She notices it because it is her field, but it is a defect in popular journalism, not in science journalism. Everthing is over-simplfied, details references and sources are omitted, everthing has to be bite-sized quotes. It affects all topics in todays news, and it does not matter if it is about science, economics, politics, war, or whatever.
As a former journalist who worked in the field of health/medical/political news writing for medical practitioners I can say there was a high value attached to accuracy. This could sometimes be frustrating as a writer where the timeliness of a story is important but it did pay dividends in terms of confidence amongst the readership. There is a balance to be had between these two things, however. I did attend courses on statistics for journos for example, in order to be able to read research papers and so on which helped avoid a number of egregious misreadings and headlines!
My biggest pet peeve in science news and in all news (well, all print news, but that's pretty close to "all news") is the headline writing. Headlines are written by different staff from the story authors, in an effort to garner more interest. But this leads to compromised headlines that are uninformative, passive-aggressive, or just plain wrong, and it drives me nuts.
well, 'garner more interest' is the issue ... Ain't exactly journalists' fault if sensation is what sells. They didn't decide to crowd the earth with people who find facts boring and would rather have their fantasies and prurience pandered to. Most folks i know went into journalism for all the right reasons, and constantly have to juggle compromises in order to pay the bills... what draws attention and ultimately sells papers or gets clicks. Notice that even Sabine's thumbnails over there on the right have HUGE ALL CAPS, BRIGHT COLORS, AND MAWKISH FACES, in order to look more sensational. She does a great job of grabbing attention without distorting, but she also gets way fewer clicks.
Headlines are trolling, they're written not out of a belief that they are true, but to fish for clicks, to fish for attention and controversy. The job of headline writers is to fish/troll for clicks, controversy, and attention.
Ridiculously inappropriate photos dredged of the Internet that do not illustrate the subject at all! Some of them are hilariously wrong! Like illustrating a story on the subject of microplastics with a photo of large pieces of plastic--that are not at all 'micro' and could not possibly enter the bloodstream of any animal!
For me its clickbait, it feels like every other day I see an headline about an asteroid heading straight for Earth only for the article to say "Actually no, no it's not". Excellent videos btw Sabine, hugely interested in astronomy but can often be left confused by documentaries but your explanations get me closer to understanding, thx.
Definitely a pet peev. It's clear that the "editor" posting the headline links hasn't actually read the article. You can filter out the superlatives, and the apparent reactions of the scientists, as in "scientists stunned"... They usually don't even say which scientists are stunned. Considering some scientists can be bought, (eg tobacco company staff scientists historically), and there isn't a single topic that all scientists agree on, which scientists were stunned today?
I'd add one: the "everything is a revolutionary discovery" effect, that's the main reason i stopped reading science news from non specialized sites. Every one of two days there was a breaktrough in some field, and of course, almost all of them ended up in nothing. If a real discovery comes up, i will still hear from some other source.
Adding degrees of accuracy to science publications would go against government interest in keeping cutting edge abilities secret. Thier mudding the waters as to your observation.
I think that one can be excused. The reason I think so is because hype helps fund science. Sensationalism directly contributes to the overall budget of science. If you just give a relatively bleak impact of the "discovery" then nobody would click and read the article in the first place. I'm not advocating for fake news, but I think overhyped correct news are not necessarily a bad thing.
This is true in other ways too. Due to the sensationalism people expect every study and every discovery to be a breakthrough, and then when they see an article about a study of some very mundane and subjectionally meaningless, they arrogantly complain about that scientist should study something meaningful instead and in their delusional IQ-superiority they often declare that more meaningful thing to be something religious or other BS.
Am doing my dissertation soon and MY GOD I relate to the citings and references part so much, I have to waste so much time on searching a source that is vaguely written and then it's a loop of websites that don't say where they got their information from
THAT is the real education. When you investigate citations and references behind citations and references you see what a rickety racket the bulk of publishing really is.
Some science news outlets are primarily selling readers to advertisers, and the story is the vehicle for this goal. In such cases the story is structured to attract readers (to be "compelling") and to a lesser extent to be complete, accurate and open ("scientific"), which may be overwhelming or boring to the general reader.
I think all of your critiques of science news applies to other types of news as well. I hate how long-winded and precious some so-called journalism is these days, especially in the 'prestige' publications. When I am trying to educate myself about world events, I don't want poetry, I want information. Thanks for everything you do, Sabine, you really do have a rare gift as a science educator.
Siansonea Yes, I get tired of articles stating figures or statistics only while I'm left asking, "Why is that the case? How many people were surveyed? Were these people paid? How were these figures arrived at?", etc.... Tell me the WHOLE story or at least link to all that information. Statistics is a classic area of abuse because they can be made to be whatever you want and TECHNICALLY you're not lying, you just haven't given the rest of the story.
Reminds me of when I presented my Thesis (Master in Science). My director told me about a professor that was in the habit of asking the toughest questions about your research. When he did ask a question so far fetched that the whole auditorium went silent and I could see my director had his eyes closed, I simply went for the truth. I said ' I have no idea but, if your question can be applied to this research, I am sure it would make a great subject for any graduate students.' So, it was the best answer as my director told me later hinting to the fact that he nor anyone in the room could have answered that question... hehe Been doing it for 40 years now and never regretted to say 'If you don't know it, just say so!' Love your video Sabine, it was about time a scientist vented our 'frustrations about science news and what's wrong with it.' Bullseye on all points! Thank you!
Being a CNC machinist and welder for 25 years, numbers without a plus or minus “tolerance” make no sense to me either. There’s no such thing as a perfect integer unless you’re enjoying pure mathematics. Love your channel. ❤️❤️❤️
The thing is, journalists think they're smarter than the average person, and because their BA in English or diploma in journalism did not teach them about precision, negative numbers, vector algebra, or statistics (let alone calculus), they think the average person wouldn't understand it. They're sitting there in their white-collar jobs looking down their noses at anyone who gets grease or oil on their fingers at work, without realizing that machinists, millwrights, electricians, farmers, and an enormous variety of technicians and technologists know stuff that is a complete mystery to them. Speaking generally, journalists are one of the most mathematically illiterate occupations.
It's nice to hear someone voice the same frustrations you have. Unfortunately in today's world the number of clicks a story/article generates is far more important then the actual content. And it's only going to get worse.
Yeah. Most of the science journalism I see in the regular media isn't concerned about science at all. It is chiefly concerned with generating revenue for minimum expenditure, which is generally means generating as many page views as cheaply as possible.
But journalism has always been this way, albeit not nearly as bad, well before the internet. Judging by articles/videos which are upvoted, they were right about human interest. We don't like straight news or complicated news, or god forbid, real science. Newspaper editors and their staff used to (talking about the 50s/60s) make the final choices about content and make sure of fact-checking. They were seasoned professionals, often with degrees in writing or journalism. While that system could be and was abused, it worked really well *compared to today*. Now, we ALL have influence and our opinions can up or down vote them. People you wouldn't ask directions from are now controlling what we find in our feeds, in a skewed, rather than representative way. Are these a fair representation or consensus? When we vote for politicians, we get one vote per person, but on the internet, you can have many accounts and votes, or a whole service designed to spam things for your business, platform, or reputation. Papers which didn't have journalistic standards and professionals at the heads of them were called "tabloids" back then, and they sold these papers at checkout stands, consisting of 90% (being generous) completely outrageous gossip, UFO, alien, freak-show fiction. But easy and fun reading. Some people actually believed them. Now those papers and sites have re-invented themselves and are part of MSM (think about that, just think about that; I watched it happen!). Sadly, all news outlets have had to follow, to some degree, this trend. TikTok news is hopefully when this crap hits bottom. LOL MSM has FOMO. When I was a kid, in the 50s and 60s, it was said that the average reading level of a daily newspaper was 5th grade (my grandfather had a 3rd grade education, yet was an avid paper reader). You would buy magazines to get more in-depth and (hopefully) more sophisticated articles, as there were few documentaries or outlets which broadcast them. This change to tabloidy, lightly fact-checked "news", as far as I can remember, was heralded in, in the early 70s, by editors realizing how many papers/magazines they could sell with Population Bomb and Coming Ice Age doomsday headlines (not sure what the root cause was, perhaps the economy, which wasn't doing well; so goes newspapers). Or maybe that was on the heels of the Ancient Astronauts book and really, really slick, popular film (completely debunked by Carl Sagan), which took off and woe to a paper or mag who didn't headline it. Also cable news networks arose, and started the immediacy trend, with less time for fact-checking or thoughtfully written pieces. Often live talking heads just talking away. I wonder how many "news" sites allow their authors to make the decision to hit the button to publish their own articles on the internet, without going through an editorial staff or formal fact-checking process? Things have to be rushed out. There used to be a job and degree called "tech writer". They were often women, back when this was one of the few science related careers women could have. They would write science and tech articles. Also press releases for say, NASA, assist in writing up scientific papers, and eventually, software and other tech manuals. Now that anyone can write anything or make a video and publish it, I wonder how this occupation is doing. Really doubt that outlets are using tech writers much anymore. Or, if so, the word limit is so low that it's hard to really cover your subject. I don't want to give the impression that science articles were common in newspapers back in the mid-century, even with the popularity of the space race and early live broadcast of missions. Carl Sagan's Cosmos PBS TV series did quite a lot to make science "cool", then the tech boom of the 80s ushered in what we have today (even if psuedo-science). I am feeling bad that this comment is so long. But then I'm just paranoid due to the quick, short posts and attention spans in social media. Sigh.
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept. Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle. Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective. North, East, West, South -- NEWS. North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields. Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge. Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual. Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy. The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy. The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus. "Always two there are" -- Yoda.
My science news pet peeves (next to the ones you already mentioned, agree with all of them): 1.Everything is always a breakthrough, even it is just as small addition to some work already done in the 1960ies. 2. Presenting the cool stuf that was done already a decade ago as the news, without mentioning the actual new science because that would sound kinda boring. 3. Publishing claims from commercial enterprises as independent science. 4. Publishing ideas, proposals, hypotises etc as facts. 5. Reporting realy shoddy science in the same tone as the great work.
Yes this is sadly very true. When I was younger, I used to love "Horizon" in the UK, but in recent years it has become terrible - it is not me aging, I have seen older episodes and they are still good. There is now a tendency to make it like a personal story of some individual "Professor X believes that ...." and "He found that ..." (usually a "he" ) as if this guy was some lone scientist who came up with this idea all by themselves, and that no one else agrees, but then some data came along (how ? if no one else "believes" it).. Maybe it was an *entirely* original though, but likely they were one of many people working in a field and they were working with collaborators. Long gone are the days when people work on things all by themselves. It is really like some one decided that we have to describe the science as a "story" of just one of the scientists that studies it, as if the science is not interesting in and of itself, only in the context of someone elses "story". I am all for knowing the story for how some bit of science came about, but that is because the science is interesting, so knowing how it came about is interesting *after* you know about the science - the story is intersteing because of the science, not the other way round.
Yeah, when I used to read those, by the end of it, I usually couldn’t tell if whether I forgot or misunderstood the topic or if the writer either forgot it or just mis-phrased it for whatever reason.
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept. Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle. Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective. North, East, West, South -- NEWS. North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields. Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge. Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual. Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy. The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy. The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus. "Always two there are" -- Yoda.
It's not just science articles that are guilty of this. Have you tried to look up a recipe lately? A lot of times you will get this LOOOOONNNNG page full of pictures, ads, trivial info of history, personal interest, anecdotes of what others did with it and you scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll... ... ... OH, there's the recipe! 🤦♂
I came here to say exactly the opposite. What I understood from Sabine is that she's not interested in the human part of science. But there are people who are, so what's wrong with writing articles that include the story? I agree with all her other points because they result in people getting false impressions. But this one doesn't seem to fit that category; it seemed more like a matter of taste to me.
OMG, I have felt this way for at least the last decade. I used to subscribe to several science magazines and surf several science news aggregators and got so frustrated with the popular science press that I more or less walked away from all of it (now I watch UA-cam videos 😂). Everything is a breakthrough, every new discovery turns our understanding upside down, causes a revolution, or changes the world. It's partly the fault of science journalists wanting attention and researchers wanting funding & needing to make their research sound more important and groundbreaking to get it.
And the PBS Nova programs are basically Biographies with a "mystery". Can you get Science credit in schools by reading biographies now? Like Ketchup counts as daily vegetable requirements.
Comet ISON is a good example. A few astronomers got their name and picture in the paper and just went nuts with the outlandish predictions ("Going to be brighter than the full moon!!", "Comet of the century!!"), which caught on like wildfire and became a full-on frenzy. The astronomers really wound up looking like shit on that one. Their predictions about Halley's comet were almost as bad, that was another dud. Any time an astronomer predicts that something will be the "____ of the century", just predict that they're full of crap. You have about a 90% chance of being right.
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept. Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle. Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective. North, East, West, South -- NEWS. North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields. Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge. Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual. Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy. The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy. The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus. "Always two there are" -- Yoda.
This has probably been said a few times here. One of the things I hate is when I see some amazing story title about a discovery and when I read the article it turns out they "discovered" whatever it is in some computer model.
Funny enough, the thing I hate most about science news, is also the thing that got me interested in science: sensationalism! I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was, but the first articles that peaked my interest were of the “this new discovery changes EVERYTHING we know about physics and existence!!” type articles. Thankfully I got to the point where I decided to learn about actual physics, before I try and learn about the buzz feed thing that somehow “cHaNgEs EvErYtHiNg!!!!”
@@kdeuler"I agree. Yeah, "EVERYTHING changes"?! The sky is red when we all thought it was blue?!" Your comment is rather stupid. He did not say that. The imaginary punchline was: "...changes EVERYTHING *we know* about physics..." Cherry-picking on sentence level without providing the information, that the quote was misleading incomplete. Where have Your "..." been here? Where is Your understanding of the difference between "everything" (the reality) and "everything we know about" (our knowledge or our imagination)? This type of comment shows clearly, what is the low standard of thinking even in the comments section of a real good science channel. There is only little correlation between the quality of any channel and the quality of the comments or the sanity of the minds commenting. The much higher correlation is between the content and what people like to hear. Confirmation bias rulez the world!
@@kdeuler i mean we learned that time and space aren't universal not that long ago , And that particles , waves and fields aren't that different not long afther We are also trying to figure out why we see blue things as blue , So yeah , it's not that everything changes , it's more everything stays the same , but everything about our perception changes
I think the main issue is language used to write news. Very assertive and simple. Uncertainty, dense explanations or citations don't have a place right now.
The part about the dates hit reaaally close to home. That also applies to many other things, for example: When I look for a software tutorial on how to do something, I do want to be hit in face with the date first because if it is too old, I will know in advance that it might not be up to date, and that not finding an option that appears in the tutorial might be an indication, not that there is a problem with my version, but simply that the menus have already changed.
I had statistics professor who was fond of saying "statistics don't lie, but statisticians often do", especially when discussing correlation vs causation.
Wonderful-you are the best scientist I have seen in 78 years. When I was born, I asked the doctor " What is all this about?" They were speechless and I realized that Science was still in its infancy. It still is.
...but would they be popular if they weren't sensationalist? I doubt it. The majority of people will never care for citations or uncertainty estimates and that's fine. Popular science articles is probably better than no science articles. There will always be a variety of depth, quality and accuracy in science news. The key is to find the right level for yourself.
Yup. News media won't get the clickthrough ad-revenue if they wrote a science story full of caveats, alternate explanations and associated lines of evidence, uncertainty bars, and lacking any relatable characters for readers to root for.
I recall New Scientist writing that sales went up if they had Quantum on the cover, and down if they had Potato. Even publications aimed at the STEM-interested have to survive (or if they don't, natural selection). I think that it's a bit unrealistic to think that popular publications exist only to delve deeply into the topics that interest you, while losing general readership. Science journals exist to host peer reviewed stuff with error bars and long lists of references. I think that it's good enough that mainstream articles (and frankly videos) are starting to more consistently link to the original material. Yeah, the excessive certainly is annoying, but that's in part the study lead promoting their work for their next grant, or venture capital funding.
I also unfollow social media pages that repeat/repost old news. There's never a date because they NEED you to click the link so they'll get paid for all the advertisements on the landing page. It's not about delivering the news or educating you, it's about making a few cents per person. They've monetized their subscribers.
This was a far more interesting topic than I was expecting! As a science enthusiast, I appreciate your perspective. And as a graphic designer, I appreciate your logo!!
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept. Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle. Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective. North, East, West, South -- NEWS. North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields. Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge. Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual. Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy. The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy. The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus. "Always two there are" -- Yoda.
I don't know, maybe it was our shared German heritage, but I fell in love with you the 1st time I saw you and then when I learned that you were a physicist I was even more impressed. You are making science sucks less, good on you. I look forward to listening to you explain things that I don't understand. It's that care that you possess about your subject matter that is positive.
@@AvoidsPikes- The first thing I noticed on UA-cam was the title of one of her videos calling out particle physics, the second thing was her. My favourite thing about Sabine is sassiness however.
I think that general understanding of the concept of error bars is one of the most important upgrade we should do as a culture. Really the idea that every statement has a many times implicit variable uncertainty attached to it is an important realization about ideas and communication.
Thanks Sabine, for another great video! My wife is a writer and editor in the computer reseller field, and she agrees that not only in science journals and publications, but in other technical publications are poorly sourced. Also, when finding resources about which to write, she finds that the data and research offered about products and technologies are from studies funded by the very industries that sell these products and technologies, and oftentimes slanted to show the products in a favorable light.
You have hit the nail on the head. Adding to this, too many science articles being written by journalism majors who get paid by the word rather than content or accuracy and as you pointed out, they are wasting the reader's time.
It's awesome to hear someone else saying what the rest of us sometimes think. The sad thing is the media uses most of these techniques and withholding of certain data, intentionally.
Agreed. This video is a check list for sorting the wheat from the chaf. I would add to the checklist: 11) Who is paying for the research or the article?
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept. Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle. Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective. North, East, West, South -- NEWS. North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields. Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge. Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual. Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy. The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy. The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus. "Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Thank you. I am a journalist who often writes about highly technical subjects and you are right about common transgressions in science writing. (Not by me, of course.) But there's a major problem you didn't address: Very few readers have PhD's in physics. They bore easily and will stop reading when you start to explain the science. Sometimes it helps to "trick" them into reading with some human interest stuff. I first learned that while writing about cold fusion decades ago.
Good to know I'm not alone suffering with all of that. Other thing that annoy me a lot is "this COULD lead/mean/change/etc everything forever". I mean, anything COULD.
Thanks for your videos, I wanted to add one point. To me science news also struggles with trying to "entertain" the reader. I want to be informed not entertained.
i've been thinking about this-there's a different emotional satisfaction that comes with approaching something looking forward to doing lot of thinking yourself. maybe describing it as a kind of enjoyment of one's own agency is helpful? and i also think about how to build relationships/communities that include that and don't have too many chefs in the kitchen.
I agree on all your points, Sabine. My biggest peeves are date not being attached to articles and failure to cite sources. BUT I think that the reason most media doesn't do the right thing in these cases is because their readers aren't educated enough to demand it. Critical thinking skills should be taught in elementary school.
"They don't understand that they don't understand it" too true. To many layman, science is so complex it might as well be "magic", and journalism covering science from the mass market perspective caters to the lowest common denominator.
There are some people for whom evidence is irrelevant, they simply believe whatever they chose to believe. There are also forces (fossil fuel, tobacco, junk food companies, for example) who deliberately and cynically exploit this to manufacture doubt. "This is not an honorable business conducted by honorable men in an honorable way. Don't assume I'm that way and you shouldn't be." -- Dr Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and unindicted perpetrator of crimes against humanity, admonishing analysts who were balking at being pressured into finding something they didn't see in reconnaissance photos Sure, Kissinger is a politician and not a scientist, but as far as I know everyone is human - PhDs don't include wings and a halo.
I agree with all your points. My personal two pet peeves are 1) over-simplification, and 2) attempting to persuade me by appealing to science consensus. I like the way your explanations remove the gobbledygook; however, that is correct clarification, not over-simplification. Science news needs to be science education, which is why I like your channel. You and your team do a nice job of sorting things out, then presenting the facts in an intelligent thoughtful and complete manner (without the gobbledygook). Thanks for all you do. marcus
Those concerns were always in my mind when I wrote any article about science for the blogs I used to write to. Because they can really be enervating! A few days ago I saw an article about the connection of 2 time crystals and... It talked about everything, except the subject itself. 🙄 Anyway, thanks for the video, Sabine! Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Awesome video. I've had the same issues with a lot of the "science" reporting that I read online or see on television. Part of the problem lies with the reporters not having a proper background in science (ie a science degree). They gravitate towards the simplistic answer when it is far more nuanced. I've spent a lot of time explaining to friends what's wrong with a particular report and why. With Covid19 and Climate Science in the news, I often have to shake my head reading what is reported.
There's a great book called _Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy_ that mentions some of this stuff with relation to nutritional news, and in its first 8 pages or so, it gives a short primer to the common reader on how to interpret nutritional news, e.g. look for studies with large samples, clinical studies are best, don't whiplash your lifestyle around based on headlines. It lessons the confusions from headlines like, "eggs are bad! No wait, good! Butter is bad! No wait, margarine is worse!"
One thing that also annoys me is when they don't tell you how big the test groups are. "90% of people notice a marked improvement within two weeks!" and when you dig you realize that they tested on a group of 10 to 20 people. I sometimes counter this by referring to my discord group for D&D. There are five British people in the group and five Norwegian people in it. None of the British people drive, all of the Norwegian people drive. If you extrapolate that it means that 100% of British people don't drive while 100% of Norwegians do. Sample size is too small!
For me the top issues areover simplification, to the level that I, as a physicist, do not understand popular articles related to my field. The second is the lack of references and background, to the level that ideas tens year old are presented as new.
A lot of my undergrad textbooks would make certain claims with a corresponding bar graph illustration that showed error bars so large, there wasn’t any difference between the bars in reality. Had professors use these in lectures who didn’t understand why I said they were unfounded claims. Discouraging to say the least. I was shocked that so many professors with PhDs didn’t understand basic scientific methods.
In my opinion Science news sucks because: - The gap between complex science and the average population seems to be growing. - It follows that articles are becoming more and more general for the normal population - This gives the opportunity to make such articles more and more lurid and some people take advantage of this opportunity for clickbait without shame.
-The average population is probably more informed about science today compared to any other time in history. -There's no reason to think that articles are becoming more and more general. -Perhaps there are simply more articles being written altogether.
@@MrAlRats The modern average person is less and less affected directly by natural phenomena, which means they have less intuition to understand what they’re reading about. I guarantee you that public understanding of weather was MUCH higher in the period just before the industrial revolution when a super-majority of people were farmers and depended on their understanding of it in order to successfully harvest crops.
@@MrAlRats - only those interested in science in general are more informed than to any other time in history - the bulk of the population IS dumb as heck and dont even know simple basics, like what a ' ² ' at a number means! (or how many cm are in a 1m, in a metric country mind you! seen all of this in person O_o) - yes, and with a higher number of x, the amount of bad specimen rises, even if the %age were to remain the same
Great video Sabine. This is the third video of yours I've watched, and am now a fan. You are accurate, truthful, and very interesting. I love how you are deliberate, purposeful and precise with your data, as well as the delivery of it. You are awesome. I will be watching all the rest of your video. Keep up the great work.
Sabine, you perfectly nailed it! I have not thought why I get irritated whenever someone shares me an article. I ran into all the points you listed. In fact it hinders important information to get to people as they have automatic knee jerk reaction to listening or reading any news. Example of this is covid outbreak a few years ago. People were dismissive of it at first but I was digging into WHO data being published out of China, spending a lot of time looking for the facts and decided to work from home (here in nyc). Everyone were saying its just news exaggerating and nobody was concerned. Luckily I was prepared for the mass panic to the stores as people ran for groceries when they learned the truth of the pandemic. And for months I was like I told you so. Thank the media for being untrustworthy for news thats caused this lack of trust or concern.
Websites used to carefully date articles, even include it in the URL. But a growing trend has been intentionally leaving out the date entirely, specifically so people will read it without realizing how outdated it is. The ad system doesn't care if you're being defrauded.
every department in every university should have a "pop science club" or something where every month researchers in that department come together to write pop science articles about their colleagues' work and their work
@@fg8557 They already spend enough time on research, it's literally their job lol you say that as if researchers are only spending an hour a day on research and then doing whatever they want. and yes I know they're not good journalists, but they know their work better than anyone, they can learn to be journalists and science communicators, if they can learn really complex topics and do research, I'm pretty sure they can learn that too.
One of the requirements of my grad program was that any time any of us wrote a research paper we also had to write a public piece for laypeople and try to get it published as well.
@@mastershooter64 I could not agree more. Unless the researcher is just publishing results (data), being able to communicate what those results mean is very important. In my mind, a good researcher should also be a good communicator. I'm not saying they all have to be fantastic writers, but as you point out, being good writers is something they can master, and it's important.
@@fg8557 you can collect data all day long, but if you are incapable of communicating what it means your work is useless. Better the researcher writes a clumsy *accurate* article about their own work than to allow a journalist to write a beautiful inaccurate article.
Oh Sabine I just want to give you a hug. I'll refer you to the Gell-Mann amnesia effect and the fact that all news is the way you are showing. Science news, political news, all news is this way. Keep up the awesome work and anxious for your next video.
Yeah, I remember reading a paper on NMNH synthesis and effects that said in the abstract it stopped cell growth, which was repeated several times in the paper itself. Very careful reading, however, showed the researchers meant ABNORMAL cell growth, were not native English speakers, and the editors failed to encourage them to underline this point. This wasn't even a science article, it was the original paper.
You somehow make it educational and funny at the same time , ive enjoyed your straight to the point remarks for a long time , i appreciate your work and i hope we get to see more and more of these in the future!
The international standard date format is Year-Month-Day, so you should write 2022-06-18, and most people have no idea the standard even exists because nobody is informing about it anywhere.
This is the first video of yours I’ve ever seen but your number one point is my biggest problem with science writing too so I know I’m in the right place!
Absolutely right. The collecting, analysing and reporting of Covid data was and still is appalling; as if the people doing it had never been introduced to rigorous statistical methods.
Innocently botched by some panicked researchers and partly sabotaged by other researchers who feared their own organizations had created it and accidentally released it on the world.
The problem is that most science reporting is written for an audience that really wouldn't understand the science. Remember your recent video where you talked about how hard it was to discuss quantum computing at a level that wouldn't sound like word salad to the readers? It's the same problem for every field of advanced science, likely paired with an element of the Dunning-Kruger effect at the hands of the people writing the articles.
I doubt few people really understand the science well enough to actually explain it well enough to others. Knowing the right scientific word to use in a story does no good if the word itself is a place holder for a concept that nobody in the world really understands. In science this word list is endless as even the most simple word like gravity or dark matter is only really understood by few in the science community. Take the search for the graviton??? Einstein's theory pretty much explains that gravity is a property of the space/time continuum that represents the distortion of the space/time fabric? The graviton is supposed to be the quantum particle or wave function that creates the field or influences the gravitational field which perhaps could represent gravity in a theory of everything mathematical formula. The graviton may or may not exist in reality but that does not prevent the word being used in such a way that ensures people understand it when the entire concept may be total fantasy.
Midwits. There is a meme of a graph that has one's knowledge of a subject on the horizontal and their willingness to talk about the subject on the vertical. About 1/3 the way across the knowledge spectrum is "mount stupud" where one's willingness to speak on things is rather large until they learn a bit more and realize they should exercise more discretion. Midwits - those just around IQs of 110 to 120 are common enough to form large social groups of reinforcement. They are also generally smart enough to be recognized as intelligent people while being capable of learning several disciplines. However, because they learn a little and are willing to talk a lot while being relatively common, they never see need to learn enough to realize they are on "mount stupid" nor are the voices loud enough criticizing them to pierce their echo chamber of reinforcement. Now elect their cult followers into office and give them control over grants and university funding.... and you end up with a world where the actual experts are shunned for criticizing Science, May It Be Praised.
The problem isn't that the audience wouldn't understand the science. The problem is that the writers understand that they can sell clicks to advertisers with minimal effort by doing a really crappy job of science reporting, and by training their prospective audience over time to be incapable of differentiating science from what might as well be made-up nonsense so the writers can be even lazier.
I'm a specialized technician in Brazil, interested in physics and technologies and I thought I was the only one thinking this way! It's very nice hear Sabine talk about it! 🇧🇷🇵🇹🇧🇷🇵🇹🇧🇷🇵🇹🇧🇷🇵🇹🇧🇷🇵🇹
Explaining what Andrew Wiles did to prove Fermats last theorem is hard. Describing how he felt while doing it is easy. It's not only being lazy. Providing the context and doing a thorough job explaining what he did exceeds most peoples attention span.
Exactly. Should journalists have simply avoided this momentous story in the field of mathematics simply because neither they nor the public were equipped to judiciously weigh the pros and cons of a 1000 page proof few mathematicians on earth could understand? I read everything I could on Wiles brilliant discovery and feel greatly enriched for having done so.
I'm not big into science but I agree with you on every point. I'm a recent subscriber. I like the science channels on YT and the minor research they often bring me to. Sabine, I live in a rural area on a Great Lake. When I go out at night and shine my 1,000 lumen light into the sky, the amount of particulate in the beam of light is absolutely frightening!
As an older viewer I can tell you the decline in journalism over the years in general is HUGE! Science probably the worst, the use of dramatisations and art work (passed off as photos), massive generalisations & the never ending anthropomorphism of probes or other equipment make science news as useful as an episode of Disney & seem targeted at 5 year olds.
That's true of all news reporting. We have thousands of times more "reporting" than we did in the past, but it feels like the actual meaningful content has plummeted by similar orders of magnitude.
I remember being told back at 1985 that journalism used to better. I don't see how that's true when they intentionally left out the worst parts of WWI, how black war heroes being killed for sitting in the wrong seat on a train when they came home, or WWIi when the bloodiest stays in the war sometimes weren't rewarded for months if ever, and Korea where all kinds of atrocities happened. , Everything that happened in Vietnam also happened in all of those wars, it just wasn't reported. They over simplified getting to the Moon, which is why it's hard to go back when people know the real risk. Turns out everybody knew about all the affairs president Harding and Hoover and Roosevelt, they just didn't report them. There used to be a more clear line between news and opinion. For brief.perod and that's about it. I guess I spent too much time chatting with my world war I veteran lawn mowing customers when I was young to ever take journalism too seriously.
@@flotsamike in 1985 racism was still widespread, as was patriotism. For the former, there is absolutely no excuse. For the latter, we had to honour the kids that fought, and the elite had to hide their many mistakes. In 1985 the Soviet Union was still a very real threat, so the nation had to be perceived as strong. News on the 1980s was a massive pile of poo. It probably is today, and in 30 years time we might look back on present times with the same lens as today we look back on the 80s. The fact is. Few of us are there to witness the things we're told about. We rely on the words of the journalists that report on the things they've been told by someone they know.
Sabine, I like the way you just report what they write and say without coming right out with a judgement call. Just lay out the facts and foundation of the issue and let us see the light.
I discovered your channel just a few days ago. And I love your vids Sabine, I admire you for your work. You do a great job explaining + tackling scientific topics but also make a lot of fun for others to watch it, that combination makes your videos a must watch for anyone willing to learn. I studied myself Biochemical Medical Molecular Science in the Netherlands, I always am interested in videos regarding the greater scope of our universe, I love astronomy as a hobby, but I am not great with math as you are haha. I thank you for all the great learning / insight I got from you thusfar. Keep up the good work! :) And have fun! ♥️
This is hands down one of the most important videos Sabbine has made recently. I pray this gets traction and we get proper vetting and honest news, STOP clicking shitty science news sites. Take mental note who wrote the article and bookmark bad actors that do what she's outlined like omitting counter facts, or recycling or any fusion article
I think we mistakenly assume that the main motivation of the writer(s)/publisher(s) is to keep us informed of the changing events, issues, and characters in the science world. It is not! Like the scientists and institutions that compete for grants, they are competitors and their outcomes betray their main motivation--to drive the most content engagement traffic and clicks.
My pet peeve is the inclusion of soft science, social "science", and the perceived injustice du jour into what were previously hard science journals such as Scientific American. It is as if the editors want to make the readers feel bad about some state of affairs rather than encouraging them think about the ramifications of scientific discovery or development. Emphasis on feel over think.
I suspect that the chemical issues regarding plastics and endocrine hormonal affecting chemicals leaching out of the plastics is creating a worldwide hormonal affecting environment that has a relationship between lowered testosterone levels in males which has been recognized because it’s been funded but other studies are routinely not funded... With microplastics in drinking water and in seafood... Emotional reactions facilitate cognitive dissonance facilitating cognitive biases and when this is the model of propaganda, advertising and social media platforms in order to facilitate planting suggestions for sociopolitical economic interests and agendas which is usually exploitation. The fact that strong emotional mental states literally short circuit logical cognitive critical thinking processes and functions which is why all humans are susceptible to manipulation and being in a emotionally emotional mental state leaving themselves vulnerable to scams, cons, propaganda, advertising and group think thinking. Social media platforms and corporate networks take advantage of this and undermine everything.
I wholeheartedly agree! I'm forced to analyze the tone and the style of a story to arrive at an estimate as to whether it is at all reliable. I've learned to ignore many stories on that basis. Not very scientific--but it does reduce the amount of time I waste. Another source of my scepticism comes from reading stories on subjects on which I am very well informed. I often groan, or growl, or shout out loud in frustration at the plethora of mistakes and ghastly misconceptions! If coverage of areas I know a lot about are so wrong--it is only rational to assume the coverage of all other subjects is equaly faulty!
Thank you so much. Great work, I will definitely share that with my students. And I hasten to enter a possible number 11: Science news as a fund-raising instrument. My long-time ever-more-annoying example is NASA's repeated "Water on Mars" "Life on Exoplanets" etc. stories. I feel that whenever they need additional funding they are launching a real barrage of reports of that kind to convince their would-be sponsors. Really Annoying.
Sabine is great in exposing misleading statistics.I wish she would write an article on Return on Investment ROI i.e. using proforma ROI on $20 billion for new space program and the same $20 billion devoted to green energy WHY >You will never see that comparison from Congress PS You will never see one from Elon Musk for his Mars projects because much of what he spends is taxpayer fund filtered via NASA PS The Moderna covid vaccine was mostly funded by the government .The result the Moderna is start company execs who made millions ina few months .The government/taxpayers share zero $$ As usual the press ignored the story and it the Moderna story typical of government funding of university research Not one person in Congress has proposed a profit sharing method for successful research funded mostly by taxpayers
I completely agree with your observations. I am frequently bothered by ‘sloppy reporting’. Not only in the science sphere; but when ‘surveys’ are done by news organizations with sample sizes of 2000 or, whatever.
The last piece of "science news" I've read, as reported by one of our most important newspapers, is that portuguese biologists discovered that the male brain and the testicles are very very similar organs.
As a science educator, it's frustrating to see people who I consider smart fall into traps of taking science articles as pure fact. That misunderstanding that science is not fact-based is a big reason I went into education.
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept. Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle. Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective. North, East, West, South -- NEWS. North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields. Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge. Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual. Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy. The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy. The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus. "Always two there are" -- Yoda.
You are correct. I would say that science is a procedure based methodology to determine objective truth about the physical world. Objective truths are largely factual information, but they can be used to predict behavior of phenomena that have not occured. The base or foundation of science is the hypothesis - experiment - conclusion cycle...
@@kayakMike1000 Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic. Absolute truth is dual to relative truth -- Hume's fork. Objective truth is a goal or target -- teleological. Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non-teleological physics (entropy). The process of converging upon absolute truth is a syntropic process and requires observers to make optimized predictions or expectations. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! "Through imagination and reason we turn experience into foresight (prediction)" -- Spinoze describing syntropy. "The relation of ideas" is dual to "matter of facts" -- Hume's fork. Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process -- teleological. Duality creates reality.
I was fortunate to grow up with interesting science evangelists on TV: Heinz Wolf, David Bellamy, Magnus Pike, Patrick Moore, etc... They all seemed quite crazy, but all were very enthusiastic and knowledgeable about their subjects. It's the reason I'm subscribed here too!
Yeah if you want to prove something you better cite the derivation of the mathematical proof behind the theorem etc. Proofs are a thing from mathematics and logic only tangentially linked to science based on some theorems or proofs being useful in representing real world observations.
Love your content! Appreciate the subject as just this week I encountered quantum computer article number 3000 with no additional insights, which is quite a shame since the basic subject is quite interesting
As a researcher, I've come to dismiss anything without a listed methodology. Even with one, the headline is something fantastical, and then you dig in to find out they have a tiny sample size with very narrow test parameters that don't actually support the assertion in the title. It's very frustrating. Excellent video!!! 🎉
Hate it when the news reports: "British scientists…" or "Scientists at [a British] university…" - but they never just say "Scientists at [University]…" - it's as if some connection with being British is the ONLY think that makes it newsworthy in Britain.
In general, “Harvard/whatever University study” is also a little aggravating, especially with that wording. I think that, on the margin there is value in mentioning consensus and authority, because it can give a completely unfamiliar reader general bearings. That said, it should never overshadow the authors and especially the research itself. “University” didn’t do that work, specific humans did.
A few of the key points I'd really like to know when I read science news include: How much data was studied? Eg, the latest super berry has been found to aid weight loss. Great. How many people were in the trial? How was the experiment designed? Did anyone check that the participants weren't simply suffering the effects of mild poisoning etc Then there's how big is the effect. Headline reads something like, planting trees helps to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Conclusion, we should all plant a tree in our gardens. Should we though? How much carbon will one tree absorb, and is that even enough to offset the carbon produced by the delivery van that delivered it?
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept. Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle. Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective. North, East, West, South -- NEWS. North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields. Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge. Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual. Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy. The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy. The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus. "Always two there are" -- Yoda.
@@alexandertownsend3291 there's a lot we can do. Most people can't be bothered to do anything though. I'd love to see data on growing your own veg and herbs Vs buying it. The obvious answer being that it's better to grow it. But is it? When I buy plant feed, it comes in a one litre plastic bottle. The soil I disturb to plant things releases carbon. Whereas a commercial grower buys fertilizer in huge reusable containers, and has computers controlling the growing conditions for optimum growth. I oversimplified of course, but point being, there are many things to consider, but the data is either not available or in fragments over many sources and hard to fathom.
@Christopher Grant you're right. It certainly is difficult to compute. But my point being there are many articles from very reputable sources that give out advice on such matters, and even attempt to look legit by crunching SOME of the numbers, usually the easy ones. But they make no attempt to work out the full picture, nor do they give the reader any indication that they've missed a load out.
I find your discussions refreshing and as I release that I have so much to learn and it is helpful when some one directs you to ask the questions we should be asking. Science is fasinating but the more we learn the more we release how little we know.
Omg all of these are spot on. Especially the bit about climate change deniers not understanding the science. The same goes for the average activist which is bizarre. Two groups of people who know almost nothing about the topic having a massive political debate over it.
The IPCC is funded by institutions with a certain agenda and no counter opinion will be tolerated. So there's that. So called 'deniers' know this. The 'activists' are politically manipulated cultists.
The improper citation practice is what surprises and bothers me a lot. It's a basic thing people learn in any writing class. I always check sources so it is frustrating when I have to spend a long time just looking for a study referenced in a news article.
Thing is.. if you talk to a lawyer, they'll tell you how legal journalism sucks. If you talk to an IT professional, they'll tell you how computer journalism sucks. If you talk to a doctor, they'll tell you how medical journalism sucks. My only conclusion is that all journalism sucks.
The real problem is that being a good journalist is hard and social media has made everyone think they're journalists. Most of these science writers are just kids who got jobs and kept going without any real training or oversight. J school grads want to go to WaPo or the NYT, not some pop science rag. It's on the publishers to do a better job with the staffs they have. But the publishers' only incentive is money, so it's all bullshit. Money tarnishes everything.
@@pexw It's hardly a new phenomenon though; I remember science journalism being just as bad 25 years ago (with the possible exception of the press release thing)
not just you, Sabine!😂 I totally agree with you. scientific journalism must take more care and responsibility to properly explain science, facts and connections in between them in a mor comprehensive and correct way
If it were easy to explain, then everyone would be a scientist. You can't explain it without the education. This is going to be a huge problem for humanity as most humans understand less and less of advanced sciences. It may as well be magic at some point.
Excellent video. The other issue with climate science is this - last summer and so far this summer have been quite cool. This spring was the 5th coolest on record. Additionally all of my life certain islands and coasts were going to be underwater and eaten away within a few years but it just hasn't happened or even started to happen. When someone tells you that we have at most 10 years for 40 years running you begin to doubt the message. When people begin to manipulate data and remove inconvenient data points from 100 years ago to make the change look more dramatic you get a little suspicious. When you look at energy usage and realize that if your country cut emissions in half that china and india are still using more total energy (not per capita) than everyone else and that most energy usage is industrial or at least not personal use you begin to see your efforts as useless. Not denying anything but somebody is not telling the whole truth. Sensationalism and so on again rule the day.
I'll copy my comment from your last video where you said you had to explain a basic concept in a popular science article. At 0:48 "now you can't write a popular...without" I find this so annoying. The sports pages are perfectly happy to write that player X was offside, without explaining the offside rule every time the word is mentioned. I have no idea what the offside rule is, and to understand the article, I would need it explained. But putting in the explanation every time would just annoy the sports enthusiasts. So it's not there, and as someone who doesn't care about ball sports, I'm not inconvenienced by the lack, *because I don't care* and *I'm not reading it*. Similarly, the people who need common science concepts explained from scratch every single time *are not reading* the article and consequently don't need to hear it yet again. All it does is annoy the readers for the sake of a clueless subeditor. Please, could we one day all agree that science reporting could reach the level of sports reporting? That there is no need to do the equivalent of explaining how the scoring system works, how many players are allowed on the field, who's allowed in the European league, how players are selected, what the colours of the uniforms mean, what a penalty is, who decides what size the ball is and so on every single time before the weekend results are announced (or even, instead of giving the weekend results)?
My wife was an original subscriber to Discover magazine. It was really good back then, with articles written for the educated enthusiast. And then, about 20 years ago, Disney bought them. The entire tone and content of the magazine changed. It was massively dumbed down, every issue had an article about sex, and everything quickly became politicized. We failed to renew our subscription.
Sabine, as always perfect material. I totally agree with you. The first thing we teach here at the uni in Greece at the physics labs is Χ +- ΔΧ, and also some excercises to allow students to understand how the error transforms
It's not only science news. Everytime I read about topics I'm at least somewhat well informed it's just frustrating to realize how many mistakes are made.
And it's usually the simple thing they SHOULD be getting right! (My pet hate... News readers referring to a divers 'oxygen' tank. I literally scream at the TV, "IT'S AN *AIR* TANK!!!)
Indeed! She notices it because it is her field, but it is a defect in popular journalism, not in science journalism.
Everthing is over-simplfied, details references and sources are omitted, everthing has to be bite-sized quotes.
It affects all topics in todays news, and it does not matter if it is about science, economics, politics, war, or whatever.
The local newspaper occasionally did stories about the highschool I went to. They always got at least one name wrong.
As a former journalist who worked in the field of health/medical/political news writing for medical practitioners I can say there was a high value attached to accuracy.
This could sometimes be frustrating as a writer where the timeliness of a story is important but it did pay dividends in terms of confidence amongst the readership. There is a balance to be had between these two things, however.
I did attend courses on statistics for journos for example, in order to be able to read research papers and so on which helped avoid a number of egregious misreadings and headlines!
Me too.
My biggest pet peeve in science news and in all news (well, all print news, but that's pretty close to "all news") is the headline writing. Headlines are written by different staff from the story authors, in an effort to garner more interest. But this leads to compromised headlines that are uninformative, passive-aggressive, or just plain wrong, and it drives me nuts.
well, 'garner more interest' is the issue ... Ain't exactly journalists' fault if sensation is what sells. They didn't decide to crowd the earth with people who find facts boring and would rather have their fantasies and prurience pandered to. Most folks i know went into journalism for all the right reasons, and constantly have to juggle compromises in order to pay the bills... what draws attention and ultimately sells papers or gets clicks. Notice that even Sabine's thumbnails over there on the right have HUGE ALL CAPS, BRIGHT COLORS, AND MAWKISH FACES, in order to look more sensational. She does a great job of grabbing attention without distorting, but she also gets way fewer clicks.
Headlines are trolling, they're written not out of a belief that they are true, but to fish for clicks, to fish for attention and controversy. The job of headline writers is to fish/troll for clicks, controversy, and attention.
Absolutely!
Ridiculously inappropriate photos dredged of the Internet that do not illustrate the subject at all! Some of them are hilariously wrong! Like illustrating a story on the subject of microplastics with a photo of large pieces of plastic--that are not at all 'micro' and could not possibly enter the bloodstream of any animal!
For me its clickbait, it feels like every other day I see an headline about an asteroid heading straight for Earth only for the article to say "Actually no, no it's not".
Excellent videos btw Sabine, hugely interested in astronomy but can often be left confused by documentaries but your explanations get me closer to understanding, thx.
Me too, a lot of false and clickbait science news out there, and some big channels solely built on complete rubbish and false science...
Now when I see asteroid heading to Earth, I block the writer of the article permanently. ( Don't have time for it ) Thanks for posting.
Definitely a pet peev. It's clear that the "editor" posting the headline links hasn't actually read the article. You can filter out the superlatives, and the apparent reactions of the scientists, as in "scientists stunned"... They usually don't even say which scientists are stunned. Considering some scientists can be bought, (eg tobacco company staff scientists historically), and there isn't a single topic that all scientists agree on, which scientists were stunned today?
I'd add one: the "everything is a revolutionary discovery" effect, that's the main reason i stopped reading science news from non specialized sites. Every one of two days there was a breaktrough in some field, and of course, almost all of them ended up in nothing. If a real discovery comes up, i will still hear from some other source.
Adding degrees of accuracy to science publications would go against government interest in keeping cutting edge abilities secret. Thier mudding the waters as to your observation.
@@anosvoldigord4075 lol ok
I think that one can be excused. The reason I think so is because hype helps fund science. Sensationalism directly contributes to the overall budget of science. If you just give a relatively bleak impact of the "discovery" then nobody would click and read the article in the first place.
I'm not advocating for fake news, but I think overhyped correct news are not necessarily a bad thing.
This is true in other ways too. Due to the sensationalism people expect every study and every discovery to be a breakthrough, and then when they see an article about a study of some very mundane and subjectionally meaningless, they arrogantly complain about that scientist should study something meaningful instead and in their delusional IQ-superiority they often declare that more meaningful thing to be something religious or other BS.
Can you suggest me some specialized sites?
Am doing my dissertation soon and MY GOD I relate to the citings and references part so much, I have to waste so much time on searching a source that is vaguely written and then it's a loop of websites that don't say where they got their information from
So true.
yes, I hate when an article says "according to studies", or "according to the science", but fails to cite any of those studies or their sources.
THAT is the real education. When you investigate citations and references behind citations and references you see what a rickety racket the bulk of publishing really is.
@@SoloRenegade My least favorite sentences to hear in conversation start with, "They did a study, and...".
@@carlodave9 * responds to such claims * oh, so who is 'THEY', exactly?
Some science news outlets are primarily selling readers to advertisers, and the story is the vehicle for this goal. In such cases the story is structured to attract readers (to be "compelling") and to a lesser extent to be complete, accurate and open ("scientific"), which may be overwhelming or boring to the general reader.
Content like this is exactly the reason why I watch this channel! Keep it up Sabine!
sabine gritting her teeth and using her stats logo to emphasise her point is exactly the reason i watch :)
I think all of your critiques of science news applies to other types of news as well. I hate how long-winded and precious some so-called journalism is these days, especially in the 'prestige' publications. When I am trying to educate myself about world events, I don't want poetry, I want information. Thanks for everything you do, Sabine, you really do have a rare gift as a science educator.
Siansonea Yes, I get tired of articles stating figures or statistics only while I'm left asking, "Why is that the case? How many people were surveyed? Were these people paid? How were these figures arrived at?", etc.... Tell me the WHOLE story or at least link to all that information. Statistics is a classic area of abuse because they can be made to be whatever you want and TECHNICALLY you're not lying, you just haven't given the rest of the story.
Reminds me of when I presented my Thesis (Master in Science). My director told me about a professor that was in the habit of asking the toughest questions about your research. When he did ask a question so far fetched that the whole auditorium went silent and I could see my director had his eyes closed, I simply went for the truth.
I said ' I have no idea but, if your question can be applied to this research, I am sure it would make a great subject for any graduate students.'
So, it was the best answer as my director told me later hinting to the fact that he nor anyone in the room could have answered that question... hehe
Been doing it for 40 years now and never regretted to say 'If you don't know it, just say so!'
Love your video Sabine, it was about time a scientist vented our 'frustrations about science news and what's wrong with it.'
Bullseye on all points! Thank you!
Being a CNC machinist and welder for 25 years, numbers without a plus or minus “tolerance” make no sense to me either. There’s no such thing as a perfect integer unless you’re enjoying pure mathematics.
Love your channel. ❤️❤️❤️
The thing is, journalists think they're smarter than the average person, and because their BA in English or diploma in journalism did not teach them about precision, negative numbers, vector algebra, or statistics (let alone calculus), they think the average person wouldn't understand it.
They're sitting there in their white-collar jobs looking down their noses at anyone who gets grease or oil on their fingers at work, without realizing that machinists, millwrights, electricians, farmers, and an enormous variety of technicians and technologists know stuff that is a complete mystery to them.
Speaking generally, journalists are one of the most mathematically illiterate occupations.
It's nice to hear someone voice the same frustrations you have. Unfortunately in today's world the number of clicks a story/article generates is far more important then the actual content. And it's only going to get worse.
Yeah. Most of the science journalism I see in the regular media isn't concerned about science at all. It is chiefly concerned with generating revenue for minimum expenditure, which is generally means generating as many page views as cheaply as possible.
But journalism has always been this way, albeit not nearly as bad, well before the internet. Judging by articles/videos which are upvoted, they were right about human interest. We don't like straight news or complicated news, or god forbid, real science. Newspaper editors and their staff used to (talking about the 50s/60s) make the final choices about content and make sure of fact-checking. They were seasoned professionals, often with degrees in writing or journalism. While that system could be and was abused, it worked really well *compared to today*. Now, we ALL have influence and our opinions can up or down vote them. People you wouldn't ask directions from are now controlling what we find in our feeds, in a skewed, rather than representative way. Are these a fair representation or consensus? When we vote for politicians, we get one vote per person, but on the internet, you can have many accounts and votes, or a whole service designed to spam things for your business, platform, or reputation.
Papers which didn't have journalistic standards and professionals at the heads of them were called "tabloids" back then, and they sold these papers at checkout stands, consisting of 90% (being generous) completely outrageous gossip, UFO, alien, freak-show fiction. But easy and fun reading. Some people actually believed them. Now those papers and sites have re-invented themselves and are part of MSM (think about that, just think about that; I watched it happen!). Sadly, all news outlets have had to follow, to some degree, this trend. TikTok news is hopefully when this crap hits bottom. LOL MSM has FOMO.
When I was a kid, in the 50s and 60s, it was said that the average reading level of a daily newspaper was 5th grade (my grandfather had a 3rd grade education, yet was an avid paper reader). You would buy magazines to get more in-depth and (hopefully) more sophisticated articles, as there were few documentaries or outlets which broadcast them.
This change to tabloidy, lightly fact-checked "news", as far as I can remember, was heralded in, in the early 70s, by editors realizing how many papers/magazines they could sell with Population Bomb and Coming Ice Age doomsday headlines (not sure what the root cause was, perhaps the economy, which wasn't doing well; so goes newspapers). Or maybe that was on the heels of the Ancient Astronauts book and really, really slick, popular film (completely debunked by Carl Sagan), which took off and woe to a paper or mag who didn't headline it. Also cable news networks arose, and started the immediacy trend, with less time for fact-checking or thoughtfully written pieces. Often live talking heads just talking away.
I wonder how many "news" sites allow their authors to make the decision to hit the button to publish their own articles on the internet, without going through an editorial staff or formal fact-checking process? Things have to be rushed out.
There used to be a job and degree called "tech writer". They were often women, back when this was one of the few science related careers women could have. They would write science and tech articles. Also press releases for say, NASA, assist in writing up scientific papers, and eventually, software and other tech manuals. Now that anyone can write anything or make a video and publish it, I wonder how this occupation is doing. Really doubt that outlets are using tech writers much anymore. Or, if so, the word limit is so low that it's hard to really cover your subject.
I don't want to give the impression that science articles were common in newspapers back in the mid-century, even with the popularity of the space race and early live broadcast of missions. Carl Sagan's Cosmos PBS TV series did quite a lot to make science "cool", then the tech boom of the 80s ushered in what we have today (even if psuedo-science).
I am feeling bad that this comment is so long. But then I'm just paranoid due to the quick, short posts and attention spans in social media. Sigh.
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept.
Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle.
Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective.
North, East, West, South -- NEWS.
North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields.
Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge.
Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual.
Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
The only difference in "today's world" is that we now have a name for click bait - a phenomenon that's as old as journalism.
My science news pet peeves (next to the ones you already mentioned, agree with all of them): 1.Everything is always a breakthrough, even it is just as small addition to some work already done in the 1960ies. 2. Presenting the cool stuf that was done already a decade ago as the news, without mentioning the actual new science because that would sound kinda boring. 3. Publishing claims from commercial enterprises as independent science. 4. Publishing ideas, proposals, hypotises etc as facts.
5. Reporting realy shoddy science in the same tone as the great work.
'Spare me the human-interest stuff' Your explanation was perfect, thank you for putting words to my feelings!
Yes this is sadly very true. When I was younger, I used to love "Horizon" in the UK, but in recent years it has become terrible - it is not me aging, I have seen older episodes and they are still good. There is now a tendency to make it like a personal story of some individual "Professor X believes that ...." and "He found that ..." (usually a "he" ) as if this guy was some lone scientist who came up with this idea all by themselves, and that no one else agrees, but then some data came along (how ? if no one else "believes" it).. Maybe it was an *entirely* original though, but likely they were one of many people working in a field and they were working with collaborators. Long gone are the days when people work on things all by themselves. It is really like some one decided that we have to describe the science as a "story" of just one of the scientists that studies it, as if the science is not interesting in and of itself, only in the context of someone elses "story". I am all for knowing the story for how some bit of science came about, but that is because the science is interesting, so knowing how it came about is interesting *after* you know about the science - the story is intersteing because of the science, not the other way round.
Yeah, when I used to read those, by the end of it, I usually couldn’t tell if whether I forgot or misunderstood the topic or if the writer either forgot it or just mis-phrased it for whatever reason.
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept.
Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle.
Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective.
North, East, West, South -- NEWS.
North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields.
Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge.
Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual.
Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
It's not just science articles that are guilty of this. Have you tried to look up a recipe lately? A lot of times you will get this LOOOOONNNNG page full of pictures, ads, trivial info of history, personal interest, anecdotes of what others did with it and you scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll... ... ... OH, there's the recipe! 🤦♂
I came here to say exactly the opposite. What I understood from Sabine is that she's not interested in the human part of science. But there are people who are, so what's wrong with writing articles that include the story?
I agree with all her other points because they result in people getting false impressions. But this one doesn't seem to fit that category; it seemed more like a matter of taste to me.
OMG, I have felt this way for at least the last decade. I used to subscribe to several science magazines and surf several science news aggregators and got so frustrated with the popular science press that I more or less walked away from all of it (now I watch UA-cam videos 😂). Everything is a breakthrough, every new discovery turns our understanding upside down, causes a revolution, or changes the world. It's partly the fault of science journalists wanting attention and researchers wanting funding & needing to make their research sound more important and groundbreaking to get it.
And the PBS Nova programs are basically Biographies with a "mystery". Can you get Science credit in schools by reading biographies now? Like Ketchup counts as daily vegetable requirements.
Comet ISON is a good example. A few astronomers got their name and picture in the paper and just went nuts with the outlandish predictions ("Going to be brighter than the full moon!!", "Comet of the century!!"), which caught on like wildfire and became a full-on frenzy. The astronomers really wound up looking like shit on that one. Their predictions about Halley's comet were almost as bad, that was another dud. Any time an astronomer predicts that something will be the "____ of the century", just predict that they're full of crap. You have about a 90% chance of being right.
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept.
Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle.
Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective.
North, East, West, South -- NEWS.
North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields.
Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge.
Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual.
Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
This has probably been said a few times here. One of the things I hate is when I see some amazing story title about a discovery and when I read the article it turns out they "discovered" whatever it is in some computer model.
Computers are reality now apparently. Lol
Funny enough, the thing I hate most about science news, is also the thing that got me interested in science: sensationalism!
I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was, but the first articles that peaked my interest were of the “this new discovery changes EVERYTHING we know about physics and existence!!” type articles. Thankfully I got to the point where I decided to learn about actual physics, before I try and learn about the buzz feed thing that somehow “cHaNgEs EvErYtHiNg!!!!”
I agree. Yeah, "EVERYTHING changes"?! The sky is red when we all thought it was blue?!
@@kdeuler"I agree. Yeah, "EVERYTHING changes"?! The sky is red when we all thought it was blue?!"
Your comment is rather stupid. He did not say that. The imaginary punchline was:
"...changes EVERYTHING *we know* about physics..."
Cherry-picking on sentence level without providing the information, that the quote was misleading incomplete. Where have Your "..." been here? Where is Your understanding of the difference between "everything" (the reality) and "everything we know about" (our knowledge or our imagination)?
This type of comment shows clearly, what is the low standard of thinking even in the comments section of a real good science channel.
There is only little correlation between the quality of any channel and the quality of the comments or the sanity of the minds commenting.
The much higher correlation is between the content and what people like to hear.
Confirmation bias rulez the world!
@@Manorainjan wow , you're so funny
@@kdeuler i mean we learned that time and space aren't universal not that long ago ,
And that particles , waves and fields aren't that different not long afther
We are also trying to figure out why we see blue things as blue ,
So yeah , it's not that everything changes , it's more everything stays the same , but everything about our perception changes
Well done!
I think the main issue is language used to write news. Very assertive and simple. Uncertainty, dense explanations or citations don't have a place right now.
The part about the dates hit reaaally close to home. That also applies to many other things, for example:
When I look for a software tutorial on how to do something, I do want to be hit in face with the date first because if it is too old, I will know in advance that it might not be up to date, and that not finding an option that appears in the tutorial might be an indication, not that there is a problem with my version, but simply that the menus have already changed.
I "love" it when the conclusion in the article is different than from the paper or even the paper states that can't be concluded.
I had statistics professor who was fond of saying "statistics don't lie, but statisticians often do", especially when discussing correlation vs causation.
Thanks!
Wonderful-you are the best scientist I have seen in 78 years. When I was born, I asked the doctor " What is all this about?" They were speechless and I realized that Science was still in its infancy. It still is.
Biggest problem with popular science articles: sensationalism sells. In other words, never let science stand in the way of profit.
...but would they be popular if they weren't sensationalist? I doubt it. The majority of people will never care for citations or uncertainty estimates and that's fine. Popular science articles is probably better than no science articles. There will always be a variety of depth, quality and accuracy in science news. The key is to find the right level for yourself.
Yup. News media won't get the clickthrough ad-revenue if they wrote a science story full of caveats, alternate explanations and associated lines of evidence, uncertainty bars, and lacking any relatable characters for readers to root for.
I recall New Scientist writing that sales went up if they had Quantum on the cover, and down if they had Potato. Even publications aimed at the STEM-interested have to survive (or if they don't, natural selection). I think that it's a bit unrealistic to think that popular publications exist only to delve deeply into the topics that interest you, while losing general readership. Science journals exist to host peer reviewed stuff with error bars and long lists of references. I think that it's good enough that mainstream articles (and frankly videos) are starting to more consistently link to the original material. Yeah, the excessive certainly is annoying, but that's in part the study lead promoting their work for their next grant, or venture capital funding.
EXACTLY
It's a problem in science in general
I also unfollow social media pages that repeat/repost old news. There's never a date because they NEED you to click the link so they'll get paid for all the advertisements on the landing page. It's not about delivering the news or educating you, it's about making a few cents per person. They've monetized their subscribers.
This was a far more interesting topic than I was expecting! As a science enthusiast, I appreciate your perspective. And as a graphic designer, I appreciate your logo!!
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept.
Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle.
Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective.
North, East, West, South -- NEWS.
North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields.
Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge.
Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual.
Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
I don't know, maybe it was our shared German heritage, but I fell in love with you the 1st time I saw you and then when I learned that you were a physicist I was even more impressed. You are making science sucks less, good on you. I look forward to listening to you explain things that I don't understand. It's that care that you possess about your subject matter that is positive.
It's a combo: Smart, Good looking, Humorous. I'll bet my entire butt that most of Dr. Hossenfelder's viewers are men.
@@AvoidsPikes- The first thing I noticed on UA-cam was the title of one of her videos calling out particle physics, the second thing was her. My favourite thing about Sabine is sassiness however.
I think that general understanding of the concept of error bars is one of the most important upgrade we should do as a culture. Really the idea that every statement has a many times implicit variable uncertainty attached to it is an important realization about ideas and communication.
Thank you for the video. Most science articles are clickbait.
Thanks Sabine, for another great video! My wife is a writer and editor in the computer reseller field, and she agrees that not only in science journals and publications, but in other technical publications are poorly sourced. Also, when finding resources about which to write, she finds that the data and research offered about products and technologies are from studies funded by the very industries that sell these products and technologies, and oftentimes slanted to show the products in a favorable light.
Yes, when a "science article" is really a "Sponsor's message"
You have hit the nail on the head. Adding to this, too many science articles being written by journalism majors who get paid by the word rather than content or accuracy and as you pointed out, they are wasting the reader's time.
Frankly, your channel is one of the most informative, easy to understand and interesting channel featuring science news
It's awesome to hear someone else saying what the rest of us sometimes think. The sad thing is the media uses most of these techniques and withholding of certain data, intentionally.
Like what data?
Agreed.
This video is a check list for sorting the wheat from the chaf.
I would add to the checklist: 11) Who is paying for the research or the article?
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept.
Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle.
Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective.
North, East, West, South -- NEWS.
North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields.
Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge.
Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual.
Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Thank you. I am a journalist who often writes about highly technical subjects and you are right about common transgressions in science writing. (Not by me, of course.)
But there's a major problem you didn't address: Very few readers have PhD's in physics. They bore easily and will stop reading when you start to explain the science. Sometimes it helps to "trick" them into reading with some human interest stuff. I first learned that while writing about cold fusion decades ago.
Good to know I'm not alone suffering with all of that.
Other thing that annoy me a lot is "this COULD lead/mean/change/etc everything forever".
I mean, anything COULD.
Thanks for your videos, I wanted to add one point. To me science news also struggles with trying to "entertain" the reader. I want to be informed not entertained.
I hear you, preaching to the choir.
That's nice for you but reading rates are a constant concern of editors. I aimed for 'horrifying' but all journalists need a hook.
That puts you in the minority of readers
i've been thinking about this-there's a different emotional satisfaction that comes with approaching something looking forward to doing lot of thinking yourself. maybe describing it as a kind of enjoyment of one's own agency is helpful? and i also think about how to build relationships/communities that include that and don't have too many chefs in the kitchen.
I agree on all your points, Sabine. My biggest peeves are date not being attached to articles and failure to cite sources. BUT I think that the reason most media doesn't do the right thing in these cases is because their readers aren't educated enough to demand it. Critical thinking skills should be taught in elementary school.
"They don't understand that they don't understand it" too true. To many layman, science is so complex it might as well be "magic", and journalism covering science from the mass market perspective caters to the lowest common denominator.
Sounds a lot like unknown unknowns doesn't it
"They don't understand that they don't understand it" applies to the journalists just as much as it does to the readers.
@@pthom1508 Ah, but many of the readers actually want to understand it, while the journos merely want a Story.
There are some people for whom evidence is irrelevant, they simply believe whatever they chose to believe. There are also forces (fossil fuel, tobacco, junk food companies, for example) who deliberately and cynically exploit this to manufacture doubt.
"This is not an honorable business conducted by honorable men in an honorable way. Don't assume I'm that way and you shouldn't be." -- Dr Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and unindicted perpetrator of crimes against humanity, admonishing analysts who were balking at being pressured into finding something they didn't see in reconnaissance photos
Sure, Kissinger is a politician and not a scientist, but as far as I know everyone is human - PhDs don't include wings and a halo.
Journalism has become more about selling advertising than providing thoughtful and complete research analysis.
Once again, you put a big smile on my face! My big irrigation is Correlation masquerading as Causation.
I agree with all your points.
My personal two pet peeves are 1) over-simplification, and 2) attempting to persuade me by appealing to science consensus.
I like the way your explanations remove the gobbledygook; however, that is correct clarification, not over-simplification. Science news needs to be science education, which is why I like your channel. You and your team do a nice job of sorting things out, then presenting the facts in an intelligent thoughtful and complete manner (without the gobbledygook).
Thanks for all you do.
marcus
Those concerns were always in my mind when I wrote any article about science for the blogs I used to write to. Because they can really be enervating!
A few days ago I saw an article about the connection of 2 time crystals and... It talked about everything, except the subject itself. 🙄
Anyway, thanks for the video, Sabine!
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Ha! I only watched the time cube video for a few minutes before I saw that it was just click bait from standard theory.
@@JohnHoranzy fortunately I didn't see it. 😬
But yeah, there's too much clickbait on UA-cam!
Dude I see you in woodworking comment sections all the time. This is an odd crossover. 😛
I would like to read an actual article on that subject, but where to find it and the time to find it.
@@MCsCreations this page tells you EVERYTHING that's wrong with science!!! It changes everything!!! ua-cam.com/video/eOH15_pqWZ4/v-deo.html
Awesome video. I've had the same issues with a lot of the "science" reporting that I read online or see on television. Part of the problem lies with the reporters not having a proper background in science (ie a science degree). They gravitate towards the simplistic answer when it is far more nuanced. I've spent a lot of time explaining to friends what's wrong with a particular report and why. With Covid19 and Climate Science in the news, I often have to shake my head reading what is reported.
There's a great book called _Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy_ that mentions some of this stuff with relation to nutritional news, and in its first 8 pages or so, it gives a short primer to the common reader on how to interpret nutritional news, e.g. look for studies with large samples, clinical studies are best, don't whiplash your lifestyle around based on headlines. It lessons the confusions from headlines like, "eggs are bad! No wait, good! Butter is bad! No wait, margarine is worse!"
One thing that also annoys me is when they don't tell you how big the test groups are. "90% of people notice a marked improvement within two weeks!" and when you dig you realize that they tested on a group of 10 to 20 people.
I sometimes counter this by referring to my discord group for D&D. There are five British people in the group and five Norwegian people in it. None of the British people drive, all of the Norwegian people drive. If you extrapolate that it means that 100% of British people don't drive while 100% of Norwegians do.
Sample size is too small!
For me the top issues areover simplification, to the level that I, as a physicist, do not understand popular articles related to my field. The second is the lack of references and background, to the level that ideas tens year old are presented as new.
The ‘problem’ with the simplification process is that it leads to truth, and who wants that?
spaceandmotion
A lot of my undergrad textbooks would make certain claims with a corresponding bar graph illustration that showed error bars so large, there wasn’t any difference between the bars in reality. Had professors use these in lectures who didn’t understand why I said they were unfounded claims. Discouraging to say the least. I was shocked that so many professors with PhDs didn’t understand basic scientific methods.
Sabine, you are fast becoming my favourite science educator. Thanks so much for all your videos!
Sabine*
@@TheCetarius thanks, corrected
In my opinion Science news sucks because:
- The gap between complex science and the average population seems to be growing.
- It follows that articles are becoming more and more general for the normal population
- This gives the opportunity to make such articles more and more lurid and some people take advantage of this opportunity for clickbait without shame.
Good point indeed.
-The average population is probably more informed about science today compared to any other time in history.
-There's no reason to think that articles are becoming more and more general.
-Perhaps there are simply more articles being written altogether.
@@MrAlRats The modern average person is less and less affected directly by natural phenomena, which means they have less intuition to understand what they’re reading about.
I guarantee you that public understanding of weather was MUCH higher in the period just before the industrial revolution when a super-majority of people were farmers and depended on their understanding of it in order to successfully harvest crops.
@@MrAlRats - only those interested in science in general are more informed than to any other time in history
- the bulk of the population IS dumb as heck and dont even know simple basics, like what a ' ² ' at a number means! (or how many cm are in a 1m, in a metric country mind you! seen all of this in person O_o)
- yes, and with a higher number of x, the amount of bad specimen rises, even if the %age were to remain the same
Most Americans believe that Moonfall is scientifically accurate lol. So the news caters to the lowest common denominator. 😂🤣
Danke! The rise of Sabine's 'Science News'. You better do it yourself. Everything has a starting point 🎉 Point 8 is annoying a lot!
Great video Sabine. This is the third video of yours I've watched, and am now a fan. You are accurate, truthful, and very interesting. I love how you are deliberate, purposeful and precise with your data, as well as the delivery of it. You are awesome. I will be watching all the rest of your video. Keep up the great work.
Sabine, you perfectly nailed it! I have not thought why I get irritated whenever someone shares me an article. I ran into all the points you listed. In fact it hinders important information to get to people as they have automatic knee jerk reaction to listening or reading any news. Example of this is covid outbreak a few years ago. People were dismissive of it at first but I was digging into WHO data being published out of China, spending a lot of time looking for the facts and decided to work from home (here in nyc). Everyone were saying its just news exaggerating and nobody was concerned. Luckily I was prepared for the mass panic to the stores as people ran for groceries when they learned the truth of the pandemic. And for months I was like I told you so. Thank the media for being untrustworthy for news thats caused this lack of trust or concern.
And thank the good doctor too.
Websites used to carefully date articles, even include it in the URL. But a growing trend has been intentionally leaving out the date entirely, specifically so people will read it without realizing how outdated it is. The ad system doesn't care if you're being defrauded.
every department in every university should have a "pop science club" or something where every month researchers in that department come together to write pop science articles about their colleagues' work and their work
But researchers are not journalists. They are not necessarily good writers and I think they should spend their time more on research.
@@fg8557 They already spend enough time on research, it's literally their job lol you say that as if researchers are only spending an hour a day on research and then doing whatever they want. and yes I know they're not good journalists, but they know their work better than anyone, they can learn to be journalists and science communicators, if they can learn really complex topics and do research, I'm pretty sure they can learn that too.
One of the requirements of my grad program was that any time any of us wrote a research paper we also had to write a public piece for laypeople and try to get it published as well.
@@mastershooter64 I could not agree more. Unless the researcher is just publishing results (data), being able to communicate what those results mean is very important. In my mind, a good researcher should also be a good communicator. I'm not saying they all have to be fantastic writers, but as you point out, being good writers is something they can master, and it's important.
@@fg8557 you can collect data all day long, but if you are incapable of communicating what it means your work is useless. Better the researcher writes a clumsy *accurate* article about their own work than to allow a journalist to write a beautiful inaccurate article.
Thank you for your clear exposition on how to read science news. I have suffered similar frustration in dealing with this topic.
Oh Sabine I just want to give you a hug. I'll refer you to the Gell-Mann amnesia effect and the fact that all news is the way you are showing. Science news, political news, all news is this way. Keep up the awesome work and anxious for your next video.
Follow the money is still sage advice. More and more it leads to some government bureau.
Another one that gets me is conflating the failure to show one result with showing the opposite.
Yeah, I remember reading a paper on NMNH synthesis and effects that said in the abstract it stopped cell growth, which was repeated several times in the paper itself. Very careful reading, however, showed the researchers meant ABNORMAL cell growth, were not native English speakers, and the editors failed to encourage them to underline this point. This wasn't even a science article, it was the original paper.
You somehow make it educational and funny at the same time , ive enjoyed your straight to the point remarks for a long time , i appreciate your work and i hope we get to see more and more of these in the future!
Usually I have some skeptical mindset about this Author but here she just nailed it . Well done Sabine . 100% with you!
This is exactly why I don't read science news, but watching your videos instead.
Keep up the good work, Sabine👍
My biggest problems with news is lack of sources and ABSOLUTE lack of date of the article piece.
Date of comment: 18.06.2022
The international standard date format is Year-Month-Day, so you should write 2022-06-18, and most people have no idea the standard even exists because nobody is informing about it anywhere.
Google has you covered. “1 hour ago”.
@@KaptenKlant it is great for sorting
Date of comment: 18.06.2022
Didn't you hear what she said ?The date of publication should come first. And then the article. Smh.
This is the first video of yours I’ve ever seen but your number one point is my biggest problem with science writing too so I know I’m in the right place!
Absolutely right. The collecting, analysing and reporting of Covid data was and still is appalling; as if the people doing it had never been introduced to rigorous statistical methods.
Innocently botched by some panicked researchers and partly sabotaged by other researchers who feared their own organizations had created it and accidentally released it on the world.
The problem is that most science reporting is written for an audience that really wouldn't understand the science. Remember your recent video where you talked about how hard it was to discuss quantum computing at a level that wouldn't sound like word salad to the readers? It's the same problem for every field of advanced science, likely paired with an element of the Dunning-Kruger effect at the hands of the people writing the articles.
That video has been sitting on my "Watch Later" list for when I have time.
I doubt few people really understand the science well enough to actually explain it well enough to others. Knowing the right scientific word to use in a story does no good if the word itself is a place holder for a concept that nobody in the world really understands. In science this word list is endless as even the most simple word like gravity or dark matter is only really understood by few in the science community. Take the search for the graviton??? Einstein's theory pretty much explains that gravity is a property of the space/time continuum that represents the distortion of the space/time fabric? The graviton is supposed to be the quantum particle or wave function that creates the field or influences the gravitational field which perhaps could represent gravity in a theory of everything mathematical formula. The graviton may or may not exist in reality but that does not prevent the word being used in such a way that ensures people understand it when the entire concept may be total fantasy.
Midwits.
There is a meme of a graph that has one's knowledge of a subject on the horizontal and their willingness to talk about the subject on the vertical. About 1/3 the way across the knowledge spectrum is "mount stupud" where one's willingness to speak on things is rather large until they learn a bit more and realize they should exercise more discretion. Midwits - those just around IQs of 110 to 120 are common enough to form large social groups of reinforcement. They are also generally smart enough to be recognized as intelligent people while being capable of learning several disciplines. However, because they learn a little and are willing to talk a lot while being relatively common, they never see need to learn enough to realize they are on "mount stupid" nor are the voices loud enough criticizing them to pierce their echo chamber of reinforcement.
Now elect their cult followers into office and give them control over grants and university funding.... and you end up with a world where the actual experts are shunned for criticizing Science, May It Be Praised.
…Neil degrasse Tyson. Hakeem Oluseyi. 🙄.
The problem isn't that the audience wouldn't understand the science. The problem is that the writers understand that they can sell clicks to advertisers with minimal effort by doing a really crappy job of science reporting, and by training their prospective audience over time to be incapable of differentiating science from what might as well be made-up nonsense so the writers can be even lazier.
I'm a specialized technician in Brazil, interested in physics and technologies and I thought I was the only one thinking this way! It's very nice hear Sabine talk about it! 🇧🇷🇵🇹🇧🇷🇵🇹🇧🇷🇵🇹🇧🇷🇵🇹🇧🇷🇵🇹
I have exactly the same views about most science news. Great video, which I will be forwarding to lots of people.
i wish more people had that kind of journalistic precision and wrote honestly
Excellent, Sabine. All of your points have bugged me for years. Thank you for putting it succintly.
Explaining what Andrew Wiles did to prove Fermats last theorem is hard. Describing how he felt while doing it is easy. It's not only being lazy. Providing the context and doing a thorough job explaining what he did exceeds most peoples attention span.
Exactly. Should journalists have simply avoided this momentous story in the field of mathematics simply because neither they nor the public were equipped to judiciously weigh the pros and cons of a 1000 page proof few mathematicians on earth could understand? I read everything I could on Wiles brilliant discovery and feel greatly enriched for having done so.
My biggest gripe about science "news" is that it often touts the benefits of doing something without mentioning the costs or limitations.
I'm not big into science but I agree with you on every point. I'm a recent subscriber. I like the science channels on YT and the minor research they often bring me to.
Sabine, I live in a rural area on a Great Lake. When I go out at night and shine my 1,000 lumen light into the sky, the amount of particulate in the beam of light is absolutely frightening!
This video has strong teacher-correcting-your-essay energy
Correct. And is that good or bad? I for one don't mind being corrected by this lady.
A lot of "Journalist" need to smacked in the essay for being mentally lazy and not actually doing journalism.
As an older viewer I can tell you the decline in journalism over the years in general is HUGE!
Science probably the worst, the use of dramatisations and art work (passed off as photos), massive generalisations & the never ending anthropomorphism of probes or other equipment make science news as useful as an episode of Disney & seem targeted at 5 year olds.
That's true of all news reporting. We have thousands of times more "reporting" than we did in the past, but it feels like the actual meaningful content has plummeted by similar orders of magnitude.
I remember being told back at 1985 that journalism used to better. I don't see how that's true when they intentionally left out the worst parts of WWI, how black war heroes being killed for sitting in the wrong seat on a train when they came home, or WWIi when the bloodiest stays in the war sometimes weren't rewarded for months if ever, and Korea where all kinds of atrocities happened. , Everything that happened in Vietnam also happened in all of those wars, it just wasn't reported. They over simplified getting to the Moon, which is why it's hard to go back when people know the real risk.
Turns out everybody knew about all the affairs president Harding and Hoover and Roosevelt, they just didn't report them. There used to be a more clear line between news and opinion. For brief.perod and that's about it. I guess I spent too much time chatting with my world war I veteran lawn mowing customers when I was young to ever take journalism too seriously.
@@flotsamike in 1985 racism was still widespread, as was patriotism. For the former, there is absolutely no excuse. For the latter, we had to honour the kids that fought, and the elite had to hide their many mistakes. In 1985 the Soviet Union was still a very real threat, so the nation had to be perceived as strong. News on the 1980s was a massive pile of poo. It probably is today, and in 30 years time we might look back on present times with the same lens as today we look back on the 80s. The fact is. Few of us are there to witness the things we're told about. We rely on the words of the journalists that report on the things they've been told by someone they know.
Anthropomorphism is something that bothers me as well. Mostly it is the talk about black holes eating, devouring, making a meal of stuff around them.
Sabine, I like the way you just report what they write and say without coming right out with a judgement call. Just lay out the facts and foundation of the issue and let us see the light.
Thank you so much for another great video. A worthwhile topic that isn’t discussed often enough.
I discovered your channel just a few days ago. And I love your vids Sabine, I admire you for your work. You do a great job explaining + tackling scientific topics but also make a lot of fun for others to watch it, that combination makes your videos a must watch for anyone willing to learn.
I studied myself Biochemical Medical Molecular Science in the Netherlands, I always am interested in videos regarding the greater scope of our universe, I love astronomy as a hobby, but I am not great with math as you are haha.
I thank you for all the great learning / insight I got from you thusfar. Keep up the good work! :) And have fun! ♥️
This is hands down one of the most important videos Sabbine has made recently. I pray this gets traction and we get proper vetting and honest news, STOP clicking shitty science news sites. Take mental note who wrote the article and bookmark bad actors that do what she's outlined like omitting counter facts, or recycling or any fusion article
I think we mistakenly assume that the main motivation of the writer(s)/publisher(s) is to keep us informed of the changing events, issues, and characters in the science world. It is not! Like the scientists and institutions that compete for grants, they are competitors and their outcomes betray their main motivation--to drive the most content engagement traffic and clicks.
My pet peeve is the inclusion of soft science, social "science", and the perceived injustice du jour into what were previously hard science journals such as Scientific American. It is as if the editors want to make the readers feel bad about some state of affairs rather than encouraging them think about the ramifications of scientific discovery or development. Emphasis on feel over think.
I suspect that the chemical issues regarding plastics and endocrine hormonal affecting chemicals leaching out of the plastics is creating a worldwide hormonal affecting environment that has a relationship between lowered testosterone levels in males which has been recognized because it’s been funded but other studies are routinely not funded...
With microplastics in drinking water and in seafood...
Emotional reactions facilitate cognitive dissonance facilitating cognitive biases and when this is the model of propaganda, advertising and social media platforms in order to facilitate planting suggestions for sociopolitical economic interests and agendas which is usually exploitation.
The fact that strong emotional mental states literally short circuit logical cognitive critical thinking processes and functions which is why all humans are susceptible to manipulation and being in a emotionally emotional mental state leaving themselves vulnerable to scams, cons, propaganda, advertising and group think thinking.
Social media platforms and corporate networks take advantage of this and undermine everything.
I wholeheartedly agree!
I'm forced to analyze the tone and the style of a story to arrive at an estimate as to whether it is at all reliable. I've learned to ignore many stories on that basis. Not very scientific--but it does reduce the amount of time I waste.
Another source of my scepticism comes from reading stories on subjects on which I am very well informed. I often groan, or growl, or shout out loud in frustration at the plethora of mistakes and ghastly misconceptions! If coverage of areas I know a lot about are so wrong--it is only rational to assume the coverage of all other subjects is equaly faulty!
Thank you so much. Great work, I will definitely share that with my students. And I hasten to enter a possible number 11: Science news as a fund-raising instrument. My long-time ever-more-annoying example is NASA's repeated "Water on Mars" "Life on Exoplanets" etc. stories. I feel that whenever they need additional funding they are launching a real barrage of reports of that kind to convince their would-be sponsors. Really Annoying.
Yes! I've noticed that
Sabine is great in exposing misleading statistics.I wish she would write an article on Return on Investment ROI i.e. using proforma ROI on $20 billion for new space program and the same $20 billion devoted to green energy WHY >You will never see that comparison from Congress
PS You will never see one from Elon Musk for his Mars projects because much of what he spends is taxpayer fund filtered via NASA PS The Moderna covid vaccine was mostly funded by the government .The result the Moderna is start company execs who made millions ina few months .The government/taxpayers share zero $$ As usual the press ignored
the story and it the Moderna story typical of government funding of university research Not one person in Congress has proposed a profit sharing method for successful research funded mostly by taxpayers
I agree!!!! Give me the deep dive and details. Not the one sentence summary.
I agree with all your points.
I completely agree with your observations. I am frequently bothered by ‘sloppy reporting’. Not only in the science sphere; but when ‘surveys’ are done by news organizations with sample sizes of 2000 or, whatever.
Actually, 2000 is a good sample size for a national poll. Learned that in statistics 101.
The last piece of "science news" I've read, as reported by one of our most important newspapers, is that portuguese biologists discovered that the male brain and the testicles are very very similar organs.
Well.....
All human tissues share some similarities so that report Is meaningless without details. What do they mean by "similar organs" ?
As a science educator, it's frustrating to see people who I consider smart fall into traps of taking science articles as pure fact. That misunderstanding that science is not fact-based is a big reason I went into education.
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept.
Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle.
Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective.
North, East, West, South -- NEWS.
North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields.
Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge.
Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual.
Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
You are correct. I would say that science is a procedure based methodology to determine objective truth about the physical world. Objective truths are largely factual information, but they can be used to predict behavior of phenomena that have not occured. The base or foundation of science is the hypothesis - experiment - conclusion cycle...
Aren't objective observations also facts? Ehe.... They may be part of science but not foundational.
@@kayakMike1000 Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic.
Absolute truth is dual to relative truth -- Hume's fork.
Objective truth is a goal or target -- teleological.
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non-teleological physics (entropy).
The process of converging upon absolute truth is a syntropic process and requires observers to make optimized predictions or expectations.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
"Through imagination and reason we turn experience into foresight (prediction)" -- Spinoze describing syntropy.
"The relation of ideas" is dual to "matter of facts" -- Hume's fork.
Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Duality creates reality.
Education isn't fact based either. Science is logical and Education is more social.
I was fortunate to grow up with interesting science evangelists on TV: Heinz Wolf, David Bellamy, Magnus Pike, Patrick Moore, etc... They all seemed quite crazy, but all were very enthusiastic and knowledgeable about their subjects. It's the reason I'm subscribed here too!
One thing that bugs me is when someone claims "it has been proven". When in reality it's more correct to say "the evidence supports the hypothesis".
Yeah if you want to prove something you better cite the derivation of the mathematical proof behind the theorem etc. Proofs are a thing from mathematics and logic only tangentially linked to science based on some theorems or proofs being useful in representing real world observations.
Love your content! Appreciate the subject as just this week I encountered quantum computer article number 3000 with no additional insights, which is quite a shame since the basic subject is quite interesting
As a researcher, I've come to dismiss anything without a listed methodology. Even with one, the headline is something fantastical, and then you dig in to find out they have a tiny sample size with very narrow test parameters that don't actually support the assertion in the title. It's very frustrating. Excellent video!!! 🎉
Hate it when the news reports: "British scientists…" or "Scientists at [a British] university…" - but they never just say "Scientists at [University]…" - it's as if some connection with being British is the ONLY think that makes it newsworthy in Britain.
its not uncommon though, quite often I've seen "researchers in japan" or Israel or any other country without a more specific mention.
In general, “Harvard/whatever University study” is also a little aggravating, especially with that wording. I think that, on the margin there is value in mentioning consensus and authority, because it can give a completely unfamiliar reader general bearings. That said, it should never overshadow the authors and especially the research itself. “University” didn’t do that work, specific humans did.
A few of the key points I'd really like to know when I read science news include: How much data was studied? Eg, the latest super berry has been found to aid weight loss. Great. How many people were in the trial? How was the experiment designed? Did anyone check that the participants weren't simply suffering the effects of mild poisoning etc
Then there's how big is the effect. Headline reads something like, planting trees helps to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Conclusion, we should all plant a tree in our gardens. Should we though? How much carbon will one tree absorb, and is that even enough to offset the carbon produced by the delivery van that delivered it?
And is that even the most efficient carbon offset or can we do better?
Good news is dual to bad news -- news is a dual concept.
Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle.
Subjective or relative news is dual to objective or absolute news -- news is dual, it is either dependent or independent of the observers perspective.
North, East, West, South -- NEWS.
North poles are dual to south poles -- magnetic fields.
Positive is dual to negative -- electronic charge.
Electro is dual to magnetic -- electromagnetic energy is dual.
Science wins through consensus. Consensus = mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The laws of physics have been decided through mutual agreement or objective democracy.
The conservation of energy has been accepted or mutually agreed by millions of scientists for decades -- consensus.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
@@alexandertownsend3291 there's a lot we can do. Most people can't be bothered to do anything though. I'd love to see data on growing your own veg and herbs Vs buying it. The obvious answer being that it's better to grow it. But is it? When I buy plant feed, it comes in a one litre plastic bottle. The soil I disturb to plant things releases carbon. Whereas a commercial grower buys fertilizer in huge reusable containers, and has computers controlling the growing conditions for optimum growth. I oversimplified of course, but point being, there are many things to consider, but the data is either not available or in fragments over many sources and hard to fathom.
@@anftrew3775 I hadn't considered any of that, but you make a good point.
@Christopher Grant you're right. It certainly is difficult to compute. But my point being there are many articles from very reputable sources that give out advice on such matters, and even attempt to look legit by crunching SOME of the numbers, usually the easy ones. But they make no attempt to work out the full picture, nor do they give the reader any indication that they've missed a load out.
I find your discussions refreshing and as I release that I have so much to learn and it is helpful when some one directs you to ask the questions we should be asking. Science is fasinating but the more we learn the more we release how little we know.
Omg all of these are spot on. Especially the bit about climate change deniers not understanding the science. The same goes for the average activist which is bizarre. Two groups of people who know almost nothing about the topic having a massive political debate over it.
The IPCC is funded by institutions with a certain agenda and no counter opinion will be tolerated. So there's that.
So called 'deniers' know this. The 'activists' are politically manipulated cultists.
Damn, but you covered every concern I have and beautifully as usual. I salute you Sabine!
The improper citation practice is what surprises and bothers me a lot. It's a basic thing people learn in any writing class. I always check sources so it is frustrating when I have to spend a long time just looking for a study referenced in a news article.
Thing is.. if you talk to a lawyer, they'll tell you how legal journalism sucks. If you talk to an IT professional, they'll tell you how computer journalism sucks. If you talk to a doctor, they'll tell you how medical journalism sucks. My only conclusion is that all journalism sucks.
The real problem is that being a good journalist is hard and social media has made everyone think they're journalists. Most of these science writers are just kids who got jobs and kept going without any real training or oversight. J school grads want to go to WaPo or the NYT, not some pop science rag. It's on the publishers to do a better job with the staffs they have. But the publishers' only incentive is money, so it's all bullshit. Money tarnishes everything.
@@pexw It's hardly a new phenomenon though; I remember science journalism being just as bad 25 years ago (with the possible exception of the press release thing)
not just you, Sabine!😂 I totally agree with you. scientific journalism must take more care and responsibility to properly explain science, facts and connections in between them in a mor comprehensive and correct way
If it were easy to explain, then everyone would be a scientist. You can't explain it without the education. This is going to be a huge problem for humanity as most humans understand less and less of advanced sciences. It may as well be magic at some point.
3:19 "... because they are wasting my time..." sabine hossenfelder at full rage... simply great, i like that so much :)
Excellent video. The other issue with climate science is this - last summer and so far this summer have been quite cool. This spring was the 5th coolest on record. Additionally all of my life certain islands and coasts were going to be underwater and eaten away within a few years but it just hasn't happened or even started to happen. When someone tells you that we have at most 10 years for 40 years running you begin to doubt the message. When people begin to manipulate data and remove inconvenient data points from 100 years ago to make the change look more dramatic you get a little suspicious. When you look at energy usage and realize that if your country cut emissions in half that china and india are still using more total energy (not per capita) than everyone else and that most energy usage is industrial or at least not personal use you begin to see your efforts as useless. Not denying anything but somebody is not telling the whole truth. Sensationalism and so on again rule the day.
I'll copy my comment from your last video where you said you had to explain a basic concept in a popular science article.
At 0:48 "now you can't write a popular...without"
I find this so annoying. The sports pages are perfectly happy to write that player X was offside, without explaining the offside rule every time the word is mentioned. I have no idea what the offside rule is, and to understand the article, I would need it explained. But putting in the explanation every time would just annoy the sports enthusiasts. So it's not there, and as someone who doesn't care about ball sports, I'm not inconvenienced by the lack, *because I don't care* and *I'm not reading it*.
Similarly, the people who need common science concepts explained from scratch every single time *are not reading* the article and consequently don't need to hear it yet again. All it does is annoy the readers for the sake of a clueless subeditor.
Please, could we one day all agree that science reporting could reach the level of sports reporting? That there is no need to do the equivalent of explaining how the scoring system works, how many players are allowed on the field, who's allowed in the European league, how players are selected, what the colours of the uniforms mean, what a penalty is, who decides what size the ball is and so on every single time before the weekend results are announced (or even, instead of giving the weekend results)?
An excellent comparison!
My wife was an original subscriber to Discover magazine. It was really good back then, with articles written for the educated enthusiast. And then, about 20 years ago, Disney bought them. The entire tone and content of the magazine changed. It was massively dumbed down, every issue had an article about sex, and everything quickly became politicized. We failed to renew our subscription.
Sabine, as always perfect material. I totally agree with you. The first thing we teach here at the uni in Greece at the physics labs is Χ +- ΔΧ, and also some excercises to allow students to understand how the error transforms