11 replies to this topic

[Dauth]

Listening to toady's "The Now Show" from the BBC it has struck me again just how bad the UK (and possibly European and Global) media are at relaying scientific findings to the rest of the population. Now I realise that Newspapers are there to make money, but surely there is something wrong with calling them News-Papers, I'll grant the paper bit but News, News is escaping me.

Point 1
The Telegraph (UK's most popular paper)
Headline "Women who dress provocatively more likely to be raped"
**Body text** Claimed by scientists.

The problem here is the work they source was an UNCOMPLETED Master's Thesis which did NOT find that provocatively dressed women were more likely to be sexually assaulted.

Point 2
The Daily Mail (Now no one with two braincells to bang together calls this news but the fact is humans do read it)
http://thedailymailo....wordpress.com/
A list in Jan 08 over 4 days of the materials that can cause/cure cancer. Notice how coffee appears on both?

I could go on and on, my PhD project has been butchered by the media enough to make me spit aerosol to cool the planet instead.


If these papers are news, can't we get them for false advertising?

[Sgt. Nuker]

You mentioned that newspapers are there to make money. In order to make money and possibly steer someone away from a competing newspaper, they sensationalize the news. That is they portray it in such a way that attracts the reader's eyes. Headlines that provoke thought are going to get looks because as a general rule, humans are curious. The curious will pick up the paper and read the article to find out what the headline is/was all about. In short, it's a marketing ploy.

To be fair, not all news is "news", as it is possible for some new health report to contain absolute rubbish, or some other scientific finding to be a farce in some way or another.

[ComradeV]

What we have to remember is that for example the most powerful people in the USA, Obama, God (church) and big pharmaceutical (including big tobacco ect). they have been known to pull advertising money from any news publication.

News companies see them selves first as a profit center, and second as a news source. We live in a day were we have Left wing and Right wing news, when we want a positive spin on the "war" we get fox news. The media today parades mental unstable people on a stage for us to scorn and ridicule.

Todays media reminds me of the movie Network, by Paddy Chayefsky, a movie way ahead of its time but now it seams dated!! The Media gave us a unique view of the Vietnam war which helped bring it to a speedy end. They have give us people like Walter Cronkite.

News today is not really news, yes there are still the good news sources, but most are Tabloids, it all started with the show A Current Affair.

We cant get them for False advertising because all they are doing is telling the story with a slant, not making it up, just slanting it. There is many away to make 99% of people who smoke die, into a percentage of people who smoke have no health problems.

but that would be my opinion, probs not worth much, i tend to ramble.

ComradeV

[Brad]

Newspapers are there primarily nowadays to make money, they only occasionally see somthing as intresting enough not to spice it up a little.
In the case of scientific discoveries, newspapers in my opinion are one of the worst places to research on the information, they often spread the news around to people, but they don't go into much detail, which as this topic is basically about, and can often get it wrong.

They also go for the scientific finding they think will relate to their audience the best, which is the average person.
They also go for hot topics, such as you linked, Cancer and such.

In conclusion, the newspapers are good for relaying some scientific information, just not all of it.

[Golan]

The problem with many "news" these day is that they aren't handled as information, but entertainment. As such, there is much less of a focus on accuracy than on impression. Interestingly, this is actually what most people want.
If you want to change that, you will ironically have to resort to similar behavior though.

[Ixonoclast]

Buy/read quality papers.

It helps, seriously.

I only read the Pers, NRC, Volkskrant. Stuff like that. High quality papers. (Dutchy knows what I'm talking about)

I also try to read both socialistic and liberal papers, keeps you from getting coloured goggles.

But screw conservative papers, if I wanted to read things through '50s-goggles, I'd play Red Alert 1. (Screw the racist moneygrabbing Telegraaf, they even collaborated with the nazis in WWII)

Edited by Ixonoclast, 11 August 2009 - 10:29.

[Rich19]

Ixonoclast, on 11 Aug 2009, 11:28, said:

Buy/read quality papers.

It helps, seriously.

I only read the Pers, NRC, Volkskrant. Stuff like that. High quality papers. (Dutchy knows what I'm talking about)

I also try to read both socialistic and liberal papers, keeps you from getting coloured goggles.

But screw conservative papers, if I wanted to read things through '50s-goggles, I'd play Red Alert 1. (Screw the racist moneygrabbing Telegraaf, they even collaborated with the nazis in WWII)

Hardly. In the UK, for example, the MMR jab scare was perpetuated by ALL the major newspapers; as were the MRSA swab sting operations in hospitals; and the BBC and all the papers continue to include ridiculous stories like "equations for the most miserable day of the year". The less reputable ones are even worse - take a look at this.

On a sidenote, I'd recommend looking at this website, and/or reading Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (the guy who runs the website).

[Dauth]

Quality papers? Sometimes I get pissed off at Science and Nature. If I'm going to trust something I'm pretty much down to journals, that was until I found out how the publishing and awarding of grants was done...

[TehKiller]

Well technological stuff that doesnt change life immediately aint that much of importance...however misrepresenting facts in world events (politics to be exact) does deserve a overhaul

[Rich19]

TehKiller, on 21 Aug 2009, 14:51, said:

Well technological stuff that doesnt change life immediately aint that much of importance...however misrepresenting facts in world events (politics to be exact) does deserve a overhaul

I would say that sports results and coverage are far less important than "technological stuff that doesn't change life immediately", yet sports sections are generally full of very precise figures like scores and suchlike. Newspapers have people dedicated to accurately reporting sports, and the finance sections can be very confusing to someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. So why is it that both of these sections still get complicated and accurate commentary, but scientific stories are ridiculously dumbed down at best (and blatantly made up at worst).

[TehKiller]

its more what the masses want...and I think the "masses" prefer sports over science... and alt more people are actually into sports so they actually understand finances in that department. As much as I would like too have science related news to be correct I still would pretty much ignore that section because its interesting only to scientists while stuff like sports (you mentioned it) are cover a broader public

[Rich19]

TehKiller, on 21 Aug 2009, 20:09, said:

its more what the masses want...and I think the "masses" prefer sports over science... and alt more people are actually into sports so they actually understand finances in that department. As much as I would like too have science related news to be correct I still would pretty much ignore that section because its interesting only to scientists while stuff like sports (you mentioned it) are cover a broader public

If the masses of people are too dense to understand or care about science stories then why are the finance pages still so impenetrable?

Also, who says nobody's interested in science stories? There was a scare in the UK a while back about a vaccination given to all schoolchildren (the MMR vaccine) possibly causing autism. No matter how busy you might be reading the sports section, if you see a story which tells you the government has just given your child autism, you will be interested in it. But actually, MMR does not cause autism. The entire media completely ignored the more reputable studies showing no link between the vaccine and autism, and did a lot to perpetuate the myth. Stories today about things like Swine Flu will also grab attention in a similar way. I agree that people would ignore science stories if they contain nothing important, but that is true for all stories. The fact is that people can be very interested in science stories when it affects them, and it is therefore important to accurately report in these cases. I'm sure plenty of people would find the sports bit of the paper boring if it carried nothing but croquet results (for example).