chabot@amber.DEC (Lisa S. Chabot) (08/14/84)
Jeff Winslow == > > I would like to reverse any negative impression the uninformed reader > may have gotten from lisa Chabot when she referred to "Science news" > as the "national Enquirer" of science. jeff Winslow is correct: I should apologize. "Science News" describes itself as "The Weekly Newsmagazine of Science", and then by its own words it should be better classified with "Newsweek" than with "The National Enquirer". However, this still indicates some problems with its coverage of news items: there are few references to published papers, which, especially in the case of the incident I described about the use of electric shock as part of the testing of calling line balls, leads one to believe that there has not been a published research paper, but that the researcher instead had a press conference or something verbal of that order. Another gripe I had about this particular item was the implication of sadism in John McEnroe as described by "...McEnroe might at least approve of the method" [the method being adding trauma about incorrect calling]: I have the impression that joking about John McEnroe's temper is a joke in the news media, and that "Science News" is not seriously declaring McEnroe's approval of these methods, but then, they are joking about this research and therefore might justifiably be accused of not properly reporting the story. And other examples of not proper reporting are not describing less ambiguously the testing situations (I realize that such details might have been editted out due to space limitations--but then this *is* a problem with such quick media such as newspapers and newsmagazines), and (again) not citing any published reports available to the curious [something brief like "Nature, vol xxx 19yy", (or to be published in "J.I.R." :-) :-) :-) ]. "Science News" is readily available to the naive (I mean, not a specialist in the field of the research reported) but interested science reader. This is a good aspect, but it also means that care needs to be taken not to give false impressions about the generality of the research described. There is a widespread problem in science reporting, that things get reported before they're really done: researchers can be in too much of a rush to publish that they've found a link between A and B--a good and valid bit of research, but if a reader decides that ingesting lots of B might help its problems with A (and here we have both self-diagnosis and self-prescription), and then rushes to the health food store to stock up on l-tryptophan; meanwhile, later research may find that ingesting B isn't going to really do anything about A, maybe... In the article I cited, well, many of us are going to read it and say, "Yeah, but what do we really know about the research done, and what affect it might have on my career decisions." Many other people won't, they'll read the article and isolate out from the context of the research endeavor that men call more accurately than women (or maybe even something like women are not sensitive to electric shock or verbal correction, since the women's scores didn't worsen as the men's scores did). This little gem will lay around in minds for years, occasionally popping up as "No good women line judges" (or maybe "No men electrical technicians"? :-), just like people today will tell you seriously that scientists proved 80% of all behavior is nature and 20% is nurture (this example was described in "The New York Review of Books" by Stephen Jay Gould in his review of _Not_In_Our_Genes_). "Science News" doesn't tell you that there is life after death for your pet or that aliens are keeping Marilyn and JFK and the King alive at the south pole, but I think of quickly reported and insufficiently described research as catering to the "trendy" tastes of technocrats. Or how does "Omni" like to describe its subscribers to themselves: "Futurians", I believe? Oh, bad, I shouldn't compare "Science News" to "Omni", I know, I'm just poking fun at us technically-oriented folk. :-), ok? And in my own defense: > This comparison must be a > symptom of too many late nights spent writing 100+ line articles... As Jeff said, "You may say this is not the appropriate forum, but" I don't write these things late, they get posted late. Waste my best reflective time on the Usenet? Ha! What I'm doing late at night isn't going to get posted to the net. > ...Who says Usenet doesn't rot the brain? > > I have subscribed to Science news for many years (about 12, I think) ... Ah, yes, Jeff, but how long have you been reading Usenet? :-) Remember Rules #1 of Rich Rosen's proper net behavior, L S Chabot UUCP: ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot ARPA: ...chabot%amber.DEC@decwrl.ARPA USFail: DEC, MR03-1/K20, 2 Iron Way, Marlborough, MA 01752 darn! only *85* lines! hmmm, 100+ (-15) = __ Tue 14-Aug-1984 13:04