Media

Yesterday, we asked, “Should the dying Gray Lady stop writing about science?” That got started because the Real Clear Science founding editor wondered about it, based on recent coverage he deems faulty. (It would be no surprise to us.*) Anyway, Sheldon here: Fascinating blog on NYT! It is exactly what Paul Johnson said would happen to America when he wrote in the 1990’s that America was being taken over by special interest groups, who like a pantheon of demi-gods, would endlessly bicker about whose ox was being gored. This is because America had rejected the Western synthesis of theology-philosophy-religion that had rocketed to supremacy over all other civilizations on this planet. And once the synthesis was destroyed in our Post-Modern Read More ›

From Alex Berezow, founding editor at Real Clear Science: What has gone so wrong for the NYT? Many things are to blame. The paper’s leftish editorial page is out of step with a large portion of the American public. A high-profile scandal, in which journalist Jayson Blair was caught fabricating articles, damaged its credibility. The biggest factor, however, is the rise of credible challengers — both print and digital — that simply do better journalism. There is little incentive to spend money to read the NYT when superior news coverage (and more sensible editorializing) can be found elsewhere. The NYT’s science coverage is particularly galling. While the paper does employ a staff of decent journalists (including several excellent writers, such Read More ›

(O’Leary for News’ other desk) Smartphone? Should we call it the dumbphone instead? Maybe, if we go by some recent studies. Is there still religious freedom at universities? Not if you go by this story. Should we or someone we love go into debt for university? Let’s look at some decision factors. Who is Edward Snowden and why should we care about him? Governments monitor the Internet to look good, not for our good Net neutrality, what’s next? And Uber Taxi, what about that insurance issue? Government may end up ruling Internet safety but not taxis Net neutrality: The basics—what does it really mean? Is the Internet really just like a telephone service? Follow UD News at Twitter!

The discussion around people being forced to support the BBC just to have the right to operate a TV was, I think, interesting and healthy (though I started it somewhat accidentally). I simply couldn’t understand how otherwise presumably intelligent people would fail so simple a proposition as this: If government says you cannot even have a TV if you don’t support some approved broadcasting service, that IS coercion. Now, as a Canadian who has received about 500 extreme weather warnings since I moved to Ottawa, I would hardly object to a minimum charge to defray the cost of warning residents against letting the main drain bust. Or flash freezing their buns.  A basic, specific EMS-type service. But the Brit-style compulsory Read More ›

But it doesn’t work Friend sends: Fave was a racist. Would it have helped if that guy were a Darwinian? Look, just wondering, okay? Wondering is still legal in most places.

The person has actually written You are obsessed with whether things are tax-funded or not. I think your reference to tax-funded TV must refer back to your item on the BBC. It is not tax-funded. It is funded by a license fee which is an important distinction. It’s optional (if you don’t have a TV you don’t have to pay it) and it goes straight to the BBC which gives the BBC its independence. So, commenter, lemme get this straight: If I were a Brit, I’d have to fund the Beeb just in order to even have a working TV and get the channels I want? And the money goes straight to the BBC? – which could be using it Read More ›

A friend sends info re this National Geographic edition, reinforcing the essential message: Fund us, you twits We are science! For example: “Those of us in the science-communication business are as tribal as anyone else, he told me. We believe in scientific ideas not because we have truly evaluated all the evidence but because we feel an affinity for the scientific community. When I mentioned to Kahan that I fully accept evolution, he said, “Believing in evolution is just a description about you. It’s not an account of how you reason.” Look, anyone who “believes in” evolution is either a twit or a ripoff artist looking for funding from public service unions (or some similar group). Evolution isn’t something we Read More ›

Further to: First, the blow-dried TV crowd don’t know anything about evolution, if you don’t count the Inherit the Wind productions they took in at school. All nonsense and falsehood. All nonsense and falsehood, actually, about the neighbours the TV crowd sneered at and left behind, and felt themselves superior for doing so—while they invested their lives in their losing media industries. And distanced the people who would have cared about them. Who really thinks Scott Walker’s opinions about “evolution” are good TV?  Isn’t it just TV’s own losers who care? Anyway, friend says,   Tom Bethell: I watch the PBS NewsHour, but less and less. It was much better when Jim Lehrer was still on board. Today I feel confident Read More ›

Probably. Some guy actually asks questions we have all been wondering about: reflecting on the current cover story in National Geographic, “The War on Science”: : Anyone who expresses any doubt in what National Geographic calls “the consensus of experts” is a crank or a nut. From the magazine’s perspective, no other explanations are even worth consideration. And the article featured a reproduction of an 1893 map of the “Stationary and Square Earth” drawn up by a South Dakota businessman who insisted that the Earth was flat. It was an illustration, National Geo says, of how “we subconsciously cling to our intuitions” about the world even when experts tell us we are wrong. Among the many things missing from the Read More ›

Not a chance. But here hack Ben Thomas unpacks the problem it creates: The trait that distinguishes scienceyness from actual science is that it’s got nothing to do with the scientific method at all. … Sciencey headlines are pre-packaged cultural tokens that can be shared and reshared without any investment in analysis or critical thought?—?as if they were sports scores or fashion photos or poetry quotes?—?to reinforce one’s aesthetic self-identification as a “science lover.” One’s actual interest doesn’t have to extend beyond the headline itself. And that, right there, is the difference between a love of science, and a love of scienceyness. Some suggestions: First, science journalists should lose the pom poms. Covering science is no different from covering sports Read More ›

News writer O’Leary’s night job The Internet can help the grass roots grow—or lay down astroturf. False climates of opinion can be built up through new media. Jihadi brides: Don’t overlook how new media market cruelty as well as porn Some women were captivated by beheading videos. Librarian: The Internet doesn’t harm the good student, but it make the poor student worse http://www.mercatornet.com/connecting/view/15720 Students confuse “available” with “helpful” When the bookstore closes, do the lights go out on culture? In one case, the atmosphere suddenly electrified. Are libraries just too unCool to survive in an Internet age? We can’t discard what libraries do. The Silicon Rift Valley—the deep social divides Silicon Valley itself is, overall, a highly unequal society. Follow Read More ›

Further to Media’s methane-based life: No it is NOT just sensationalism, it is cheerleading for a worldview (one that permits, even encourages, fiction to stand in for fact): At Forbes, philosopher of science Henry Miller identifies a similar pattern at National Public Radio, which receives federal funds: Among the most egregious transgressions of fair, professional journalism was a series of programs called “The DNA Files” which set up a false moral equivalence by juxtaposing the views of Princeton University Professor Lee Silver against those of Margaret Mellon, long-time NGO-dweller, troglodyte and antagonist of any and all applications of biotechnology. This pairing was a paradigm of NPR’s notion of “balance”: a mainstream, non-ideological academic versus an intransigent, anti-industry, anti-technology, uneducable activist. Read More ›

From Darwin Day in America (with Afterword): The very issue Holdren was testifying about—climate change—provides a disturbing example of the growing effort to treat scientific dissent as heresy. One of America’s leading daily newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, announced in 2013 it would no longer publish letters to the editor that expressed skepticism about the human role in climate change. Since one of the original purposes of printing letters to the editor was to air community viewpoints that might differ from a newspaper’s official position, the Times’s decision represented a dramatic departure from historic journalistic standards. Others go much further, calling for the criminal prosecution of global warming skeptics. In 2014 Professor Lawrence Torcello at the Rochester Institute of Technology Read More ›

Attkisson is a genuine investigative journalist, harassed by authoritarian government in an age of cosseted government media hacks, poseurs, and vapid cheerleaders for “science.” Further to kairosfocus’ Sharyl Attkisson (in a TEDx) cautions on Astroturfing and pseudo-consensus: This also seemed worth calling out as astroturf: A close third is an array of blogs that use words such as “science” and “skeptic” in their titles or propaganda in an attempt to portray an image of neutrality and logic when they are often fighting established science and serving pro-pharmaceutical industry agendas. Or, we would add, attempting to strangle sciences that seek to move beyond the dead ends in which they themselves comfortably burrow. For an antidote to that last, see, for example, Read More ›

Yesterday a friend sent me a link to a news article with the exciting headline: “No water needed: Methane-based life possible on Saturn’s moon Titan, study says.” Quite remarkable! Amazing enough to immediately attract my friend’s attention and to get him to shoot an email to me with the link, as he knows I am interested in the field. Yet, if the headline weren’t exciting enough, the first sentence of the news article really amps up the message: Researchers from the Cornell University have developed a methane-based, oxygen-free life form that theoretically may exist in the cold and harsh environment of the planet Saturn’s giant moon Titan, defying the idea that water is necessary for life. This is truly an Read More ›