Here, for Hallowe’en.
Here’s a non-Hallowe’en take.
An alleged incidence of deplorable science journalism that I’ll call Krakengate was very much of interest yesterday in Penn State biologist Andrew Read’s undergraduate class. This was a class in science for non-majors and Read said his subject matter often deals with the treatment of science in the media and critical thinking. From talking to the class and answering students’ questions, I realized there is a real problem with science journalism: Many people no longer distinguish journalism from PR. The krakengate scandal brought that home.
We’re not sure it’s a “scandal” exactly, unless one also wants to regard most science journalism around origin of life, life on exoplanets, and recent human evolution as a scandal. But for some reason, the same people seldom do.