Comments on: Bad science journalism the fault of chickens or eggs?

By: eti

eti — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:36:06 +0000

Heh, I know I immediately thought of this comic strip after hearing the story: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174

Sums it up nicely…

By: Lucas

Lucas — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:43:54 +0000

That definitely sounds like a 'mad scientist' plan - but that makes me like it even more! The OC-17 gene is known and sequenced, so no problems there. The viability of plankton overexpressing OC-17 does concern me a bit. Such a genetically engineers plankton would face pretty stiff competition from Cocolithophores and Foraminifera. If the expression of OC-17 does not confer any advantages such a plankton would likely bite the dust. What might work though is seeding large basins (seas? oceans?) of water with calcium and bacteria-produced OC-17 (like insulin)! It's definitely an interesting concept.. Dependent on the thermodynamics of the crystallization reaction it could work !

By: rubberband

rubberband — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:13:21 +0000

I think a much more intriguing take on the research is, “Can newly identified eggshell-making protein be used to combat global warming?”
Maybe I’m missing some key point here, but rapid, low-energy formation of CaCO2 might be one way to sequester the carbon dioxide that is dissolving in (and altering the pH of) our oceans.
Do we know the gene responsible for OC-17? Can multiple copies be put into a limited-life plankton?
Or am I talking “mad scientist” stuff here?

By: Lucas

Lucas — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:58:16 +0000

@Moriarty23: What I can do is write a blogpost like this (I'm not alone, luckily). At least some people will read it (this is by far my most popular post ever, traffic-wise!) and they will know the 'true' story. By calling science journalists out on their failures, I hope someday change will come to mainstream science journalism as it is performed today. This might not be the worst misrepresentation of science ever, but it's a perfect example of everything that's wrong with science reporting.

By: Moriarty23

Moriarty23 — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 19:23:33 +0000

Sorry to troll here, but come on. 4 point something billion years ago all this stuff around us came into being. After a few more billion years things had settled down a bit and here we have Earth. The earliest lifeforms acted like bacteria – splitting in two, we can see this today in a petri dish. One day the split had a mutation and for some unforknown reason the thing that came off it was younger than the progenator. It grew to become ‘like’ the progenator (no spell check on this site, soz if I’m spelling in error) and split with this new knowledge, that to split with a ‘younger’ version of itself helped procreation. We are talking cosmic slop here, ancient soup, all animals procreate through this ‘egg’ thing. Seeds from a flower. Fish in spawn. Humans and ovaries.

If we are truly concerned about the misrepresentation of science in the popular media, then we’d better do something about it. Mr Goldacre has done a hell of a lot of good with ‘Bad Science’, but what, really, can we do?

Education, from the earliest ages. I used to have to say the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ in school assembly each day. That is now gone. We are making progress.

Will we be having this conversation in 50 years time?

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:41:54 +0000

Oh jeez... Ken Ham just picked up the story and ran with it, claiming the study supports a literal interpretation of Genesis...

By: Moriarty23

Moriarty23 — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 20:27:39 +0000

This isn’t as drastic a slight on Science as may first be assumed. It’s a Chicken and an Egg. What came before the Chicken? What came before the egg? There’s a hint of creationism about this and it makes me chuckle – whatever animal the Chicken evolved from in the first place had obviously been laying eggs, this question is like asking, what came first, Hydrogen or Helium…this is simply daft, a way to make thick (sorry) people go ‘Oooh, inter-er-er-esting…duh’…

Come on. We’re a bit above this. The media has never been happy with cold science because the media people generally aren’t scientists (who could explain this ish to a baby), they’re salesmen and women. Keep up the good work guys, push and push and push.

One day those salesmen and women will HAVE to sell science in it’s cold (actual) form. Then we’re in real trouble.

By: Wochenrückblick | NIConline

Wochenrückblick | NIConline — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 09:09:45 +0000

[...] bleibt dann noch von dieser Sensationsmeldung? Nicht viel, meint auch Lucas Brouwers, der in seinem Blog-Post auf unzureichende Arbeit der Presse [...]

By: Lucas

Lucas — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:02:25 +0000

Thanks for the comments everybody!
@Hannah I wish I knew.. Do science reporters even see that there is a problem with science journalism?

@Ed I don’t think the authored encouraged the misinterpretation of their research intentionally. On the Daily Mail, the following comment appeared:

Ok lets clear this up as i sit in the office with the guys who researched this.

They did not prove anything about what came first or what came second etc etc. The problem is that the media never actually listened to what he said OR what the research mean, its all been whipped up. They just wanted a headline and then started actually reporting on what other papers say and misquoted Dr Freeman.

I believe the authors honestly didn’t know things would spiral out of control as they did. Not to say that they couldn’t have seen it coming, but on the whole it’s really an unfortunate chain of things gone wrong..

@Josh The effects of this could be twofold: the science journalists don’t have the scientific background to do proper reporting and/or they write these kind of stories because that’s what their public expects. The comments on most news sites give me hope though, many people seem to realize that this has got nothing to do with ‘chicken-or-egg’ problems.

@Lab Rat I guess an average (not science-crazy like us) person hears about science maybe once or twice every couple of weeks. I can sadly understand why somebody would start posing the cliché “Where do our taxes go” question if you run across ‘articles’ like this..

@Bjørn @Paul I don’t think the blame here lies with anybody in particular, the responsibility for a good story clearly is a shared one, as Paul pointed out. The authors also tried to (naively) repair some of the damage (I saw quotes where the same Dr. Freeman was saying it was better to ask the chicken-or-egg question to a biologist or paleaontologist).
I like the idea of convincing the big media that they’ve got it wrong, but I’m afraid it will be a bit like tilting at windmills ;). The virus-like spread of a virus can hardly be contained when it’s out there, and I doubt whether many science editors/journalists would agree with us that they made a mistake.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:01:26 +0000

It’s the authors’ responsibility to be clear about the limitations and implications of their work, so both they and the reporters share responsibility here. I wonder if sites like CNN might be convinced to add a short correction to the story? Anyone wants to take a stab at it? ;)