Tag Archives: science

Facts are not subject to a vote

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From Cocktail Party Physics: we are in…like…so much in trouble… episode two.

[…] most people would rather state their opinion about things without wasting time looking up the facts. The NASCAR race I’m watching features the AT&T ‘Fastest Pit Crew of the Year Award’. Fans VOTE for the fastest pit crew. The last I looked, time is not subject to human opinion. Sure AT&T donates $20,000 at the end of the program to a deserving charity. But how silly do you have to be to think that ‘fastest’ has anything to do with your opinion? How about sponsoring something mathematically meaningful, like showing us a histogram of all the pit stop times, showing who was exceptionally fast or slow.

Should science journalists take sides?

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From The New Objectivity

Great post yesterday by fellow Discover denizen Ed Yong, asking “Should science journalists take sides?” Honestly, it shouldn’t be a hard question, although the answer depends on how you visualize the sides. If you have in mind

He said vs. She said,

then the job of a journalist is not to take sides. But there’s another possible dichotomy that is much more crucial:

Truth vs. Falsity.

In this case, it’s equally clear that journalists should take sides: they should be in favor of the truth. Not just passively, by trying not to make things up, but actively, by trying to figure out whether something is false before reporting it, even if it’s been said by someone.

This should be a no-brainer, but apparently there are some “science” journalists who will report every story about a scientific dispute as if the sides have equal merit. See also my notes here.