I kinda hate it, and that hate is creeping into scifi in general. The articles are always clickbait, the stories are always wrong, the 'journalists' have no fucking idea what they are talking...
I kinda hate it, and that hate is creeping into scifi in general.
The articles are always clickbait, the stories are always wrong, the 'journalists' have no fucking idea what they are talking about, and anyone who reads the stuff is going to have a head full of pseudo-science fiction nonsense that makes them sound 'smart' to idiots and like a dumpster fire to anyone with an actual science background.
I'd much prefer some honest, factual, real science reporting. That content doesn't win in today's web market because it's far too boring when compared to the fictionalized/sensationalized versions of the same story. People go for the clickbait titles in their news feeds, and a bullshit story about Tabby's star being a hive of aliens is going to do better than an astrophysics journal article that's simply describing wtf we're seeing when we look at it through a telescope.
I think the @Nanda_G should be a bit more specific with what constitutes pop science and your opinion is only valid for some/most of the scientific journalism. There's a lot of high-quality...
I think the @Nanda_G should be a bit more specific with what constitutes pop science and your opinion is only valid for some/most of the scientific journalism. There's a lot of high-quality science outreach being done in universities, museums, even publications (quanta magazine, for example). Done by professors who are the best in their fields or people who really care about science outreach and education.
There's also a lot of shit like "I fucking love science" that has decayed into pure clickbait, but still one has to consider the different purposes of different things. IFLS, for example, isn't made for people who already like science enough that they want to see rigor, it's made to attract people to science and we can discuss whether the goal is worthy and if it's being pursued correctly but I think it's unfair to say that "pop science is science but simplified a lot" or that "the stories are always wrong"...
There are always good versions of any given science stories out there, in fact those usually come first. Someone with a brain and a budget does have to do the real work, before the vultures who...
There are always good versions of any given science stories out there, in fact those usually come first. Someone with a brain and a budget does have to do the real work, before the vultures who create nothing can come along and have their feast. These originals are never ever popular. They show up on websites where people actually have standards, or in magazines, which is the same as saying no one is reading them. The audience is tiny, and the internet at large remains unaware of the story.
No magazine that exists has subscription numbers large enough to call 'popular' compared to today's web reach. I think the largest ones boast at best around ten million, nowhere near the reddit/facebook league or many other social sites. Popular is what's on reddit/facebook's front page. They now own popular and no one else is even allowed to use that word anymore. That should worry us.
The damage isn't just this sci-bullshit being spammed across five hundred million screens. There's plenty of legacy damage. Any search results on this topic are now permanently poisoned. Any discussions about the story are now overrun jackass-level drivel and quotes from the meme version of the story, persisting for years. People will remember a wrong meme for a lifetime, and a right fact only until their next ferret-shock moment. It's a cloud of noise drowning out the signal.
All the universities and outreach in the world doesn't matter - anything they create no matter how good, how groundbreaking, how vital, will just get ground up and fed into that bullshit generator, making millions in ad revenue for people whose only agenda is to dramatize to make a buck. The people doing the bastardized reporting will make more money than the scientists who did the real work or the actual science journalists who create the original articles.
I have a problem with society that rewards this kind of behavior. It's going to be satisfying building systems that burn that nonsense to ashes here. The megathread model we've discussed seems like the place to start.
I really don't think that people are "permanently poisoned" by simplified versions of science, and it's not as harmful as you're making it out to be. Compare it to the progression of learning in...
I really don't think that people are "permanently poisoned" by simplified versions of science, and it's not as harmful as you're making it out to be. Compare it to the progression of learning in school - you learn easy to digest material that gets you interested, and then you learn how it's actually much more complex.
"Real science" has never been mainstream and it never will be. At least not like entertainment is. And with what we've got now at least people are aware of some more scientific concepts and open to new ideas, which I see as a net positive.
I beg to differ - in the current media and social media environment, bad (sometimes, intentionally distorted) popular science reporting contributes to a permanent state of wrongfully placed...
Exemplary
I beg to differ - in the current media and social media environment, bad (sometimes, intentionally distorted) popular science reporting contributes to a permanent state of wrongfully placed skepticism - "well, one study said butter was bad for me, and another says it's good, so it's all b.s. and I can eat whatever I want", "vaccine companies are hiding thousands of dead children, so I won't vaccinate my kids", "it's snowing here, so climate change can't be happening"...
You don't need to be a professional scientist to gain a working understanding of reality and an accurate apprehension of risks from good science reporting, but it's helpful to have a guide.
Major edit - I'd posted this as a guide before noticing that it's promoted by the right-wing astroturf science group, the "American Council on Science and Health". For instance, they described Scientific American as "the headquarters for left-wing social justice warriors and others who felt bashing conservatives was more important than reporting good science". So when I say that there's an intentional strategy of truth-dilution which has toxic consequences, there you go.
Look at my username. The "Asimov" part refers to author Isaac Asimov. He is famous for his science fiction, but he actually wrote more non-fiction than fiction throughout his 50+ year career. Most...
Look at my username. The "Asimov" part refers to author Isaac Asimov. He is famous for his science fiction, but he actually wrote more non-fiction than fiction throughout his 50+ year career. Most of those non-fiction works were books that explained science for everyone from students of all levels (he actually co-wrote some textbooks) to general laypeople. In fact, one of his nicknames was "The Great Explainer". He had a knack for taking the trickiest, driest scientific topics, and explaining them so anyone could understand them.
Another person who did this was Carl Sagan, with his TV series (and associated book) 'Cosmos', which was remade recently with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Then there's Stephen Hawking's own book, 'A Brief History of Time'. And many many other examples.
Some scientists decry this sort of writing as cheap and selling out. They think it's beneath them to write proper science in non-scientific language. If people want to learn about science, let them do it properly! However, explaining science to non-scientists is essential in this modern technological world.
Maybe the problem is not "popular science" in general, but finding the right popularisers: the ones who explain their subjects clearly and objectively, while making the concepts understandable to any ordinary reader.
In that case, there are good books, of course there's always some level of simplification (even in a textbook there is simplification), but you must make the conscious choice of what level of...
In that case, there are good books, of course there's always some level of simplification (even in a textbook there is simplification), but you must make the conscious choice of what level of understanding you want to gain. I'll concede that it's hard to gauge the level of simplification of a book but there are more and more reviews done by knowledgeable people (check SIAM, AMS for maths, APS for physics, etc.). One of the problems of pop-sci books is that they don't go through peer reviewing so you have to look at post-publishing reviews, but still there are many high-quality products out there.
What's an example? I'm confused if it's using bogus science to justify false statements, or like in scifi where they make up some gobbledygook words or explanation that sounds plausible, Like...
What's an example? I'm confused if it's using bogus science to justify false statements, or like in scifi where they make up some gobbledygook words or explanation that sounds plausible, Like doing 'the kessel run in 12 parsecs'. Even if now they retconned the crap out of that to make it fit.
It's more like blowing small observations out of proportion and/or totally misrepresenting the focus of a study in a way that makes for a good headline, but confuses the reader into making false...
It's more like blowing small observations out of proportion and/or totally misrepresenting the focus of a study in a way that makes for a good headline, but confuses the reader into making false conclusions.
I kinda hate it, and that hate is creeping into scifi in general.
The articles are always clickbait, the stories are always wrong, the 'journalists' have no fucking idea what they are talking about, and anyone who reads the stuff is going to have a head full of pseudo-science fiction nonsense that makes them sound 'smart' to idiots and like a dumpster fire to anyone with an actual science background.
I'd much prefer some honest, factual, real science reporting. That content doesn't win in today's web market because it's far too boring when compared to the fictionalized/sensationalized versions of the same story. People go for the clickbait titles in their news feeds, and a bullshit story about Tabby's star being a hive of aliens is going to do better than an astrophysics journal article that's simply describing wtf we're seeing when we look at it through a telescope.
I think the @Nanda_G should be a bit more specific with what constitutes pop science and your opinion is only valid for some/most of the scientific journalism. There's a lot of high-quality science outreach being done in universities, museums, even publications (quanta magazine, for example). Done by professors who are the best in their fields or people who really care about science outreach and education.
There's also a lot of shit like "I fucking love science" that has decayed into pure clickbait, but still one has to consider the different purposes of different things. IFLS, for example, isn't made for people who already like science enough that they want to see rigor, it's made to attract people to science and we can discuss whether the goal is worthy and if it's being pursued correctly but I think it's unfair to say that "pop science is science but simplified a lot" or that "the stories are always wrong"...
There are always good versions of any given science stories out there, in fact those usually come first. Someone with a brain and a budget does have to do the real work, before the vultures who create nothing can come along and have their feast. These originals are never ever popular. They show up on websites where people actually have standards, or in magazines, which is the same as saying no one is reading them. The audience is tiny, and the internet at large remains unaware of the story.
No magazine that exists has subscription numbers large enough to call 'popular' compared to today's web reach. I think the largest ones boast at best around ten million, nowhere near the reddit/facebook league or many other social sites. Popular is what's on reddit/facebook's front page. They now own popular and no one else is even allowed to use that word anymore. That should worry us.
The damage isn't just this sci-bullshit being spammed across five hundred million screens. There's plenty of legacy damage. Any search results on this topic are now permanently poisoned. Any discussions about the story are now overrun jackass-level drivel and quotes from the meme version of the story, persisting for years. People will remember a wrong meme for a lifetime, and a right fact only until their next ferret-shock moment. It's a cloud of noise drowning out the signal.
All the universities and outreach in the world doesn't matter - anything they create no matter how good, how groundbreaking, how vital, will just get ground up and fed into that bullshit generator, making millions in ad revenue for people whose only agenda is to dramatize to make a buck. The people doing the bastardized reporting will make more money than the scientists who did the real work or the actual science journalists who create the original articles.
I have a problem with society that rewards this kind of behavior. It's going to be satisfying building systems that burn that nonsense to ashes here. The megathread model we've discussed seems like the place to start.
I really don't think that people are "permanently poisoned" by simplified versions of science, and it's not as harmful as you're making it out to be. Compare it to the progression of learning in school - you learn easy to digest material that gets you interested, and then you learn how it's actually much more complex.
"Real science" has never been mainstream and it never will be. At least not like entertainment is. And with what we've got now at least people are aware of some more scientific concepts and open to new ideas, which I see as a net positive.
I beg to differ - in the current media and social media environment, bad (sometimes, intentionally distorted) popular science reporting contributes to a permanent state of wrongfully placed skepticism - "well, one study said butter was bad for me, and another says it's good, so it's all b.s. and I can eat whatever I want", "vaccine companies are hiding thousands of dead children, so I won't vaccinate my kids", "it's snowing here, so climate change can't be happening"...
There's a sustained campaign, for political purposes, to undermine the existence of objectively provable truth, particularly with respect to the science of climate: https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/global-warming/solutions/global-warming-solutions-fight-misinformation
You don't need to be a professional scientist to gain a working understanding of reality and an accurate apprehension of risks from good science reporting, but it's helpful to have a guide.
Major edit - I'd posted this as a guide before noticing that it's promoted by the right-wing astroturf science group, the "American Council on Science and Health". For instance, they described Scientific American as "the headquarters for left-wing social justice warriors and others who felt bashing conservatives was more important than reporting good science". So when I say that there's an intentional strategy of truth-dilution which has toxic consequences, there you go.
Look at my username. The "Asimov" part refers to author Isaac Asimov. He is famous for his science fiction, but he actually wrote more non-fiction than fiction throughout his 50+ year career. Most of those non-fiction works were books that explained science for everyone from students of all levels (he actually co-wrote some textbooks) to general laypeople. In fact, one of his nicknames was "The Great Explainer". He had a knack for taking the trickiest, driest scientific topics, and explaining them so anyone could understand them.
Another person who did this was Carl Sagan, with his TV series (and associated book) 'Cosmos', which was remade recently with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Then there's Stephen Hawking's own book, 'A Brief History of Time'. And many many other examples.
Some scientists decry this sort of writing as cheap and selling out. They think it's beneath them to write proper science in non-scientific language. If people want to learn about science, let them do it properly! However, explaining science to non-scientists is essential in this modern technological world.
Maybe the problem is not "popular science" in general, but finding the right popularisers: the ones who explain their subjects clearly and objectively, while making the concepts understandable to any ordinary reader.
In that case, there are good books, of course there's always some level of simplification (even in a textbook there is simplification), but you must make the conscious choice of what level of understanding you want to gain. I'll concede that it's hard to gauge the level of simplification of a book but there are more and more reviews done by knowledgeable people (check SIAM, AMS for maths, APS for physics, etc.). One of the problems of pop-sci books is that they don't go through peer reviewing so you have to look at post-publishing reviews, but still there are many high-quality products out there.
What's pop science?
What's an example? I'm confused if it's using bogus science to justify false statements, or like in scifi where they make up some gobbledygook words or explanation that sounds plausible, Like doing 'the kessel run in 12 parsecs'. Even if now they retconned the crap out of that to make it fit.
It's more like blowing small observations out of proportion and/or totally misrepresenting the focus of a study in a way that makes for a good headline, but confuses the reader into making false conclusions.
Ahh, yeah it's annoying, but kind of inevitable.
Numberphile & co. Yeah !
Kurzgesagt Nay !