from the people-who-know-what-they-are-talking-about dept.
On March 27, 2015, astronaut Scott Kelly rode a rocket to the International Space Station. Waving up at him from Earth was Mark Kelly, his mustachioed twin brother. While they were 400 vertical kilometres apart, NASA scientists studied how the human body reacts to the stresses of long-term space travel. Scott was the test subject; Mark served as the control. Over the course of the one-year mission, NASA extensively examined the twins' physiology, gut bacteria and even their genetic code – sure enough, NASA saw the toll of space stress on Scott.
However, NASA's sloppy wording of their findings, followed by reporting from a non-critical media, beamed the research into the realm of science fiction. "Space travel changes our genes" said one news report in March. "NASA astronaut's DNA no longer matches his twin" reported another.
These articles quoted NASA's January 2018 report which stated Scott's genetic code differed from Mark's by 7 per cent. That's not just an improbably claim – it's an impossible one, with identical twins. In anyone, twin or sibling or unrelated human, a 7-per-cent change in genetic code would mutate that person into something not human-like. "What NASA meant by genetic code was, in fact, gene expression," Smith said. "If only the journalists had quoted scientists, this incident of fake science could have been averted."
So what is the difference between genetic code and gene expression? Your genetic code is a blueprint for your body's functioning. The cells in your liver and heart contain the same code. Yet, these cells differ in their functioning because of differences in the deployment – the active expression – of the cell's genetic code. "If every gene in your cells were being actively expressed, your kidneys would be growing eyes," Smith joked.
[...] With manned missions costing taxpayers millions of dollars, the public trusts NASA. That two-way channel of trust is mediated by journalists. Scientists who convey the information in the first place need to make sure their data is sound – and their communication about it, clear.
[Source]: University of Western Ontario
This is an interesting take on "fake news". Do you think that scientists don't do enough to convey news accurately? Or, is the media to blame for bad/sensational reporting?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:07PM (3 children)
Scientists communicating poorly isn't a very common problem, with the caveat that they are communicating primarily for the benefit of other scientists who are mostly neither ignorant nor idiots. But it happens.
The media taking part in bad or sensational reporting, not especially caring what's happened so much as what they can make out of it, on the other hand, is pretty much the job description of many of them.
The areas in which this is more accurate or less accurate have shifted over time with cultures, but the statement is pretty much a constant.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:19PM (1 child)
And also,
No, they probably don't. Even if they do, this article doesn't present any evidence in that direction. (Speaking slowly and clearly to someone with a notepad, an agenda, and preconceived notions does not help them to understand.)
Unless scientists have both an incredible ability to manipulate and a tremendously cross-cultural charismatic emotional-demigogue-zeitgeist-leading effect (think the "Steve Jobs Evil Distortion Field" on a global scale), while simultaneously possessed of a do-gooder desire to right the wrongs of faux-journalistic mankind, then scientists aren't the answer here. And if they did, then "scientists" probably isn't what they'd be known as, because that would be only a secondary function at that point.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Saturday May 26 2018, @07:52PM
A journalist must have written that headline.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 26 2018, @09:35PM
Near universal maybe, but yes, I wouldn't go as far as to say that it is merely a very common problem.
(Score: 2) by gringer on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:17PM
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:20PM (16 children)
Every time I come across a mainstream article on a topic in which I'm expert, I find that the journalist is a moron who'd do better to keep quiet.
Then, I realize that experts of other fields must feel similarly.
Then, I realize that everything is probably trash.
Smart people don't aspire to be journalists.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Justin Case on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:35PM (6 children)
Every time I have personally observed a newsworthy event, the reporters get it spectacularly wrong. Not just a little wrong. Not just a bit of "spin". No, they are so far off the mark they must have pulled the whole story out of their asses, probably with malicious intent, or if not, then at least professional incompetence.
This is not just science illiteracy. I'm talking easily reported stories involving tens of thousands of people, but then they flat out lie about what we all saw.
This is not an aspect of recent politics. It has been going on as long as I have been able to observe, and I speculate centuries before that.
It's all lies. Believe nothing.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Saturday May 26 2018, @06:20PM (1 child)
I've seen this all four times I've been quoted in the newspapers going back as far as grade school.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday May 26 2018, @09:25PM
I too have seen this on every story in which I knew the details because I was personally involved. The journalists got it wrong every time.
What's more, many of the mistakes are trivial and pointless. They don't even add to the drama. These range from typo type stuff like getting someone's name a little wrong, to misstating how many children they have and what line of work they're in. I can understand wanting to fuzz or omit private and personal details, but this is like the journalists just don't care about accuracy, and would rather make shit up even if it's not dramatic, than trouble to do good interviews.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday May 26 2018, @07:29PM (1 child)
Do you have a specific example in mind?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @07:33PM
http://www.anfieldroad.com/dont-buy-the-sun/ [anfieldroad.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @07:40PM
During a building evacuation following a (bogus as it later turned out) bomb threat, I got stuck in a Starbucks since my car was parked right next to the police block and it was pouring rain. It was just me, another elderly client and a couple of waitresses when one journalist after another parked their vehicles up the sidewalk, didn't bother speaking to anyone, and proceeded to enter the shop and make their orders. After a few journalists gathered, a creative writing class commenced around such human interest stories as "scared mother and daughter", "angry local shop owner complaining about rising street gang activity" or "local officer reports"...
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday May 27 2018, @10:43AM
I don't know about news in general, but for science news a good rule of thumb is that once it hits the mainstream media, whatever the original story was has been mangled into gibberish. Single Eve Hypothesis, Mozart Effect, there's endless, endless examples. The problem is that most science stories aren't that interesting to non-scientists, a new hypothesis on the origins of X that needs further research, a 2% improvement in efficiency when doing Y, etc. That's not news. What is news is a misinterpretation of some universities' press office trying to talk up the research. So it's a catch-22, anything significant enough to become mainstream newsworthy is the original research mangled beyond recognition. That's why, for any new breakthrough or clickbait science story reported in the mainstream media, if I don't just ignore it I'll try and find the original publication that presented the work. Which is often nearly impossible, because few journalists would ever dream of providing any reference to the publication they're busy misinterpreting.
One general exception to this is the Grauniad. They actually employ science journalists who know science. Wow.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bart on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:39PM
I was going to write almost literally the same! I realized this about 10 years ago, and I've stopped trusting (or even ingesting information from) journalists. Whenever I see something interesting somewhere, I go to the actual data source, and base my opinion on that, and ignore the content of the 'news'. As far as I'm concerned all 'news' should be considered fake.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:42PM (3 children)
Only 90% [wikipedia.org] and it's not trash but crap.
The latter difference noted is essential: while "One man's trash is another man's treasure", crap remains crap for everyone.
Look, that's plain wrong.
Either:
- it's indeed a problem, so it may admit a solution. Then the journalists can't be stupid (can't cure stupid, no solution), just uneducated - and the solution is to educate them; or
- the journalists are actually stupid, then this is not a problem, but a sad reality we need to leave with.
(large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:06PM (2 children)
For some scientists, it's still a treasure. [nationalgeographic.com]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:19PM
As a fertilizer has good value too. It's still crap, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday May 26 2018, @10:19PM
Doesn't mean I want it in my news.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:11PM
Journalists lie about the news because their job is not reporting the truth but selling the news. Truth is often boring and may require complicated explanations to understand. Boring and complicated don't sell because people read news for entertainment not enlightenment.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:42PM (2 children)
There is a name for this. Dunning-Kruger [infogalactic.com]
Look at who makes up the vast bulk of the MSM and it is clear thevery best of them are midwits. Expecting them to understand the topics they report on would be foolish. Yet billion dollar industries do exactly that, send people of barely average intellectual capability (or often worse) out to "report" on subjects they have no reasonable expectation of understanding and other billion dollar industries actually depend on that content to make billion dollar decisions. Fascinating.
But the real "woke" take is journalism is a tactic. Events and raw reports of them are just the feed stock thrown into a grinder daily to spin the Narrative from. If an event is useful to that greater purpose it will be covered to death, if not crickets. But the coverage may or may not bear much correspondence to the actual event and the conclusions drawn almost never make sense in the context of that event, only from the point of view of driving the Narrative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @06:26PM (1 child)
Its called the Gell-man amnesia effect. Michael Chrichton (of Jurrassic Park, Westworld, etc fame) popularized it: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?cid=450584&sid=17334 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday May 26 2018, @06:45PM
Look down, I note the error. However both do apply. The media itself suffers Dunning-Kruger in that they convince themselves they are competent. WE suffer Gell-Mann when we notice how subjects we understand get covered incompetently and then listen to the same people bloviate about the problems in the Middle-East or tax policy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:25PM (6 children)
Hmm...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5436103/ [nih.gov]
According to that here should be about 3 changed basepairs for every billion cell divisions. Also, there's about 6,500 x10^6 basepairs in the human genome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genome). And:
http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/bionumber.aspx?id=100379 [harvard.edu]
Then adult identical twins should differ by about 3e-9 x 10^16 = 30e6 basepairs, which is 100*30/6500 ~0.5% of the genome. So a 7% difference is only one order of magnitude off these ballpark calculations for an "average" person, anyone saying that is "impossible" or they would be "a different species" is a fool.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:38PM (5 children)
7% difference is greater than the genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees. Since humans and chimpanzees are different species, a 7% difference is more than enough to be a different species.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:51PM (4 children)
Chimps have a different number of chromosomes. It depends on the exact difference, 7% random changes doesn't mean a new species. Also, only 90% of the human genome has been sequenced:
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-much-of-our-genome-is-sequenced.html [blogspot.com]
I don't know what that number is for chimps but its probably higher. So any claim about less than 10% differences is just speculation, ie fake news if it is presented as fact like you just did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:56PM
I meant to say that a larger percentage is probably missing for the chimp genome (just guessing based on funding priorities).
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:11PM (2 children)
Correct. 7% random changes means a dead individual.
And BTW, that page you linked to is 6 years old. In a topic as active as sequencing, the information in it is most likely horribly outdated.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:39PM
It's likely outdated, but it's also likely that the missing areas contain an extensive number of repeats of identical sequences, as (at least a few years ago) those were giving the sequencing machines a lot of trouble.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:42PM
You probably don't even have two cells with the same sequence in your body, and have many with over 7% difference from each other RIGHT NOW.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40142-013-0029-z [springer.com]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3497787/ [nih.gov]
It was discussed on SN a year ago: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/07/29/039200 [soylentnews.org]
There doesn't seem to be enough interest in completing the genome for some reason so no progress has been made for over a decade on the difficult stretches.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:46PM (14 children)
Fake news is a meme created to let you dismiss things you disagree with. It is a tool given to you to help you keep your cognitive dissonance going. Unfortunately for CNN it backfired on them.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday May 26 2018, @04:26PM (4 children)
Fake news is something reporting itself as news, which is fake. For example a news report saying that 15 people were killed by a suicide bomber in Berlin yesterday would be fake news, it is demonstrably false. Saying that Mike Alig-Juzfahrted has been appointed superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, or that the Pope had endorsed a candidate for the US presidency in 2016 is demonstrably false.
I agree that the accusation has been thrown around more recently to refer to things which are not demonstrably false, either opinion or accusations or predictions or even just plain mistakes, but it certainly exists.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by unauthorized on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:42PM (3 children)
Fake news is also whenever you report the objective truth about people SJW don't like, incels for being a good recent example.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by jmorris on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:51PM
Nah, that is propaganda, the Narrative, spin and blatant editorializing. Fakenews is when it is entirely bullcrap. Russia! Russia! Russia! for example qualifies because there appears to literally be nothing real there other than projection, deflection and maybe a bit of wish casting. Stormy Daniels' lawyer being camped on CNN multiple times a day isn't even FakeNews, that is just the Narrative flogging a story nobody cares about to avoid covering stories people outside DC do care about.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday May 27 2018, @02:15PM (1 child)
unauthorized wrote:
How about if *you* choose a different word for that, hmm? like: "news", for example.
You're muddying the waters, and it doesn't help.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Monday May 28 2018, @01:40AM
I'm really not really, this comment is meant to satirize the propensity of people calling "fake news" when they are the one being deluded by their social media bubbles.
(Score: 5, Informative) by fritsd on Saturday May 26 2018, @04:55PM (8 children)
can we please go back to calling it "lies" then?
AFAIK the word "lies" is not contaminated and very clear.
"fake news" is not real news of things that have happened: OK agreed
it pretends to be real news: OK agreed
----------------
therefore "fake news" is lies?
Now can we take this one step further?
I have read about internationally known people the last 2 years, who have called certain news reports "fake news", where those news reports were proven to contain true facts, that have been corroborated by other witnesses, and where the nature of the news reports was such that, if the news report *had been* "fake news", it would have easily been proven, exposing the sloppiness or malice of those reporters.
Since that didn't happen, it proves the opposite: those internationally known people labelled something as "fake news" which was proven to be "real news", and they didn't retract that they'd made a mistake, or saw the facts on the ground wrong, or mumble about dodgy aluminium rods and yellowcake from Nigèr [wikipedia.org], or anything to address or mitigate the disagreement about facts.
Can we then start calling such people "fake people" instead? Or "liars"?
Everybody sometimes says stupid shit that others correct them for. Especially me (why else am I here).
But there are two kinds of people: the kind that can admit: "ok I said it wrong, or I saw it wrong, I agree with you that the reality is different",
and the kind that thinks: "I don't make mistakes, reality is what I say it is, and I call you a liar so that the effect and purpose of the words that I speak is, that my minions [wikipedia.org] will classify you in their "out group" [wikipedia.org] for disagreeing with The Leader they festooned with their, genuine, loyalty and trust.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:16PM (4 children)
No. When the news reported Bill Clinton's claim that he did not have sex with Monica Lewinski, they reported a lie (as Clinton later had to admit that he did have sex with her). But it was not fake news (because they didn't make up that claim, they truthfully reported Clinton's lie).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Saturday May 26 2018, @07:24PM (1 child)
There is a difference between truly reporting a lie, and lying in a report.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Saturday May 26 2018, @08:19PM
What's the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman?
The car salesman knows when he's lying.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by shortscreen on Saturday May 26 2018, @07:51PM (1 child)
Not all lies are fake news, nor does fake news need to contain lies. A selective reporting of facts combined with opinion can do a fine job of giving everyone the wrong idea.
(Score: 2) by VanessaE on Monday May 28 2018, @02:32AM
Not to mention that a lot of the time, it is simply any kind of news, from any source, about any subject, which some snowflake thinks is just being spread around and reported for the sole purpose of capturing mindshare or just to bury something that that person deems to be more important...so to him/her, it's "fake news". Doesn't matter if it's true, just matters if it's being repeated enough.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:31PM (1 child)
I remember this same debate wrt free software vs. open source software. It was a vigorous debate, and it was lost.
Free software, software which respects freedom (usually expressed as Stallman's four freedoms), was being called by some (notably Eric Raymond) as "open source" despite that term referring to a range of things including software which was nonfree (proprietary) but incidentally had source code available for viewing.
So, in great "how are we going to lie and spin this" fashion, the idea was "I know! We'll just say* that to be open source, it has to
be free softwaregrant certain conditions that have no special connection to freedom but are just randomly in our definition! That'll answer that objection!"Sort of the same has happened with fake news (fiction or hoax purported falsely to be truth).
Even though that phrase has a definition, many have decided "we'll just say fake news is ........." followed by whatever is convenient/inconvenient for them.
I catch a lot of flack here for pointing out that words mean things. The flackers usually say "language evolves! get with the times!" as if all changes were good ones. They aren't all good changes.
"Fake news" is a phrase with a meaning (see above). However, given current idiotic cultural trends, it is more common to see someone use that phrase to mean something entirely different. Because you are not using the words with any specific meaning intended, it's impossible to use words to talk rationally about the issue.
Since that subversion is so handy for many, and they're getting away with it (aided and abetted by the "language evolves!" flackers), it's unlikely that we will be calling things by their truthful names (lies, etc.) anytime soon.
----------------
* "We'll just say" is a time honored phrase used to both justify and plan lying.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday May 27 2018, @05:27AM
Thanks for saying this. I'll just note my journal entry [soylentnews.org] that says similar things in more detail, because I got tired of pointing out that words mean things in this instance.
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Sunday May 27 2018, @12:42AM
Lies are intentional falsehoods. It's very hard to discern motive when someone utters a falsehood. You usually can't tell whether the falsehood was intentional or not. Fake news covers both situations where it's a lie or whether it's just a falsehood that someone mistakenly believes.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:56PM (1 child)
Follow the money, who made more money and got more attention, the null-result true story or the clickbait?
If your wallet depended on the general public not knowing the truth about something that frankly doesn't matter to them anyway...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @04:12AM
Not only that, but what did better at concealing and propagandizing in favor of the true rulers: investigative journalism or clickbait?
White Helmets... WMD... Gulf of Tonkin... etc etc
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @04:55PM (2 children)
They want to get attention, which leads to hype. They seem to think it's ok to exxagerate or oversimplify results for the popular press. They need funding and tenure, which may be at odds with objectivity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @04:14AM
maybe it would be better if there were more exxxageration
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday May 27 2018, @08:46AM
I strongly believe that we need less exxonageration [theguardian.com], if humanity is to survive.
Hey look, I just made a new word!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:00PM (3 children)
I, too, have had the experience of being present at an event, and the story later reported of it being totally at odds with what I experienced. I have even had the experience of being part of an event (one of the participants), and the later reporting was again completely disconnected from what went on.
Almost all journalists are stupid. But it's even worse than that. They also don't care about getting things right. They don't get paid to be correct, they get paid to tilt things a certain way (which way depends on who's paying them that day). They are not reporters of truth. They are propagandists of lies.
That's easy to see about things you disagree with. It's damn, damn difficult to remember when it's about things you do agree with.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:59PM (2 children)
Crap, should read all the way to the bottom before posting. Yea, that is the term I was really looking for. The media really do tend toward dumb, just the selection process hires and promotes on almost everything but smart, but yea this is the specific effect that best describes this article and the silly notion that scientists can somehow fix science reporting while failing to realize ALL reporting is that bad, it is systemic and thus their pathetic attempt to fix it will fail.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday May 26 2018, @10:20PM (1 child)
while jmorris is already there! C'mon, jmorris! How can we accept your belly-aching about the media when it is obvious you are RWNJ infested? Best to head back to gab, so you can discuss this "further" and more "rationally".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @04:20AM
would you like a left-wing criticism of the media instead [wsws.org]?
though the anti-feminist point of view [wsws.org] will probably turn you off
(Score: 3, Interesting) by suburbanitemediocrity on Saturday May 26 2018, @06:14PM (4 children)
Question everything. Something that is discouraged in the educational world today. What happens when you get presidential senior policy advisors saying things like
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @06:34PM (3 children)
Wow, now that I see what is coming from DNC advisers, their ridiculous amount of failing makes a lot more sense:
http://www.newgeography.com/users/morley-winograd-and-michael-d-hais [newgeography.com]
http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/930173/12774430/1308371971103/Millennials++Critical+Thinking.pdf?token=PlwvVGveRCyVjBxPGqbTq7nMqgM%3D [sqspcdn.com]
Why did you leave out the source though?
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Saturday May 26 2018, @06:46PM (1 child)
Because it usually gets downvoted or buried when I do, at least on other sites.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @04:43AM
it seems rather sinister
they've proposed a method that is supposed to be better than thinking critically and listening to experts, but their proposed method is wide open to manipulation by propagandists
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Saturday May 26 2018, @06:48PM
It's nice to see that someone else checks
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 26 2018, @07:23PM (8 children)
There is no technical solution to a moral problem, and in this case the moral problem is lack of critical thought. Leaving aside that scientists shouldn't also be expected to be reporters and journalists themselves, and that a lot of this stuff simply does not translate into terms the average American can understand even if they wanted to, the problem is *lack* of "wanted to." People are lazy and stupid, and getting more so by the day.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @12:24AM (1 child)
Azuma Hazuki, I'm surprised that your post hasn't been scored all the way up to 5. It is by far the most insightful comment I've seen on this topic.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday May 27 2018, @04:28AM
Eh...really? o_O KHallow actually had a partial counter to it, that being that sometimes technology created new problems, and sometimes it can obviate them if not actually solve them. Thanks, though :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 27 2018, @12:38AM (5 children)
No problem is purely moral. Technology, for example, can create or obsolete such problems. For example, the dilemma of whether to pay organ donors only exists because it is possible for us to donate organs (usually upon our deaths). That dilemma will similarly go away, if there becomes some innocuous way to grow or make artificial organs that is superior and cheaper to organ donation.
OTOH, there are rather high expectations that scientists should be able to report and explain their knowledge and endeavors to peers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @04:29AM (4 children)
you keep using that word, i do not think it means what you think it means
if only we had somebody who was educated enough in the field to get an accurate grasp of the work. this person, instead of doing experiments, would report the state of the art to the public regularly. there would be more than enough work for many people like him.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 27 2018, @04:53AM (3 children)
But that's not a typical job of a scientist nor teacher. They can be very well compensated, but they're not that common.
Triggered eh? I just mean here people sufficiently well-versed in the subject that they can read advanced research and get something out of it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @05:13AM (2 children)
this is what i had indicated
your rebuttal to my proposal is to beg the question
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 27 2018, @12:44PM
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday May 27 2018, @07:28PM
Finally! A correct use of "beg the question"!! http://begthequestion.info/ [begthequestion.info] Unfortunately, and predictably, it referenced the peerless khallow, but that is to be expected. "Science" derives from the Latin "scio", to know. I think I see the problem with America: they do not think knowledge and teaching are connected. Explains much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:45AM
The fight against 'fake news' is utterly pointless as long as people continue to use social media as a source of news.
It's like trying to find a cure for diarrhoea while continuing to drink out of the toilet.