The Washington Post reports on a video from the television series Last Week Tonight with John Oliver regarding flaws in science and in reporting about science.
Topics touched upon by Mr. Oliver include p-hacking, exploratory studies vs. confirmational studies, press releases, the "telephone" effect, animal testing, oversimplification, industry funding, sample sizes, and TED talks.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lentilla on Thursday May 12 2016, @12:49AM
Maybe using that tactic for the Snowden interview was an effective way to get the audience to care, but that does not bode well for the audience's intelligence.
And that is democracy for you.
In a democracy - in order that anything changes - a small number of smart people need to either convince or cajole a much larger number of considerably-less-smart people that something is worth doing or caring about. So whilst you bemoan "the audience's intelligence" - this is par-on-course for any topic involving more nuance than "a chicken in every pot".
If a message is important enough to communicate, then it is likely it will have to be communicated in different ways to different people. Some people have an ability to immediately grasp implication - these are the kind of people that inherently understand why Snowden is important. For everybody else, different tactics are required.
A favourite sales tactic involves gently steering your client to tell you (the putative salesman) exactly what is causing them an issue and why. In short: arrange that the customer tells you why he actively wants you to sell a product that will solve a problem.
Sometimes a communicator is simply fighting for space to get their message across. People are being bombarded with information and a lot of it gets lost in the noise. If your filters aren't top-notch, it's far easier to go "ah, yeah, like whatever" because you can simply tune out the 99% of junk: the unimportant, the lies, and the misinformation - at the cost of occasionally missing that all-important 1%.
So sometimes low-brow humour is a useful tool in a communicator's arsenal. It buys a tiny bit of head-space in the audience. If you crack a joke about three letter agencies salivating over "your wife's junk" what you are really doing is getting people to stop and think: hmmm, I don't like the sound of that..., gee heck, I'd really get some curry from my wife over that..., hang on a second, why are people staring at pictures of my wife anyway?..., I wonder what else they can do?..., I really don't like the sound of that..., Now I'm mad as hell... And thus the battle gains another fighter.