aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Science news devolved into commercial puff nonsense
The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist.
The “scientist” is a political scientist and the debunking is quite complete, but it’s the coda that caught my attention:
More and more, empty “science” stories are being generated by public relations companies, who team up with academics, and commission some spurious piece of “research” that will be attractive to the media, where the company is name-checked. The classic examples are the “equations for” stories. None of Dr Curry’s doubtless excellent scholarly work in political theory has ever generated media coverage like his silly futuristic essay. I spoke to friends on other newspapers (the Guardian didn’t cover the story, mercifully) who told me they had stand up rows with news desks, explaining that this was not a science news story. But the selective pressure on national newspapers is for journalists who compliantly write up this kind of commercial puff nonsense as “science news"ÂÂ�, while religious fundamentalism of all varieties is conquering the world. Bravo!
Via Boing Boing.
