But Simon Oxenham did, at Prime Mind:
Let’s begin by looking at the most widely-read news website—Mail Online, which provides a perfect demonstration of what we’ll call the seesaw effect. Almost every week, the Mail publishes news stories illustrating scientific findings that—apparently—turn our understanding of the world upside down. If you believed everything you read in the Mail about cancer, for example, you’d have to believe that everything from taking aspirin to drinking beer both causes and prevents cancer. That’s according to The Daily Mail Ontological Oncology project, a tongue-in-cheek attempt to track “the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it.”
But it’s not just the Mail that’s at fault. This version of science is endemic throughout the media. A week doesn’t go by without some news sites confidently stating that scientists have “changed their minds” in one direction or the other, whether it’s on the health consequences of wine, meat, or chocolate. More.
All the basic food groups of science news should be consumed in moderate quantities, with the clear recognition that no distinction is usually made between the news copy and the sponsor’s ads.
See also: Science writers should be better skeptics There is little in the scientific method to support the current low standards but there is a lot in metaphysical naturalism (brain shaped for fitness, not for truth,)
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