Comments on: Copywriters are Not Always Scientists

By: Celine Finnighan

Celine Finnighan — Sun, 13 May 2012 19:00:30 +0000

This is really exciting! I don’t think you’ve taken into account what happens day to day, but still a good post.

By: Study Grader

Study Grader — Wed, 09 May 2012 03:55:58 +0000

[…] interested in nutrition, and health in general. As a result, I’ve read a lot of really shoddy nutrition and health news over the years. I’ve noticed that the mistakes journalists make usually involve coverage of […]

By: Study Grader | News and Participatory Media

Study Grader | News and Participatory Media — Wed, 09 May 2012 03:46:13 +0000

By: Ethan Zuckerman

Ethan Zuckerman — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:23:27 +0000

Matt, I really appreciated your analysis of the shortcomings of some scientific journalism. In discussion in class, you made one of your main points more forcefully – if you can’t find the original study being cited, it’s virtually impossible to see if it’s being presented correctly.

It might be interesting to see what could be done to make these short pieces more helpful or fairer. One is obviously linking to the original studies. Another might be providing a quick summary paragraph – why you should care, why you shouldn’t take this too seriously. Another might be a simple mouse-over that listed how many data points are in the study, or gave a quick way of looking at the “p” value of a study, the chance that the study’s results could also be explained by sheer randomness…

By: mstem

mstem — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:16:38 +0000

Yeah, there’s so much judgement and assumption in that one little graph.

By: natematias

natematias — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:16:49 +0000

The fact you checked is interesting to me because it’s a great example of a self-affirming fact. It’s not written to hereditary millionaires, who are presumably reading something else. It’s written to the rest of us who will congratulate ourselves for being hard-working earners who don’t donate to charity.