DNA is held together by hydrophobic forces

The thing's that, as far as I can tell, economic/political journalism seems to be at least as corrupted (intellectually; not talking about moral corruption), where explanations of complex phenomena are grossly oversimplified beyond recognition. Despite knowing that, it's hard to make a precise study of that sort of corruption because the actual underlying truth is unclear.

By contrast, it seems reasonable to read pop-science journalism and then compare it to a corresponding scientific story. We can then try to understand the nature of media twisting, then apply that understanding to helping us interpret journalism covering economics/politics, where the underlying truth isn't as easily otherwise-determined.

In short, it's neat to see pop-science journalism in action as it helps to put other sorts of journalism into perspective.

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Separately, I'd note the expression that "There's no such thing as bad publicity.".

While science-journalism may not be particularly successful in informing the public about science, it might have a positive effect on public-relations with the scientific community, helping the community to feel more connected to the scientific establishment.

I mean, it seems to work in, say, sports, where local communities will cheer on competitors from their community despite not having any real direct attachment to the competitors' efforts. It's my understanding that this sort of emotional connection helps to keep professional sports well-funded, driving public interest in their activities.

Then ditto for stuff like the expensive Apollo missions to put someone on Luna, which I've heard that Americans took to be a national victory (and perhaps others found it to be a human victory).

In short, science journalism might help drive public support for the sciences, even if it fails to convey actual science.

Full disclosure: in graduate school I worked in a lab that published a paper that contradicted some of his previous work. It was a different part of the lab so I only know the high level overview of the controversy. He's a giant in the field though.

Key rule of thumb for pretty much any biological structure: it's the entropy not the enthalpy that dominates. Entropy in this context is the stacking of base pairs, enthalpy is formation of electrostatic or similar bonds (like an H-bond between DNA bases). Essentially every biological molecule is "greasier" than water, so it likes to hide that "grease" from the water much the same way oil likes to form droplets with itself in water because doing so reduces the "order" and therefore the boosts the total entropy of the solution.

Why you ask? It's complicated but my general understanding is that water that is interacting with "grease" has to adopt a fair amount of structure. By reducing the number of water molecules contacting your "grease" you reduce the amount of structure the water has, which means the total system is more disordered even as the grease itself adopts a higher degree of structure.

This is all a little handwavy, it's been a while since thermo, but it's a decent overall framework for general understanding.