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Comment by woo49 | Hacker News Reader

this is why nobody trusts the news. And also why global warming is so controversial. If, hypothetically, some credible scientists tomorrow did some research that showed global warming is not as bad as we thought, would that get reported widely? No way.

Even if your articles are 100% fact based, selection bias in which stories to report and which to promote is a huge issue.

It's why we love places like HN, also - both for the un-editorialized ranking of stories as well as the ranking of comments.

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> If, hypothetically, some credible scientists tomorrow did some research that showed global warming is not as bad as we thought, would that get reported widely?

Absolutely yes. It would be hard to come up with strong evidence that the hundreds (thousands?) of other papers are wrong, but extraordinary evidence would absolutely be shared widely.

I admire your optimism. My view is that people that have bet their political or journalistic careers on a certain matter or position are very reluctant to embrace opposite facts (consciously or unconsciously).

As another example - there were huge campaigns to get women to get screened for breast cancer. Turns out there is little to no benefit in doing so based on extensive long term scientific studies (very surprising to me but that’s what it is). It is taking forever for that fact to come out and it’s not even that controversial.

News about the recent study seems fairly balanced IMO

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53753458

I don't expect major public health shifts to happen within a month of a paper being published, especially during a pandemic.

The point doesn't require optimism at all. In fact, it requires a certain degree of magical thinking to believe that the information WOULDN'T get a wide degree of publicity.

Consider the massive numbers of people and industries who are ideologically and economically motivated to show that climate change is a hoax. It's an absurdly charged issue. Also consider the massive effort that would be required to thoroughly debunk the many dozens of sources of evidence and papers that suggest climate change is both man-made and accelerating.

You are correct that some types of information don't spread as fast as others. In fact, the vast majority of information on earth doesn't get prominent national attention. By definition, it's quite abnormal to reach that level. I don't know much about breast cancer screening, but it seems obvious that "breast cancer screening isn't as reliable as we thought" isn't a shoe-in for front page news, and I'm not sure why that should have any implications for climate change news.

Not sure about un-editorialized ranking of stories. There are entire classes of important stories that are probibited by the rules, stories and comments are shown based on a combination of voting and the whims of a couple staff members, and the site is owned by an organization invested in the companies that are being discussed.

HN is a fun discussion site but if it was your only source of information your worldview would be very warped.

Part of this is also on the readers. Science is suppose to change as more evidence comes in. But, many people for whatever reasons ignore updates unless they match their narrative. Nuance is lost.

I trust the news plenty.

Don't state like its the norm now not to believe well known old and trusty news papers.

My basic assumption is, that they are not lying but they can also make mistakes.

Do you think a story that showed global warming was not as bad as we thought would get a lot of traction on HN?

There is plenty of evidence to suggest it's not as bad as we thought if you search out there. You'll never see it in the popular mainstream news though.

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