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Comment by maybelsyrup | Hacker News Reader

Did anyone else read the headline here on HN, then look to the right at the parentheses that says "ucsf.edu" as the source, then think to themselves "press release from university PR department", get a bit suspicious, then decide not to click on the article and move on with their evening?

I'm not hating, exactly -- universities do cool stuff often, and I like to hear about it. But when the source is the university itself it seems a bit like COI.

(And lo, ramraj07 and others' comments bear this out: not much to see here.)

Edit: after some backlash, let me clarify: I'm asking whether others look askance at university press releases. In my experience, they're often as fluffy as press releases from corporations and the like, which was a letdown early on for me. Does this anecdote align with anyone else's experience?

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You are spot on. Universities PR scientific releases like this are usually bad. And I'd dare say, detrimental to science if it reaches the public. It sets false expectations regarding scientific work and its meaning.

Concur. As a non-scientist science-aware layperson who has had excellent experiences with UCSF and trusts them very highly, the byline definitely caught my eye. But the headline seemed overstated, so I clicked through to the comments here first, and my suspicions were confirmed.

UCSF, if you’re seeing this, I’m providing a single data point: You have diminished your credibility one quantum with one moderately scientifically-literate member of the public.

Another sign that it’s a puff piece is when it starts describing the persons involved: X grew up in place Y, etc etc.

Indeed, I have noticed this trend with "news" more and more. The style is characterized as being written like a non-fiction novel. I wish news was just more concise and to the point. I don't have time to read thru the fluff.

Having seen the horrible things my university's press department was able to do with my work when i was in academia... I'm not really inclined to get all hyped up over articles such as these.

Weird how you ended up in this comment section despite "moving on".

In a modern web browser, you can do both simultaneously with ctrl-t.

Jokes aside, I was curious if anyone else furrowed their brow at university press offices. So here I am.

I do the same thing, but will often check the top comment(s) to make sure I'm not missing something and generally keep my BS detector well trained.

In this case the top comment happens to reinforce said detector.

Honestly, you rarely have to look as far as the URL; the headline itself's often enough. High on impact or even just zeitgeist + low on specificity + no quantitative statements is a great recipe for "not worth your time".

To their credit though, they don't claim that the antibody is using artificial intelligence, or AI, to do it's thing.

feel free to dig up the Science paper then and read it

the fact that you are facing backlash for calling our University Corporatism is ridiculous. No one should be above scrutiny or questions... Thats Science 101

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