The Continuing Bizarre Decline in Science Reporting at the New York Times | Hacker News Reader

The Continuing Bizarre Decline in Science Reporting at the New York Times

daringfireball.net

25 pointsmissinfo12 comments

> It’s not even a remotely plausible figure given our lived experience of this pandemic.

Just a nitpick, but I'd be really careful to generalize like this. The lived experiences of the pandemic are radically different between people. For some, it is very personal and immediate - if they have close friend or relatives who are affected or if they work in a profession, where they frequently whitness infections.

Others may be lucky and may not have experienced the actual pandemic at all, only the effects of the countermeasures.

All that makes it hard for a random person to instantly dismiss most figures like the one in the article as implausible, if you're not specifically keeping track of the development or are working in the field. I think this is one of the reasons why covid misinformation can grab a hold so easily.

I think this is far too important to be called a nitpick.

This is a very easy trap to fall into - both on your own and when guided to it.

Assuming children here means under 18 as the article never mentions a specific range, then the population size as of 2020 was about 73 million [0]. That means we're talking about the difference between 1.2% of children and 0.08% of children.

In terms of national impact, that's pretty significant. But in terms of your individual lived experience, I have doubts. I've already spent too much time looking for relatable events with a similar probability so I'm going to stop here, but I don't think most people are that clued in about kids to seriously expect to notice this kind of difference in their life.

Unless you count reading/watching the media as part of your life experience, I don't think most people would notice a difference here.

[0]https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp

I don't get it, the Times made an error when it came to a figure in one article and that is, according to the title, a continuing bizarre decline in science reporting?

We could talk about science reporting at the times if we knew how many errors they make in say a thousand science articles compared to a decade ago, or if they're slower to correct them, or correct them less frequently or whatever else.

Up next, the bizarre decline in the quality of blogposting, one guy on substack made a mistake they didn't correct

I had the same reaction at first. The frame of the blog post is the decline in science reporting, but it is a pretext from which to hang this story correction before our eyes and made no attempt to deal with accuracy over time, as you suggest.

However, it was two corrections in one story, and they both seem to have been howlers. If these mistakes were made by the COVID beat reporter, that's important. A better frame might have been something like "Why I'm Skeptical of NY Times Reporting" or "Why I don't trust NY Times Reporting".

Why are we getting our science news from the liberal arts majors on the other side of campus? The problem is they really do not understand science. They believe everything is concrete and don’t understand the nuances.

Why are we assuming the New York Times doesn't hire science majors as science reporters?

>a Master of Science degree in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

https://www.nytimes.com/by/apoorva-mandavilli

( ^ the author of the NYT article that was the subject of the correction!)

>graduated cum laude with a B.A. in physics from Princeton University in 1987. He also received an M.S. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1988 and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1995.

https://www.nytimes.com/by/kenneth-chang

>graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz Science Communication Program and completed his undergraduate degree at Cornell University, where he studied biology.

https://www.nytimes.com/by/nicholas-st-fleur

>holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunobiology from Harvard University.

https://www.nytimes.com/by/katherine-j--wu

etc, etc, etc if you search the web for "science reporter nyt" (these are just a few of the first results).

Evidently their degrees are Bayesian FALSE POSITIVES - they are NOT the experts qualified as their degrees would mislead you to believe!

Good article. People are being mislead constantly by people we've given our trust to and it's unfortunate.

yes, just observing how hard they push certain covid narratives at every opportunity possible is well beyond science. same for npr. the worst are the “experts” they bring on to parrot the party line.

There is a general decline at the New York Times. It's certainly not limited to Science, that just may be the easiest place to spot shoddy reporting.

Sophistry is going to be the undoing of civilized society.

The numerical mistake Gruber points out is definitely a howler, but I’m not sure characterizing all and any opposition to COVID boosters as “nonsensical” is fair. The WHO itself says:

>In a period of continued global vaccine supply shortage equity considerations at country, regional and global level remain an essential consideration to assure vaccination of high priority groups in every country. Improving coverage of the primary vaccination series should be prioritized over booster vaccination.

https://www.who.int/news/item/04-10-2021-interim-statement-o...

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