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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

NOVA has been undergoing a similar decline.

The latest episode was about the nanoarchitecture of butterfly wings, which is a fascinating topic.

A researcher mimicked the nano structure onto a piece of metal, a disk the size of a nickel, which is so hydrophobic that two disks close to each other would float, as it had essentially a bubble trapped between them.

The subtext of the show was about "combating climate change". So the narrator ludicrously suggests that it could be used to create floating cities because global water levels are rising.

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The problem with NOVA in this TikTok era is the hour long format that was designed for broadcast TV. A topic with 10 minutes of material is stretched into 45 minutes with unnecessary drama and reenactments as filler.

Like the kids say these days 'Ain't nobody got time for that'. I'd rather watch a 10 min video on Youtube that covers the same topic.

Youtubers stretch 30 seconds of material in 10 minutes.

Pithy, but I’d actually argue the opposite. As someone who consumes quite a bit of science content on YouTube, it’s actually quite jarring to go back to traditional TV science shows. It feels a lot less information dense and more time-wasting.

An interesting example is when Veritasium, who normally does the usual YouTube science content, got some big budget funding for one video [1] and produced it in a style more like what you’d see on TV. It was striking how there was so much filler and dramatization to try to make it interesting, and the whole thing felt dumbed down compared to his usual content, for example [2], which is deeper and relatively information-dense.

And there are channels like PBS Spacetime which go far, far beyond anything I’ve ever seen in any media aimed at a general audience [3].

[1] https://youtu.be/YMDJA4UvXLA

[2] https://youtu.be/OxGsU8oIWjY

[3] https://youtu.be/gSKzgpt4HBU

You've not watched any Kurzgesagt have you? Sit down for a wild ride:

https://youtube.com/c/inanutshell

I don't find that to be true in general. I mean, some do that, but it is quote rare. Most don't try to force specific length at all. They are comfortable with super short videos and super long videos and anything in between.

I don't think it's anything unique to the "TikTok era". It has always been like that, as long as I can remember. Decades ago was the same.

My guess is that the primary challenges are

a) finding a subject that happens to exactly fit the 60-minute time slot without requiring grievous cuts or padding. I imagine it is hard to know this in advance. I notice, for instance, the bigger, famous theatrical documentaries don't exactly have a uniform run-length.

b) production costs. Sure, you could fly around the world to interview another 4 experts and get another 3-hours of footage (that you cut down to 15-minutes) and have a graphics artist who charges $1,000/day generate more models ... or you could just recycle and pad with cheap filler to reach your run-time. After all, you were only given a budget of $X,000 to make a 60-minute documentary.

I remember this being an annoyance for a long time.

BBC horizon documentaries pretty much took the prize when it came to endless stock video with ambient music and aimless "poetic" quotes from various eccentric scientists talking about some interesting but essentially fantastical topic far removed from any reality or future.

That might be silly, but its not downright misrepresenting concepts the way this article is complaining about, e.g.

> “First, the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against."

I came here to call out that quote. Apparently this is the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_McLemore

Only half of the story is Scientific American going downhill. The other half is that social activism creeping into science. A professor and researcher, regardless of if they're a social activist, shouldn't disparage statistics like that. It's also troubling that she either 1) understands statistics that poorly or 2) twists the meaning to make a point.

I believe social activism should be entertwined with science - we should use science to make the world a more just and fair place, and we should look to human misery as inspiration for things we can study and improve.

However, twisting scientific terms by using double meanings of terms that have differing colloquial meanings like the scientific american does, doesn't accomplish that and helps nobody.

Also your approach is more honest than saying ‘keep science apolitical’.

YouTube is better now. there's some excellent science/engineering channels.

On another episode, "The Universe Revealed: Big Bang", the presenters said:

"Somewhere there was a first planet that formed in the entire universe. We'll never know about it. We'll never know when it formed or what its fate was. But it formed somewhere!"

That’s certainly dumb but doesn’t strike me as dumbed down. More like some cynic trying to do a bad parody of Carl Sagan.

Watch the episode. It's pretty dumbed down. Even if you realize that there's only 5 minutes worth of material in a 50 minute show. The filler I quoted is just an example.

I beg a pardon, but what's wrong with this one? Sure, if you understand enough of the general relativity theory, you kinda get that "X was earlier than Y" starts making less and less sense if X and Y are light years apart, but it's not something you can easily explain to the general audience.

The quoted phrase, on the other hand, understandably conveys the idea that planets are not specific to the solar system, and that other systems have formed and died billions of years before.

If Kermit The Frog said it on an episode of Sesame Street, it would be reasonable. Maybe follow it up with "P is for Planet".

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