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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

This links to a (much better) better press release which in turn links to the original study.

https://www.newswise.com/articles/researchers-find-spaceflig...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-03777-z.pdf

OP - and HN readers in general - please consider not submitting the first article you find on an interesting topic. Follow the links back and submit the best version you can find. You do not owe the clickbait outlet any sort of reward just because they promoted a bit of interesting news onto your radar. If there weren't so much clickbait, quality news would stand out much more easily.

Science writers, maybe you want to inform the public by making information simple and accessible to a general audience. That's good. But if you just give them factoids and don't include any scientific reasoning (like a comparison to the baseline, or noting the absence of one) then you're just selling sugary snacks that are not really very nutritious.

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I agree with the sentiment of tracing a headline back to the topic's best coverage.

But posting plain studies directly to non-industry forums is often not ideal. The studies are not written for a general audience and rely on jargon, shorthand, assumptions, and shared education that general audience readers are at least as likely to misinterpret as professional science writers.

We like to beat up on science writers for writing poor and misrepresentative coverage of research, but are you sure a bunch of random (and often compulsively contrarian) intellectuals trying to earn internet points are an improvement?

The best of both worlds is probably to find the best coverage, and then add the study in a comment.

The GP said that you should submit the best article on any given topic, not just the original study. In fact, they specifically called out the press release by the original authors (which can be viewed on Mt Sinai's blog: https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2022/fesearchers-f...) as being "much better" then the original article. I'm not a researcher, but as a member of the public I also agree that the press release seems to do a good job at explaining things for the public while also not dumbing things down or exaggerating the findings too much. Nobody is saying you should just post the original study devoid of any context

Totally. I wasn't challenging the GP, just elaborating on nuance.

>posting plain studies directly to non-industry forums is often not ideal. The studies are not written for a general audience and rely on jargon, shorthand, assumptions, and shared education that general audience readers are at least as likely to misinterpret as professional science writers.

I think there's an argument to be made that, regardless the specific subject of discussion, a forum like HN is not a "general" audience and can appreciate content that hasn't been watered down for the general masses.

Hacker News is beholden to witty titles

My rule of thumb is find a balance between "getting to the point" and accuracy. A study by itself in a specialized field will only be intelligible by a select group, but a science-based news site that can condense it appropriately is my goto.

dang has said that HN doesn't outright ban TV news sites like CNN, despite being against the guidelines[0], because they do occasionally surface interesting stories.

But every example of that I've seen has essentially been blogspam that is better covered by primary sources instead. I really wish he'd reconsider.

[0] "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That particular guideline seems to have informally expired. Normal news gets to the front page all the time. See, for example, the thread on the death of the queen. Hardly related to tech, startups, or even intellectual gratification.

I feel like it just gets waived every once in a while when the news is appropriately "important". The death of a monarch in a western nation essentially hits all the criteria of becoming massive media fodder.

I'm pretty sure the only thing that's interesting to talk about when the Queen dies is if this is a perfect time to get rid of the monarchy, and dang said that's too 17th century to talk about. Without that conversation, IMO what's happening in the lives of kings, queens, princes, and princesses is also too 17th century to talk about.

While I'm all for a Cromwell II to this Charles III, I don't think it's fair to say that there are no other interesting things to talk when such a long-lived world leader (even though she was mostly a figurehead) dies. It's natural to want to look back and contemplate, and even just reminisce, about how the world has changed under her. A discussion can be interesting without being a debate.

> If there weren't so much clickbait, quality news would stand out much more easily.

So much this. I took a break from some news websites a few years back, when I recently visited one of them, I was sad to see that many front page news articles had clickbait titles.

Somehow each generation is convinced anew that their pearl clutching will be of any interest to others

It's certainly a best practice that should absolutely be encouraged.

Keep in mind:

It can take practice to get good at it.

People who are handicapped, distracted, short of sleep etc may try to do so and simply not get it right.

If you don't have the time to try to do this, you can just not submit it rather than tossing click bait at HN.

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