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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

One of my pet peeves with reporters and writers is that they believe themselves to be studied, enlightened and informed, more so than their audience. And if true this would be great.

If true they could inform me and give me better understanding of the world around me.

Sadly, I find, most of them rely on gut, opinion and lack rigor. They lack basic scientific investigative techniques. So we end up reading mostly opinion backed by further opinion, sometimes backed by unreliable social sciences studies. By unreliable I mean the results are often one offs but they are cited as if accepted fact.

For example, antivax. The opinions of antivax are given the same credibility as epidemiologists. That to me is egregious. Sometimes they do the right thing and call out the questionable opinion as they tend to do with the anti global warming crowd.... But I bet that is helped by their political leaning more than by their being rigorous.

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For the sake of argument, let's stipulate that the mainstream US news media consists of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, and the Washington Post.

Could you cite an example in any of those four publications where undue weight was given to "antivax" people?

Just so you know: I 1000% agree with you that giving equal weight to antivax crazies and professional epidemiologists would constitute "undue weight".

I don't have a citation. It's more a vibe I get from listening to npr interviews. They have interesting guests with some neat theories about things -politics, economics, social justice, climatology, sexuality, etc. I would love for them to prod the guests for evidence and methodology rather than take what they say at face value.

I want to know why something might work not simply feel good that something might work. Let's take the minimum wage. From a layman perspective I think a higher national minimum wage would be welcome and adjust it to inflation. But I'd like for this opinion to be validated, not simply presented as unquestionably good.

I mean, let's say we standardize at 15 or 20 or a speculative $30hr. What would the impact be. Will it lead to more automation? So higher pay for those with jobs but more unemployed? Who becomes the undesirable and unhirable (the inexperienced)? If it leads to higher unemployment (speculation) what are our responsibilities as a society and who has preference (citizens vs non citizens)? Do we train?

I don't have a citation. It's more a vibe I get

Ironically, something an anti-vaxxer would probably say too.

Guy complains about lack obvious lack of rigour.

HN asks him for citations.

Srsly?

________

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_objectivity

[3] with ref (1) to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy

[4] http://www.salon.com/2011/01/16/dangerous_immunity/

[5] http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/13/science/la-sci-autis...

No, the complaint that drew the request for citations was 'antivaxers given same credibility as epidemiologists', not the complaint on journalistic rigour in general.

Just like the "it's a vibe" response, your own point on rigour isn't particularly rigorous.

I'm not a journalist and don't have their gravitas. Journalists have some gravitas and it should be required that have some modicum of rigor. This is a forum where we exchange ideas not an organ of record and the one who is taken to be the preeminent news source in North America.

There is a difference. They have whole teams dedicated to research. Use them. As someone upstream said, don't take one fact and weave a theory around it. Make sound reasoning and use the research teams available to them.

Thomas asked for evidence from select publications. I don't bookmark things like that. I don't even recall where I might have read or heard the anti-vaxers, but they are an example of a group whose voice is given much too much voice in mainstream media, in my view.

And I asked where that was happening in the mainstream media, and you started talking about the minimum wage.

Robert F Kennedy was the source for the Salon Piece in footnote 4.

"He had written a much-discussed and much-challenged story for Rolling Stone last year linking childhood vaccines and a rise in autism."

"Nonetheless, perhaps more than any other Kennedy of his generation, he is looked upon as the next potential vessel for Something Bigger. In words, temperament and actions, he conveys a frenetic vibe of restlessness that invites the questions "What else?" "What next?" "What more?""

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/fashion/25bobby.html?pagew...

Its this kind of stuff that is ultimately problematic. Note that this is in the 'fashion' section of the NYT.

You could say that 'Salon' is outide your definition of mainstream media, but the issue is that the sites you mentioned still cover the stories, even if nothing more than as references in pursuit of 'journalistic integrity'.

Obviously google will turn up lots of materiel on this if you want it.

(Note that the current treatment of these topics is far more skeptical. The LA times in 2015 is not going to treat these topics the same as the NY times in 2006.)

Salon is nowhere near the mainstream media. It's a punchline for people who think Slate is mainstream, and those people are themselves not in the mainstream.

The NYT piece you cite is not about vaccination, and notes on that subject only that RFKjr wrote an antivax piece that was challenged.

I suppose you could use the same argument for rolling stone, but frankly it doesn't matter. Look at the UVA rape case from earlier this year (covered widely). The RFK piece on vaccination was published originall in rolling stone. The hagiographic prose the NYT writes about the author (kennedy) and the editorial selection of the piece by rolling stone lend these ideas credibility regardless of the flaws in the articles. Again, look at the UVA rape article earlier this year (published: rolling stone) and see how much coverage it got in NYT, WaPo, LaTimes etc. Its worth noting That WaPo debunked alot of the Rolling stone reportage ultimately, but that just goes to show that not all newsrooms are single minded/purpose entities.

Lastly, if you look up (and read) the footnotes in my earlier not, you'll se that there is a clear link between the academic critique of 'journalistic integrity' and the anti-vaccination example, insofar as 'false balance' is a well defined sub-topic of that debate. Under the Wikipedia article for that...you notice (rightly or wrongly) that of the examples given, the anti-vaccination quakery (eg, kennedy in rollin stone etc) is a "well worn" example.

In other words, a commenter making reference to this is not making any novel or original argument that needs "footnotes". Footnotes are useful when there is a more subtle point, a nuance or something that is not obvious. Footnotes are less called for here, as a simple google search will attest.

> Sadly, I find, most of them rely on gut, opinion and lack rigor.

> I don't have a citation. It's more a vibe I get from listening to npr interviews.

If the New York Times gave the same amount of column inches to holocaust deniers as it does anti vaccination nuts there would be an outrage despite the fact that both camps are about as valid as each other.

There's a lot of prejudice in your sentence. Having some experience in this debate topic, I don't think there are "holocaust deniers", there are only gas chamber skeptics. Same with "anti vaccination nuts", I think there are only people that are against forced vaccination. No one is against you vaccinating your kids and living in a town where only vaccinated people are allowed.

If arguments were as simple as you're pretending they are, those argument would not have been going on for decades.

EDIT: I should have searched for [innguest holocaust] before answering.

There are plenty of people who think the holocaust - all of it - is a lie. And even if we accept your much more limited version of what a holocaust denier is - "the holocaust happened but the gas chambers didn't" - well, that's wrong too.

And there are plenty of people who campaign vigorously to stop other people's children being vaccinated, who accuse people who vaccinate their children of causing harm to those children.

Regarding the holocaust, see all I have to say about it in my other reply below.

As for vaccination... look, I am not against vaccines, I was vaccinated. I don't think vaccines are harmful. But I am intellectually honest enough to understand their arguments and to see you're distorting them.

Just like a Christian should proselytize and try to convert me if they actually believe I am going to hell, so should an anti-vaccination person that believes vaccines do harm and want to convince others about it. It took me a while to understand this. Penn Jillette makes this point here in 1 minute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owZc3Xq8obk

That anti-vaccine people proselytize tells me they are genuine and I should look into what they have to say and exchange ideas with them to see where they are wrong and where I might be wrong.

If they don't proselytize how do you suggest they bring up their concerns? I am for the free market of ideas. I am always skeptical of those that don't engage in debates because the other side is "clearly wrong".

You said

> Same with "anti vaccination nuts", I think there are only people that are against forced vaccination. No one is against you vaccinating your kids and living in a town where only vaccinated people are allowed.

I was responding to that. There are people who are against all vaccination; people who think you are harming your children if you vaccinate them. You are wrong to suggest that those people do not exist.

    I don't think there are "holocaust deniers", there are only gas chamber skeptics.

I don't want to give any publicity to such idiocy but here you go:

http://expeltheparasite.com/2013/10/28/the-holocaust-hoax-it...

http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar01.html

Indeed it is this kind of idiocy that turns people off revisionism altogether, when in fact it is a serious field that has contributed enormously to progressing the much needed, and much stifled, research on WW2 atrocities.

For the intellectually curious I'd say steer clear of any website with a swastika. Start with Skeptic magazine's Michael Shermer "holocaust debate" with Mark Weber (available on Youtube) for a civilized discussion, based on documents, among intellectually honest people. If you want something to read regarding revisionist arguments, I can recommend Arthur Butz's PDF book (a fellow computer scientist) available online. For the mainstream arguments I recommend the relevant parts of Hilberg and Arad and then Pressac's books on gas chamber operations. This will equip the student with enough knowledge to be able to talk about the subject intelligently.

This was the only safe way I could find of starting this research since a lot of material online seems hell-bent on blaming Jews for everything. I never understood this spurious connection. I don't hate anyone, and I was curious to know how exactly millions of people could have been killed in such a systematic way. So I started looking for material without the hatred and it does exist, but it leads down a deep rabbit hole with very few certainties. Gas chambers are one of the hardest problems for historians to explain and the most prominent researcher in this area, Jean-Claude Pressac, has switched between mainstream and revisionism a few times because of that. That much should entice the potential student.

Near-unanimity among academics happens when there is great political pressure. Even the Pope's political enemies in the 13th century conceded to his altered version of 4th century history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Constantine) that was used as a device to support the Pope's political authority. Today, Israel needs a similar political authority, and as Norman Finkelstein argues, it finds such authority in the mainstream holocaust narrative. Hence the political pressure against progress in this field, and hence the laws against discussing it in Europe.

FWIW in England prominent favourable coverage was given to anti-vacination frauds; and to climate-change deniers (even those paid for their opinion); and to MRSA scare merchants (see Bad Science for examples). Look at the terrible quality of most science reporting (especially anything related to nutrition).

mc32's comments don't seem too far off-base -- although I have no idea if they apply to the US media.

most people don't get their news from print media as far as i know.

I think part of the problem of scientific reporting is that journalists deliberately look for sensationalist material, and how journalists discuss science is little different from how Bill O'Reilly might react if he just found an exclusive clip of Hillary Clinton getting drunk and saying stupid things. Bill O'Reilly and his team would probably be thinking about how this might be worth a month of material.

The other part of the problem is that scientific writing is meant for scientific audiences, an audience which is expected to be aware of an ecology of evidence and professional debate occurring around studies. If we don't want pathological journalism, where a journalist finds a single piece of evidence and spins whatever narrative they want from it, then we need a journalist who is authoritative enough to represent a whole field and its diversity of opinions, like Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Would you trust Neil to be honest with you?

Actually, No I would not since he seems to go outside his knowledge base, gets political, and make some false statements. Check his validated Twitter feed for some examples. Now if Feynman was still around, I would trust him since he had a record of giving honest opinions.

It's not Neil's beliefs on politics that people care about. Instead, we care when he makes statements about the field of physics. Not a phenomena, but the field itself. It's because those statements can be incredibly useful to a lay audience.

Imagine hearing this claim: "Most psychologists nowadays use cognitive behavioral therapy, or some kind of statistically-backed similar therapy involving cognitive work, while psychodynamic approaches have almost all but died except in southern California."

This doesn't make a claim about psychological phenomena. Instead this is a claim about the field of psychology. And it's incredibly useful because you don't have to understand the merits of one therapeutic approach over another. Just by hearing about trends of expert behavior, you can develop useful guesses.

If I heard that a dental procedure had fallen out of favor among dentists, I would use that information. As a layperson, I don't need to know about the technicalities of some dental procedure. And I am quite aware that experts can talk me into any way they want. What I want to hear is a representation on the field of dentistry.

I think it is THIS function that we want out of an expert scientific journalist or propagator. We should want someone who can represent the temperature of the field, as opposed to merely making a claim on a phenomena. I trust Neil to say that "most physicists believe X" without spin or deceit.

"I trust Neil to say that "most physicists believe X" without spin or deceit."

See, that's the problem, I don't trust him to say that without spin or deceit. He makes claims about certain politicians making statements they didn't make (e.g. 360 degree turn or taking part of a quote out of time and context) which leads me to believe I cannot trust anything he says without independent confirmation. He has become a pundit not a teacher.

Depends on what you mean by "honest". I would probably trust him not to maliciously proclaim falsehood when it is obvious and known to him that it is false. But I wouldn't trust him not to "find a single piece of evidence and spin whatever narrative they want from it". In fact, there are documented instances where Tyson changed or invented quotes to fit his narrative, so that ship has sailed.

I'd trust somebody like Tyson the same way I trust Wikipedia - if the matter is factual and mostly uncontroversial (like how the steam engine works or what is the value of pi with certain precision and how one could calculate it) I'd have pretty high degree of trust. If the matter is a subject of controversy, you need to verify the references - or seek out the sources and proof if there is none, and then you need to consider how trustworthy those are too, without these the degree of trust would be "some people think that it is true".

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