logoalt Hacker News

flavetoday at 8:48 AM3 repliesview on HN

I’m sure the individual writer is smart educated and thoughtful, but the system of science journalism (science communication is different but equally flawed) is so bent-out-of-shape as to be effectively worthless.

Like, take this exact article as a great example. I’m sure Mr Biswas is genuinely very intelligent and thoughtful and a great journalist but having him write a science article is unfair on him and on readers.

Doesn’t even have an undergraduate in a science subject, has never worked as a scientist, and his job is as a national correspondent.

Perhaps my wording prioritised humour over fairness - I’ll take the criticism on that. But I don’t think my core point was wrong. How can you “communicate” something you yourself don’t understand?

Finally, I want to stress again - it’s not his fault. The system is broken.


Replies

terabytesttoday at 8:56 AM

Can you point out the issues with the article?

show 2 replies
mentalgeartoday at 11:05 AM

Good points - that's why I follow & support https://theconversation.com/ for news since it's Science Journalism is done by actual scientists working in the field.

tobrtoday at 10:13 AM

> How can you “communicate” something you yourself don’t understand?

This goes both ways: how can you (as a scientist) communicate something when you don’t understand communication?

The answer to both is to let the person who understands it and the person who is good at communication collaborate.