What’s wrong with you, New Scientist?
And you’re not off the hook either, scientists.
“We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality,” says Bapteste.
Sigh.
This one is just too annoying and overstated to discuss. See Evolutionary Novelties, Sandwalk, and Evolutionblog instead.
Yup, and then they get all huffy when we criticize science journalists….This is what we mean when we do that. And if a specialized science magazine does such outrageous stuff, what can one expect from a science beat reporter for some newspaper?
This is nothing, wait for the incoming issues:
Newton was wrong! (apparently, some obscure employee from a German patent office has come up with the idea that it applies ONLY IN CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES)
and…
EINSTEIN WAS WRONG!! (where the theories of this same obscure employee are discredited by something even crazier that they call “quantum mechanics”)
In the end, New Scientist is right: we’re better off not listening to those misleading scientist, and stick to the old explanation of the Giant Turtle carrying the World on Its Back.
Another problem with loud, obnoxious headlines like this is that they make it that much more difficult for authentic, real science news to get through… what a great start for Darwin Year!
The problem is, this should be the same thing as saying “Einstein was wrong” (in the sense that both their theories have been modified, added to, and restudied by other scientists after them), but it’s not. Darwin gets people all riled up, and a similar headline with Einstein wouldn’t have ruffled that many feathers.
Let’s face it – they’re journalists. Journalists sensationalize headlines for bigger sales. Advertisers extoll the virtues of their piece-o-crap kitchen gadgets. Pharmaceuticals exaggerate clinical trials to get people to buy their drugs. It’s sad, but it’s just another case of cash rules everything around me – singing dolla dolla bill, y’all…
Please see my posts here and here about why this type of science journalism signals the beginning of our own undoing.
The journalists – as in writers – actually don’t make up the headlines a lot of the time. I don’t have a lot of experience (and none at NS for that matter) but about half the time the titles of the articles were either written or heavily edited by editors.
Explaining the New Scientist Cover:http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/01/explaining-new-scientist-cover.html – Sandwalk
Rather,
Explaining the New Scientist cover – Sandwalk
It’s true that flashy headlines equals bigger sales, but there is also a price to pay in terms of reputation of your publication if these headlines are obviously bogus and can easily be perceived as such. I think that this becomes more and more important when we’re talking about a specialized publication, one whose readership is discriminative enough to spot this kind of things (that’s why the tabloids can get away with outrageous headlines all the time without being hurt by them). I guess that this doesn’t speak well of the direction that NS has decided to take…