[Update, Dec. 8: Embargo Watch’s Ivan Oransky got the following response from Dwayne Brown, senior public affairs officer in the office of communications of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, when he asked if the agency regretted using the phrase “extra-terrestrial” in its initial press release:
“It’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback. However, the statement was accurate.
“The real issue is that the reporting world has changed because of the Internet/bloggers/social media, etc. A “buzz” term like ET will have anyone with a computer put out anything they want or feel. NASA DID NOT HYPE anything - others did. Credible media organizations have not questioned NASA about any text. Bloggers and social media have……..it’s what makes our country great—FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
“The discussion now is about the science and next steps.”
Calling the press release accurate relies on a technicality, however. A statement can be factually correct and misleading at the same time, due to ambiguity, tenor, or a dozen other rhetorical factors. Moreover, “pitting” (as Oransky put it) blogs against “credible media organizations” belies the fact that blogs at The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and CBS News were among those that fed the speculation about aliens.]
VIDEO: NASA Footage of UFO Fleet Leaving Earth... Famed NASA Astronaut confirms Extraterrestrials are here... (VIDEO): Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell: The UFO crash in Roswell Dr. Edgar Mitchell... Pravda: Extraterrestrial Spaceships Land and Crash on Earth Regularly... Pope's star watcher to visit Nasa (12th February 2009) and talk aliens:
http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/2010/10/nasa-footage-of-ufo-fleet-leaving-earth.html
#1 Posted by Dan, CJR on Wed 1 Dec 2010 at 11:45 PM
Another way to frame this discovery that certainly would have made it more sensational would be "Second Biogenesis on Earth" or "Second Tree of Life Discovered." Both of these are accurate ways to describe the Mono Lake discovery.
And certainly, this is an important and major scientific discovery.
#2 Posted by Dan Givens, CJR on Thu 2 Dec 2010 at 03:07 PM
Curtis -
I hate to sound like the dude with a hammer, for which everything looks like a nail, but I think this only reinforces a point we've discussed previously about the way the embargo system undercuts clear public understanding of issues of great public interest by keeping good information under wraps while bad information is allowed to run wild.
#3 Posted by John Fleck, CJR on Thu 2 Dec 2010 at 05:32 PM
Nice treatment. I'm not sure Seth Borenstein can fairly draw such a distinction between responsible science reporters and bloggers who have the luxury to speculate: After all, the reporters (like myself) had the luxury of actually getting hold of the paper, while many bloggers, locked out of the pre-embargo pathway, had no CHOICE but to speculate.
And NASA's ridiculous press release, which spoke of findings in astrobiology (since when is Lake Mono in space?) and implications about extraterrestrial life, pretty much begged for the sort of speculation they got.
This may have had less to do with bloggers v pros than sloppy v not and, quite importantly, the embargo-privileged and the embargo-poor. AAAS and NASA played a silly game here and made almost everyone look bad or silly. And to what gain? Little that I can see.
#4 Posted by David Dobbs, CJR on Thu 2 Dec 2010 at 05:34 PM
John, I go back-and-forth on the value of the embargo system in the modern media environment. I sympathize with Seth's point, and think it probably does still help pros get the story right and provide more context. But I also agree with Ivan Oransky's excellent analysis at Embargo Watch, in which he argues that Science was wrong to keep the embargo in place after the online speculation started to takeoff. At the very least, those who enforce embargoes need to be more on their toes these days and tuned into rapidly evolving Internet memes.
#5 Posted by Curtis Brainard, CJR on Fri 3 Dec 2010 at 01:07 PM
David, you make an excellent point, and one that I should've fit into my column. Before posting it, I swapped a couple e-mails with Ginger Pinholster, the communications director at AAAS. She made this comment, which I did not use but probably should have:
"Dear Curtis... You asked whether irresponsible blogging may imperil the work of trusted science reporters who respect the embargo system. I tend to think the issue is mostly about responsible versus irresponsible science communication - not so much the medium. Long before the Internet, respected science journalists had to navigate competition in the form of speculative tabloid coverage and broadcast teasers of forthcoming science news. Misinformation campaigns in the pre-Internet age were ALSO promoted via facsimiles and phone calls to newsrooms; veteran reporters learned to separate the wheat from the chaff."
#6 Posted by Curtis Brainard, CJR on Fri 3 Dec 2010 at 01:46 PM