Rebecca X objects to my omitting the institutions I work with, including The Atlantic and Johns Hopkins, when criticizing the insufficiently skeptical transmission of study findings. OK, The Atlantic and Johns Hopkins do it, too. Every publication and organization I work with does. I do it myself, all the time. Am I credible now?
The Observatory
11:00 AM - January 9, 2013
Playing the study game
David Freedman responds to critics of his article about bad health reporting
‘See you on the other side’ - Meet Jessica Lum, a terminally ill 25-year-old who chose to spend what little time she had practicing journalism
#Realtalk: This is the best moment to be in journalism - The old stuff isn’t coming back, but that’s okay
Streams of consciousness - Millennials expect a steady diet of quick-hit, social-media-mediated bits and bytes. What does that mean for journalism?
Sticking with the truth - How ‘balanced’ coverage helped sustain the bogus claim that childhood vaccines can cause autism
An ink-stained stretch - Can Aaron Kushner save the Orange County Register—and the newspaper industry?
Stop with the Jew-ranking already!
“There are some lists that have helped Jews in the past, including, most notably, Schindler’s, but…”
Please continue pronouncing ‘gif’ any way you please
We are all correct
The New York Times told me to take this down
“If you wouldn’t mind using another publication to advertise your infringement tool, we’d appreciate it”
In AP, Rosen investigations, government makes criminals of reporters
“[A]s flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush’s administration”
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
Uptown Messenger – Hyperlocal news for a neighborhood in New Orleans
Who Owns What
The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
I agree with you that there is a problem but the cause is a bit different than you describe. In science, studies that discover something are extremely rare. Take the Higgs-Boson study. All they really demonstrated is that there is a Higgs-Boson-like particle that exists. Other studies are still trying to nail things down. Scientists usually get in trouble when they try to prove something from one study or claim their study is perfect. The NHLBI mega-study mega disaster is the classic example.
Reporters need to report on how the study is part of a process of understanding and not an endpoint, and of course acknowledge the limitations of the research.
#1 Posted by Todd Miller, CJR on Tue 22 Jan 2013 at 02:47 AM