Kudos to our friends at the New York Times for building this highly-entertaining and addictive game. Try it out by blowing up some of their articles here.
Every Science Article Ever
New research finds stuff about whatever
SOMEWHERE. A long-running and moderately expensive study published somewhere today has revealed uncontroversial fairly new evidence of ‘whatever’, already partly familiar to most people, had they given it any thought, which they hadn’t, because they don’t care.
Someone not particularly closely involved in the study explained that “something about something else” had partially triggered the idea for the research. “But that’s not important,” he said, “and besides, it’s fairly opaque with a lot of jargon and whatnot.”
According to another researcher, proving whatever about stuff involving things and how they related to other things was “almost as important as doing other stuff”, but added that it was also vital to take time away from proving whatever to weigh up whether it worth comparing whatever to stuff to determine whether new studies should be launched into the whatever-stuff relationship.
A spokesman for the scientific journal ‘Science Journal’ described the findings as “published”, although added that they were also “kind of predictable, almost certainly unavoidable, and arguably completely negligible, in a cautiously optimistic way”.
“You know how it goes,” he said.
It’s my view that if you put the best scientists, science communicators, and science journalists in a room, it wouldn’t take long for them to agree on the basics of good medical science reporting. A checklist would look something like the following. Every story on new research should include the sample size and highlight where it may be too small to draw general conclusions. Any increase in risk should be reported in absolute terms as well as percentages: For example, a “50 percent increase” in risk or a “doubling” of risk could merely mean an increase from 1 in 1,000 to 1.5 or 2 in 1,000. A story about medical research should provide a realistic time frame for the work’s translation into a treatment or cure. It should emphasize what stage findings are at: If it is a small study in mice, it is just the beginning; if it’s a huge clinical trial involving thousands of people, it is more significant. Stories about shocking findings should include the wider context: The first study to find something unusual is inevitably very preliminary; the 50th study to show the same thing may be justifiably alarming. Articles should mention where the story has come from: a conference lecture, an interview with a scientist, or a study in a peer-reviewed journal, for example.
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| — | Fiona Fox, Slate. What If There Were Rules for Science Journalism? (via futurejournalismproject) |
Meet Global Times, the angry Chinese government mouthpiece that makes Bill O’Reilly seem fair and balanced.
Take last Tuesday’s saber-rattling editorial, printed with only slight variations in the Chinese and English editions, which duly unnerved many overseas readers. “Recently, both the Philippines and South Korean authorities have detained fishing boats from China, and some of those boats haven’t been returned,” the editorial fumed. “If these countries don’t want to change their ways with China, they will need to prepare for the sounds of cannons.” The war-mongering language was meant to attract attention, and that it did, with Reuters, Manila Times, Jakarta Globe, The West Australian, Taipei Times, and other overseas media referencing it in news articles. The bellicose editorial was certainly newsworthy, assuming that the paper on some level is a mouthpiece for China’s rulers. But whose views, exactly, does Global Times really represent?
Warco (aka “War Correspondent”)
via Ars Technica:
Warco is a first-person game where players shoot footage instead of a gun. A work in progress at Brisbane-based studio Defiant Development, the game is a collaboration of sorts; Defiant is working with both a journalist and a filmmaker to create a game that puts you in the role of a journalist embedded in a warzone.
It’s still an FPS.
Journalism Warning Labels
From the designer, Tom Scott:
“It seems a bit strange to me that the media carefully warn about and label any content that involves sex, violence or strong language — but there’s no similar labelling system for, say, sloppy journalism and other questionable content.
I figured it was time to fix that, so I made some stickers. I’ve been putting them on copies of the free papers that I find on the London Underground. You might want to as well.”
You can download the template and read more about it here.
