Hello, and welcome to Measured Outcomes, a blog about the myriad interpretations of science writing.
The news is a harsh mistress, and things can get downright ugly once they've been put through the multiple filters that exist between bare facts and public perception.
Just like when a quantum physicist tries to pin down the exact location of a particle, uncertainty exists when people try to pin down the nuanced meanings of the flood of scientific findings reported every day. Each researcher, press officer, writer, editor, copyeditor, and reader changes the "outcome" every time they "measure" a piece of news.
But hell, that's the fun part! Science is meant to be interpreted, discussed, analyzed, and—more often then not—debunked. For all the routinely provable theories that might as well be rock-solid laws of nature (ahem, evolution) there must be a few million announced discoveries that are tenuous at best and deserve the utmost skepticism.
So let's see what's out there and—with open minds and a huge cup of java—discuss.
No comments:
Post a Comment