Professional Media Aren't
It's stories like the "Collapsing Colony Disorder" thing with bees that make me wonder about the supposedly "professional" media. I ran across this column today by an expert in the field of entomology, and it sounds like this phenomenon isn't as worrying as it's been played up - it's not new, either. It's when I got to this paragraph that I realized I had run across another batch of endless hype:
Sixth, it's never a good idea to trust what the media are telling you. At least once in the present case the media got something completely wrong and created a huge mess: The story about cell phones was basically a misrepresentation of what one pair of reporters wrote about a study that they misinterpreted. In a nutshell, the original research didn't involve cell phones, and the researchers never said their research was related to honey bee colony die-offs. Even details like the alleged Einstein quote are dubious. No one has yet found proof that Einstein said anything about bees dying off the earliest documented appearance of the "quote" is 1994 and, yes, Albert was dead at the time.
This goes back to something I've said before - whenever mainstream media reports on a field I know something about, the errors are usually large and obvious. This makes me wonder about the fields I know little or nothing about, and leads me to believe that most reporters don't even qualify as generalists. The exceptions tend to be in narrow fields where you get truly passionate people - sports and movie/theater reviews, for instance.
What's happening with the web right now is that the minimal generalists of the media are being disintermediated as our sole sources of information - we can now hear from actual experts who can give us their opinions without "joe reporter" as the middle man. For obvious reasons, reporters dislike this trend, but that's the way it is. The carnage that's happening in the US newspaper business is the leading edge of that change-over, and it can't happen soon enough as far as I'm concerned.
Technorati Tags: newspapers, reporting
Comments
subject matter expertise
[ Troy Brumley] June 2, 2007 11:08:32.283
Comment by Troy Brumley
Your comments reminded me a of few things.
I recall my initial reaction to the "experts" saying that the Total Information Awareness act wasn't a danger to privacy because all the data could be protected. Hah. The spate of data losses since then, including some from the government, proved otherwise.
I also recall a bit in Broca's Brain where Sagan was talking with another scientist from another field (biologist of some sort, iirc), and each noted that the science in Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision in areas they knew something about was all pure bunk, but the other stuff "looked pretty good to them."
From that I take the warning that anyone can be fooled at anytime, and it is important to find real SMEs in multiple fields you care about but not might know enough about yourself to evaluate correctly. The professional media don't have the time or structure to do this, and their audience is too broad for them to try.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
[Isaac Gouy] June 2, 2007 12:52:15.665
Troy wrote ... important to find real SMEs in multiple fields you care about but not might know enough about yourself to evaluate correctly.
If we don't know enough to evaluate the field correctly then would we know enough to evaluate that the SMEs are real experts?
picky picky picky
[ Troy Brumley] June 2, 2007 14:18:11.814
Comment by Troy Brumley
You kind of have to network. See who people you trust find trustworthy, check credentials, &c. That won't guarantee success, but it beats blind faith in someone just because they were on TV or in the paper.
picking apart
[Isaac Gouy] June 2, 2007 14:40:14.806
See who people you trust find trustworthy ...
And somehow that wouldn't apply to those we see on TV or in the paper?
it beats blind faith
Sooner or later it comes down to trusting what someone says - because for some (not necessarily related to what they say) reason we find them trustworthy - because as individuals we can never have the time/energy/knowledge ... to get to the bottom of everything.
What does "blind faith" have to do with this?
[] June 2, 2007 21:51:53.734
Sadly when the experts talk, someone then says oh they've a bias or lying because they are receiving funding from <insert organization/company> here, thus nothing *they* say can be trusted.
other ways to find experts
[Lex Spoon] June 4, 2007 9:47:29.057
Troy's answer is a great one: use reputation networks. Learn not only who you trust, but who you trust to make good recommendations. Two other suggestions: 1. Look for objective demonstrations. If it's a science question, then look at whether the scientist is managing to make predictions about the world as you know it. If it's an engineering question, try to find someone who is actually succeeding with the idea. If it's a sports question, see if any team actually tries it and wins some games. To contrast, if an idea is only even comprehensible to people who are "in", much less demonstrable, then maybe the idea is fine, but it is meaningless to you. 2. Look at what other people choose, when the rubber hits the road. Identify other people who have a real choice in the matter, and where the choice matters to them, and see what they pick. Since the person will be personally responsible for whether the choice works out, you can trust that they will make an honest effort.
Obviously there are lots of cavaets in all three of these approaches. Luckily we as humans are good at these social issues. We're going to need them especially well as the Internet opens up more communication channels for us.