Don’t believe the “Breaking News” hype (NYT science section version)

Gary Schwitzer explains why we should not believe the above claim, which points to this news article. Here’s Schwitzer:

What does/should breaking news mean? I suggest that it means “Drop everything….this is something you must know right now…it will rock your world” – or something similar.

But here is what the term was applied to:

– a story about one person in an experiment – a person apparently not even being followed by the researchers anymore;

– a finding reported by two researchers who – according to the revelation that begins in the story’s seventh paragraph – were found by the German Research Foundation to have committed scientific misconduct and were sanctioned by that group;

– a finding which one researcher quoted in the story said “should be taken with a massive mountain of salt”;

– a story that was also reported the same day by STAT – perhaps even earlier in the day by STAT. Since I don’t buy into the whole breaking news hype, I don’t get into judgment about who was first. Either way, it makes the whole “Breaking News” BS more evident.

– a story that STAT’s headline handled much more reasonably, stating: “With new ‘brain-reading’ research, a once-tarnished scientist seeks redemption.” That puts the elephant in the room actually in the room much sooner for all readers to see immediately.

– a story that the NYT writer promoted in Twitter in this way: “tadaa! My first article for @nytimes is out.”

Schwitzer concludes:

I emphasize that research looking for ways to help paralyzed people communicate is important. Some impressive, meaningful advances have already been made in this field.

Readers don’t benefit from “Breaking News” hype. Please allow the science, the data, the long-term results replicated by others to speak for itself.

I agree. The good news is that the NYT article has lots of interesting details and discussions. In many ways it’s an excellent science story. Which makes it even more frustrating that they hype it in this way and that they bury the “elephant” of the researchers’ history of scientific fraud, which is discussed in detail in the STAT article by Meghana Keshavan.

I saved the best for last

If you go that NYT article on the web, you’ll find this at the very end:

Wow. Really going all-in on the classic pattern of finding the most trivial, unimportant errors to correct.

7 thoughts on “Don’t believe the “Breaking News” hype (NYT science section version)

  1. Given his background, the author may have been more excited than most about the topic. It is an actual exciting neuroscience result:

    I was a research assistant in Paris, studying the neuroscience of conscious perception, but quickly became disillusioned with what being a scientist entailed: too much sitting around, coding, with only incremental results. I wanted to learn more, faster. So I took some months off traveling mindlessly across South America and at some point the idea of being a journalist suddenly struck me as appealing. I jumped into a degree in science journalism at NYU and it turned out to be a great fit.

    https://www.nasw.org/article/meet-new-member-jonathan-moens

    But for most people, this likely gets filed away with all the “coffee is good/bad for you” studies.

  2. I don’t ever watch television or online “news” of the “breaking” variety. But I recall once a few years ago I went in a restaurant at lunch time and all their TV’s were tuned to a “news” broadcast were showing a ginormous building being gutted by spectacular flames. Stupid me I assumed it was a local TV station and wondered what building it was.

    I couldn’t identify the building so I looked closer at the BREAKING NEWS crawler at the bottom of the screen. It was a warehouse fire in some town 1,000 miles away, the station was CNN (or some other cable news) and the fire footage from around midnight the night before. Guess it was a slow news day, that was the most “breaking” thing they could find even twelve hours later.

  3. “– a story that the NYT writer promoted in Twitter in this way: “tadaa! My first article for @nytimes is out.”

    I agree with Schitzer’s general complaint but I don’t see why this is relevant. The guy just seemed excited to have his first article in NYT published and said so on his Twitter profile. I don’t see why that’s a problem, or what is has to do with the suitability of the “breaking news” tag.

    • Djad:

      It’s fine for the author to be proud of his work. I’m proud of my work too! One problem is when the goal is publication rather than accurate reporting; the other problem is the perverse incentive: a less accurate, more sensational, story can be more likely to be published and publicized (for example, advertised as “Breaking News”).

      • Andrew:

        I understand and agree with the overall point of the post, I just don’t get why that *specific* point (the author’s tweet) was brought up.

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