#18554: — 03/14  at  10:37 AM
Journalists are, as a group, the most poorly educated of all professionals. I use the term "professional" only to mean that they are paid for their work. They mostly prefer to report on politics and trials, because they think they could do either or both better than those who are doing them. When it comes to science or technology, they are woefully ignorant (with a few exceptions, like Chris Mooney and some other science writers). It is no surprise, then, that when they must report on science or technology, they revert to the court trial model: let both sides testify, and then let the jury decide.

#18558: Phila — 03/14  at  11:45 AM
What makes the equal time especially irritating is that in most cases, the "skeptic" is actually an economist or something similar. Even with industry groups pumping millions into phony research institutes, they still can't find that many climatologists willing to humiliate themselves by turning tricks for the fossil-fuel industry.

Which, again, makes it kind of similar to the ID situation, where "expert" tends to mean "Some conservative activist who read an executive summary of Darwin's Black Box."

#18559: — 03/14  at  11:46 AM
One thing that can be done, but only in some instances, is to take a page from Rifkin, who, no matter what you think of his ideas, is a master at getting press. This only works when there's a press release involved, but press releases can always be sent.

As part of the release, you include names and contact numbers of people who oppose your position. This makes what reporters perceive as their job easier. (I think they're perceiving their jobs wrong, but far easier to work with them than swim upstream.) This gives you some leverage in pointing them to a critic you want them to call, not some random nutcase they've heard about.

The trick here (not all that easy in itself) would be to figure out who would be a reasonable or semi-reasonable opponent for your views. Although this may not be easy, at least you have some control over the process as it almost always works now. (If there is indeed no one anywhere who would seem a decent critic, one approach in teaching evolution cases might be to find one who isn't so "cleverly" disguised as a science source -- instead of "The ID guy" or "Freedom of choice and teach the controversy guy" you point them to "Theocracy Now, Inc." or "The Church of the Wrath of God be on you and yours".)

#18560: Captain Salty — 03/14  at  12:02 PM
I bet you're right as regards evolution vs. creationism. All you ever see from creationists are generalized comments like, "There's science on both sides." Rarely do you see journalists press for precisely what the science behind creationism, and never do you see same-said journalist take same-said science to the guy promoting evolution for comments.

Maybe I'm forgetting some of the journalism I studied in college, but I seem to remember a professor who suggested that maybe reporting might occassionally entail challenging a source's information.

You also never see this in reports about The Ten Commandments. Mostly you see Christians saying, "This is a Christian nation, founded on Christian principles." Rarely do reporters ask history professors if that's true. At least, I've never seen anyone say, "Well, if you're looking for the real principles on which this country was founded, look to the late Renaissance and Greek and Roman eras." Otherwise, we might have bills pending in various state legislatures to hammer up copies of Plato's Republic.

#18561: — 03/14  at  12:02 PM
To a large extent, this seems to be a problem with how journalism is conducted rather than a problem with individual journalists. That is, there appears to be a widespread viewpoint among journalists and (probably especially) editors that the way to cover issues is to get representatives from each side and just report what they said.

This works reasonably well when you have a genuine he said/she said situation with reasonable arguments on both sides. It breaks down when essentially all of the facts are on one side of the argument or when one side is being blatantly dishonest.

#18569: Captain Salty — 03/14  at  12:54 PM
I'm pleased as punch to learn that I'm not the only person left utterly unfulfilled by the "quote from Column A, quote from Column b, and call it good" approach to journalism.

I think you're right that it might work if both sides are reasonable ... there's still no excuse not to get to the bottom of something, since most issues are much more complex than you'll ever discern from the spin, but it does at least put everything on a level playing ground.

The source of the problem is always the journalist himself. Journalists could write stories that give both sides space, but can insert some relevant facts, like objective third party analysis or even ... maybe a little history.

As bereft as modern reporting is of real science, it's just as empty of historical context.

#18570: — 03/14  at  12:57 PM
Well, what we need to do, is kill all the humans to solve the global warming problem. Now, shiver me timbers, isn't that what Mother Earth is doing by all the AIDs/HIV plagues... Tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, fires, and wars that are going on? Mother Earth, if the quantum physicists are correct -- is a thinking, intelligent "system," and she/he/it is not happy and is trying to get rid of the "irritants," ... "us." Mother Earth may succeed if we don't do it ourselves. All the rest is just rhetoric drivel and doesn't mean a hill of organic beans.

#18572: — 03/14  at  01:01 PM
Journalists? What a bunch of left-wing, insecure, uneducated poop flinging circus apes, who could not tell you how many chromosomes there are in a fruit fly.

#18584: — 03/14  at  02:34 PM

Mother Earth, if the quantum physicists are correct -- is a thinking, intelligent "system," and she/he/it is not happy and is trying to get rid of the "irritants,"

What a bunch of nonsense. Provide me one link to any peer-reviewed article about quantum physics that even remotely says that Earth is a thinking, intelligent "system".
BTW why the scare-quotes around system? That's the only world that is remotely correct in that contexzt.

#18587: — 03/14  at  02:58 PM
Peculiar. The only time I think I've seen the words "controversy" and "evolution" in the same paragraph in a British newspaper article was when they were talking up the Gould/Dawkins thing a few years ago.

Peculiar, and more than a little scary.

#18593: — 03/14  at  03:34 PM
I think I have come across the combination in an article about a private school, in Denmark that didn't teach evolution, and which used some kind of religious study program from the US. The controversy wasn't about evolution, but about wether the school should have its permit revoked, or get a respite in which it could correct the lessonplan. In the end, they received the period of time, didn't correct anything, and is now not allowed to perform as a school.

#18596: Captain Salty — 03/14  at  03:51 PM
It's more scary than peculiar. It was maybe peculiar 20 years ago, when you could dismiss these creationists as Flat Earthers. Today, though, they're in charge of two branches of government, and have at least one ally on the Supreme Court.

Luckily, as Steve Gilliard pointed out last night, fundamentalists have a pretty short half-life on the public stage. They crawl out from under a rock, wind up getting on everyone's last nerve, and it's back under the rock for another century or so.

#18678: — 03/15  at  12:22 AM
Well, I'm a professional journalist (that is, I get paid), and I've been making fun of the anthropogenic global warming crowd for nigh on 20 years now.

I'd be rich, I guess, if even a small part of those millions or billions being spent to delude me had stuck, but unfortunately the only thing I've gotten from the fossil fuel industry was a free subscription for a few years to 'Environment & Climate News.'

I offered that to a college to pay for my kids' tuition, but they turned it down.

Curiously enough, Capt. Salty, I have a column coming out Tuesday on the historical background of the Commandments.

Just the kind of thing you said journalists never do.

#18679: Chris Clarke — 03/15  at  01:30 AM
Well, I'm a professional journalist (that is, I get paid), and I've been making fun of the anthropogenic global warming crowd for nigh on 20 years now.

Ah. So you're the kind of skeptic that challenges bad science when you're not swallowing it uncritically.

#18705: Captain Salty — 03/15  at  09:33 AM
Wow, you must be a real peach when it comes to real life journalisming. I said no journalist ever asks historians to put the Ten Commandments into the historical context of how they relate to the founding of the United States. As in, how relevant was the Ten Commandments to the real life founding of the United States?

Either you simply read me wrong, which explains much about your 20-year mockery of the "anthropogenic climate change crowd," or you really meant that your column covers the topic I mentioned and you're just a piss-poor writer.

And if "Environment & Climate News" is the newsletter I think it is ... they'll give a free subscription of that to anyone who can fog a mirror. In fact, I got mine without even asking for it. I was most impressed with its promise to offer reasonable alternatives to environmental issues, but was somehow not all that surprised to find that it seemed not to find anything wrong with Bush administration environmental policy.

#18730: — 03/15  at  11:38 AM
Someone should tell Berlinsky that the Kansas Bull Test is a contest for best bovine, not effluent from same:
http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/pr_bull/Reports/Test 64/kbt 64 rules.pdf

#18746: — 03/15  at  01:22 PM
Well, I got the information for my column from historians. Duh.

I guess I should stop writing for the sarcasm-impaired, though.

#18751: Captain Salty — 03/15  at  01:46 PM
What publication do you do your journalisming for? I gotta read this myself.

Your first post makes it sound like your column is about the history of the Ten Commandments, not the Ten Commandments as they relate to the founding of the nation. Your sources were never the question, regardless of how poorly you pull off sarcasm.

#18768: — 03/15  at  04:50 PM
Harry, nothing personal in my comments on journalists. I feel qualified to make my earlier statement because I was a newspaper reporter for about four years, and I know what I learned in school and out. And I know what I learned when I went back to grad school in an entirely different field (atmospheric science - not law school like most reporters I knew). I also know what a leading reporter at a leading Southeast newspaper said regarding her coverage of the Y2K hoax I mean world-ending crisis: reporters are not trained to do anything but ask questions and peruse documents; they are not expected to actually know anything about the topic they are covering.

#18770: Chris Clarke — 03/15  at  04:57 PM
Y2K hoax

This would be news indeed to thousands of COBOL programmers who worked their geeky little asses off.

#18771: — 03/15  at  05:12 PM
I wonder if there were really "thousands of COBOL" programmers working their asses off. I wonder if perhaps that is the same type of exaggeration used in the first place by the purveyors of the Y2K crisis (paid consultants) and the idiots who swallowed their tripe. I read in the newspaper that jet airliners might fall from the sky. Traffic lights might not work. Elevators might stop. None of that happened here, where we spent billions to stop it, and none of it happened in the rest of the world, where they mostly didn't spend much to stop it. But, hey, that's old news, and once it was Jan 2, the news media went on to something else.

#18775: Chris Clarke — 03/15  at  05:20 PM
I wonder if there were really "thousands of COBOL" programmers working their asses off. I wonder if perhaps that is the same type of exaggeration used in the first place by the purveyors of the Y2K crisis (paid consultants) and the idiots who swallowed their tripe.

About a dozen just in my circle of friends, and 50 percent of my parents as well. Interestingly, I don't know of any of them who felt the world was going to end. Their approach was more "get out of our way and let us fix this."

But you go ahead and believe what you want to if it makes you feel all superior and snarky.

#18777: — 03/15  at  05:29 PM
Well, that accounts for 13 COBOL programmers. I know several dozen programmers. None of them uses COBOL. Almost all use some variety of C, while a few fossils like myself use Fortran. I work in an extremely computer-intensive field. I know what the news media said would happen, and I know what happened. What happened here was essentially the same thing that happened the world over - nothing. Nothing happened in many places that did not spend the billions that we spent. Why did they experience none of the crises predicted here? Were we the only ones using computers, airliners, elevators, thermostats, hospital equipment and the rest of the technology? I will answer my own question: No. They escaped the catastrophe because the potential effects of "Y2K" were greatly exaggerated.

Y2K compliant? My 20-year-old VCR was Y2K compliant.

#18778: — 03/15  at  05:31 PM
Besides, I thought we were all aiming at superior and snarky. Or was that just me?

#18781: Chris Clarke — 03/15  at  05:43 PM
What happened here was essentially the same thing that happened the world over - nothing. Nothing happened in many places that did not spend the billions that we spent. Why did they experience none of the crises predicted here? Were we the only ones using computers, airliners, elevators, thermostats, hospital equipment and the rest of the technology? I will answer my own question: No. They escaped the catastrophe because the potential effects of "Y2K" were greatly exaggerated.

Oh, OK, I get your point now. Sorry for being superior and snarky.

The applications you mention were probably fine all along. But business apps were vulnerable. Yeah, no one was going to die if the ATM suddenly couldn't reach the bank database. But a lot of very large US businesses were using non-Y2K-compliant software for "just-in-time" inventorying systems, and there WAS a real danger of things like short-term shortages of rather important items in all the stores in your region. Not a huge issue if you can switch from one brand of corn flakes to the stale store brand, but a big problem if your prescription for Depakote can't be refilled.

In other countries that used "just in case" rather than "just in time" inventorying, the problem would not have arisen.

No planes falling out of the sky. But businesses could have gone under, and - as we all know - the corporate world can tolerate a few thousand needless deaths, but an avoidable ding on the balance sheet is anathema.

And I recognize that COBOL was a dead language by 1992. which just means that some guys like my Dad decided not to retire just yet, and that others decided to study it real fast.

"Tens of thousands" is not that big a number, you know. There were probably that many people pulling down six figures back then to sit in meetings all day and interface about leveraging their core constituencies.