Prem sent me a picture this morning which beautifully illustrates the way the media portrays science. On the left, the Wall Street Journal (page D1). On the right, the New York Times (page A1). Both today:
Reminds me of one of my favourite cartoons:
Serendipity
Applying systems thinking to computing, climate and sustainability
That comic made me laugh out loud. Thanks for sharing it.
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Yes, it does make me laugh, too 🙂
However, subsequently, the laugh becomes a little ironic and the newspaper articles make me frown (in a funny way my dad can perform a lot better than me – left brow high up the forehead while the right one moves slightly to the centre, just to let you get the right impression…).
I’m trying to think of how we can improve that ridiculous situation:
Shall we prepare “media summaries of executive summaries of project results” to release to the media?
Will they still be able to interpret it wrong?
How can we make mass media-adequate statements without inadvertently adulterating our results?