Comments on: Galaxies So Near, Yet So Far

By: Science journalism | Graphene Times

Science journalism | Graphene Times — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:32:23 +0000

[...] has suffered, and physicist-blogger Sean Carroll points out that science journalism has been particularly hard-hit. He says, in part, For better or for worse, conventional science journalism has been cut back to [...]

By: George Djorgovski

George Djorgovski — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:35:41 +0000

Time was when one actually had to measure a redshift of a galaxy in order to claim that it has such a redshift. And the only way to make sure was to get a spectrum and detect unambiguously at least 2, pref. more emission or absorption lines. Ah, the silly old days! Nowadays you can claim to be finding galaxies on unbelievable (pun slightly intended) redshifts, just from a few pictures.

The cold, cruel fact is that the number of galaxies with confirmed, believable redshifts z > 6 is exactly zero. Zilch. All of these faint little blobs are just -candidates- to be at high redshifts, deemed as such on the basis of their broad-band colors, and some modeling. Whereas such “photo-z’s” are well established for the closer galaxies, especially if one has obsservations in several filters and with a high S/N, things get pretty iffy at higher redshifts and fainter fluxes, which is what we are dealing with here. Sure, some of these faint galaxies may indeed be at the claimed redshifts, but none are secure, and it will be a long time before we can measure their spectra and find out for sure.

What is happening here is a combination of two sociological phenomena: the standard of proof in this game has declined gradually over the years, in proportion to the scope of the claims; and there is a bit of a competitive rush going on among the many groups, all of them trying to do exactly the same thing with exactly the same data.

So, I would not blame the journalists for failing to fall for any of these “news”.

By: Kaleberg

Kaleberg — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:04:32 +0000

Given how much research is published, I doubt that every researcher in the field is even able to keep up with his or her own specialty. Surely, even a small group of journalists on the astronomy beat could still miss an important story. That’s actually one of the great things about the internet. Journalism can be a participatory process. The reporter listens to the traffic and opens with a story, but that story is just the starting point. The community gets to chime in. Everyone gets heard; everyone gets a better story. It’s like those sites that post the latest FOIA info dump and ask everyone to dig in. They tend to find the good stuff, and provide a sense of balance. It’s the same in science, except science lives with a perpetual info dump. In fact, that’s the great thing about it.

By: kierra jones

kierra jones — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:52:31 +0000

this is super weird

By: Read

Read — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:38:30 +0000

Here is a good article to read about the decline of science journalism.

http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2010/01/why-decline-rebirth-of-environmental-journalism-matters/

By: Marshall McLuhan's Ghost

Marshall McLuhan's Ghost — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:12:17 +0000

The medium is the message.
The medium is the message.
The medium is the message.

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:44:59 +0000

My guess is that modern publishing methods (notably the Web) allow for more and better information dispersal and aggregation. If you read any history of science and knowledge with any insight, you cannot help but be impressed at how often concepts or knowledge were discovered or partly understood, only to be lost or overlooked.

My guess is that this will happen less often now. The countervailing force is the explosion of information (and sometimes disinformation), which means that we are essentially bringing a better tool to bear against a bigger problem. So maybe lost or underappreciated knowledge will still happen at the same sort of rate in percentage terms.

However the ability to sample vast stores of information and easily link to original sources should not be a bad thing on balance. And automation can leverage those data sources on a huge scale, giving us all some breathing room.

By: Bernard HP Gilroy

Bernard HP Gilroy — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:32:19 +0000

no choice but to wait for press releases to appear to write a story.

Perhaps unintentionally, this sentence captures the true problem. Although I suspect the author meant, “no choice but for to wait press releases to appear before the reporters can write a story”, it can also be read as, “no choice but for to wait for press releases, before the reporters can appear to write a story”.

By: Lab Lemming

Lab Lemming — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:45:09 +0000

Why is Kuhnian science not newsworthy? Perhaps public understanding of science would be better if journalists simply picked papers to report at random, instead of putting an emphasis on “important” ones.

By: coolstar

coolstar — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:26:37 +0000

It seems to me that’s it’s always been quite a small minority of newspapers who would actually send journalists to meetings like those of the AAS. Perhaps the Washington Post and New York Times, in this country, and very few others. I happened to bump into journalists from several of the usual suspects at the latest AAS meeting, for example, and didn’t notice a HUGE decline in numbers (I also didn’t do a survey, so my impressions could be wrong). Good science journalists who cover LOCAL issues well at your average big city paper have always been in short supply. My gut feeling is that the number of science journalists who have been cut from newspaper staffs mirrors reasonably well the numbers of say, sports journalists, who have been cut. Of course, the absolute numbers started out very different. Your newspaper may not have a good science reporter anymore, but they may also not have a NBA beat reporter anymore. Science blogs like this one can certainly help fill in the gap in science journalism. Unfortunately, too many of them (NOT this one) just mirror press releases without really adding any value. I’d be much more worried if good general issue science magazines like Discover or specific ones like Sky & Telescope started to go the way of the dinosaurs and newspapers.

By: 13 January 2010 « blueollie

13 January 2010 « blueollie — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:31:34 +0000

[...] and calling attention to yourself Sometimes the loudest press releases get the most attention: You might have heard the news out of last week’s American Astronomical Society meeting, that the [...]

By: George Musser

George Musser — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:52:20 +0000

Well, the media can’t be at fault in this particular example, because both of these results come from the same team! Illingworth was the relevant speaker at the press conference last week.
George

By: Bjoern

Bjoern — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:42:13 +0000

That’s the observational side; but what does the theoretical/computational side say to this? There are some groups doing computer simulations on structure and galaxy formation, aren’t there? What do these simulations say when the first galaxies should have formed?

By: Brian Siana

Brian Siana — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:21:49 +0000

In fact, over the last 4-5 months there have been MANY papers on the arxiv using these data to find high redshift (z>6) galaxies. I’m not even sure this is a complete list.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.1806
http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.2255
http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.5183
http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.0001
http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.0077
http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.0838
http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.1098
http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.1338
http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.4263

By: Low Math, Meekly Interacting

Low Math, Meekly Interacting — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:49:13 +0000

It’s very simple: News is not free. At minimum, a journalist has to eat. They might even want some shelter if they live outside of the tropics. Having a way to disseminate the fruits of their labors would also seem to be a basic requirement. It wouldn’t hurt to have them be highly educated (autodidacts are always welcome) in the sciences if you want them to report on science.

If the blogosphere continues to grow at the current pace (and I can’t imagine it won’t), it may cover all the old territory through the efforts of enthusiastic scientists. But instead of having the news handed to us on a platter, we’ll have to become hunter-gatherers, which is kind of a drag if you’re busy. I hunt and gather even though I’m too busy, but lots of people just tune out unless you stick it in their faces. That’s a scary prospect, when you consider how important science literacy is.

We’ve gotta pry open the wallets, folks. I’m not saying necessarily that we should resuscitate “old media”, but a high level of quality and convenience is going to take money. Lots of money. If enough people become convinced that all news should be made available gratis, not only are they living in a fantasy utopia, they’re starving those of us who ARE willing to pay out of the goods by making high-quality information available only to specialists and those educated enough to even know where to look. I know you open-sourcers are convinced the world can run on impeccable ethics alone, but I not only think you’re dreaming, I think you are ON CRACK if you believe there’s enough of that good will around to even keep you fed.

I don’t see much of a future for the newspapers, but I do hope that something reasonable fills the void they leave. What I don’t know, but if it’s comprehensive and of high quality (perhaps I flatter myself thinking I’d be able to tell), I’ll pay handsomely. You all should, too. In fact, I’d say it’s your civic responsibility.

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:18:31 +0000

You can “expect” it all you want. But newspapers are busy firing science journalists, not asking them to spend more time on each story.

By: erik

erik — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:09:48 +0000

“And let’s not even think about the idea that journalists should spend time (and money) going to lots of conferences and talks and chatting with scientists about what’s hot in their fields these days — the resources just aren’t there.”

Hopefully I’m not the only one who took issue with this. Why shouldn’t we expect newspapers that want to report on science to have competent people who can scan and read through the new additions to arxiv?