There are words commonly used by both the general public and scientists that do not share common meanings. ‘Theory’ is probably the most well known and most frequently misused, although statistical “significance” has lately been running a strong second. At one time there were professional Science Writers who had a better-than-average understanding of the subject and conceptual meanings, but that seems to no longer exist.
“Arctic Ice Makes Comeback From Record Low, but Long-Term Decline May Continue”
>>Lately, a new low in summer sea ice has been set every few years, followed by a few years of recovery, followed by yet another low that typically exceeds the previous one by a substantial margin.<<
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/science/earth/ar...
In the scale of global climate change there is no such thing as a 1-year comeback or a few-years
recovery. Those things cannot be defined mathematically and their use in this context is nonsensical..
Update:Hey Dook --
I beg to slightly differ on this one. It may not be egregious, but it is more sinister because it is more subtle – and it’s the frigging NY Times. I also blame scientists for not appreciating the sophistication of the political opposition and for not choosing their words more carefully. Jones comment about statistical significance was careless because only a small percentage of people knew not to take it literally. Most people – understandably – took his statement to mean that the data showed nothing important or meaningful.
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This example is very far from the most egregious instances, or from even from the routinely bad examples, of poor science reporting in the press. "Recovery" is a term borrowed from financial and economic journalism, which I suppose took it from medicine. New York Times (Justin Gilles) and Economist are rare exceptions. Most journalists are much worse at communicating essential contingencies, at differentiating the tentative from the unambiguous, at understanding basic probabilities, or incorporating an applicable sense of scale. Your larger point is very right on.
Media have become incompetent in statistics and science in the past 50 years.
Example - a vast population of poor people's with a few enormously rich people's incomes are combined to yield an average income. It is meaningless. Like averaging income of a cab driver with that of a multimillionaire passenger. Or an article about discrimination against blacks because there are so few employed as professors in advanced math departments of our universities - while ignoring the extreme lack of blacks who study math.
Same thing in climate change. It is complicated research that ranges world-wide and into the solar system, and millions of years in time scale. It includes all disciplines with statistics, chemistry, physics, geology, biology and astronomy. It involves tens of thousands of scientists over decades. The scientifically indisputable conclusion, world-wide, is that mankind have created an exponentially increasing global warming. But media is incapable of understanding it and of writing about it.
Not to mention the inability of Americans to wade through the fog of deception and deceit the Kock brothers and such have generated to protect their fossil fuel financial future.
I think a 1 year comeback can be defined mathematically, as can a few-years recovery.
Do not forget that this is for the general public not scientists.
It is not too bad an article, the word recovery was used in the context of a one year improvement, it was not meant to imply long term recovery.
All in all I thought it was a fair assessment., I think you are nit picking.
I agree. But I think it should be scientists who launch the backlash.
I'd like to see scientists phoning editors, writing letters, appearing on TV and kicking up an absolute storm when journalists misrepresent the science. Imagine how much fun it would be for the National Academy of Sciences to issue press releases naming specific channels, specific reports on specific days by specific journalists and anchors, and tearing their reports to shreds.
I'd almost pay money for that.
Wow! Refreshing to see a report in the popular press that isn't overtly alarmist.
Apparently the news industry is belatedly responding to our backlash & toning down their blatant alarmism.
Now if we could just get rid of some of the polarizing radical environmental activists that head various government agency's, we might get some actual"practical science" done.
It certainly wasn't like this in the 60's , we made it to the moon in 7 or 8 years & the existing space industry we developed to do that could have put us on Mars by the mid 80's if political activism hadn't got in the way.
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/hyperbola/2008/0...
The "teeming masses" are not as stupid as you think. We can be lead with objectivism , but we refuse to be pushed by alarmism.
It is all a PR stunt anyway. We have been telling you all along. So much of it is perspective. For example, true scientists have been saying the earth has been cooling for over a decade. The greenies insist that this is just a lull and the earth is really heating. This is said by scientists with degrees.
Either the earth is cooling or it isn't. So the greenies come in and say that it is, but it isn't. Now you want to refer to confusion, the greenies thrive on confusion.
Quote by Jim Sibbison, environmental journalist, former public relations official for the Environmental Protection Agency: "We routinely wrote scare stories...Our press reports were more or less true...We were out to whip the public into a frenzy about the environment."
So, as you don't seem to know what cooling is, in the English language, you have no reason to complain about confusion in the public sector, as the greenies are mainly responsible for that.
It's like when politicians talk about "reducing" the budget deficit, when the deficit is created anew every year.