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The first anniversary image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope displays star birth like it’s never been seen before, full of detailed, impressionistic texture. The subject is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI)
Recently a scientist published a paper in Nature with tailored information regarding climate change data so it would get published. He also said that it was written that way because he knew the editors of Nature would like it.
Apparently, the editors didn’t like it. Nor did anyone else much, including his co-author. There’s another dimension here.
This seems to be a very unsubtle shot at very visibly implying, intentionally or otherwise, that any negative data about climate change wouldn’t get published and that the publishers are “biased”. Great call.
This wasn’t actual climate change denial. Most “papers” by denialists are really just perfectly innocent applications to join QAnon, MAGA, the Flat Earth Society, or some other highbrow organization.
Climate change denial, aka attempting to discredit decades of research, is now actually viewed as a psychological problem. There’s even an argument that the significance of climate change denial is overstated, with the media magnifying the numbers and importance of denial.
That’s a pretty fair argument. We see on a daily basis how ridiculous irrelevant people are magnified to many times their actual size and worth by media. Politicians, boring billionaires, you name it.
To coin a phrase, “If it’s nuts, it’s news.”
Few journalists could disagree. It’s been the case for some time that PR, that fabulous fecal fountain of brilliance and relevance, drives more news than facts. Much good that’s ever done anybody but PR people.
There’s another issue here which invariably goes under the radar which is highly relevant to scientific publications. It’s no coincidence that information is presented to publishers in a certain way.
This very formulaic approach to getting published is quite normal in all other media. In fiction, appropriately enough, you simply produce something which is pretty close to what’s been published before.
It’s called slop. It’s published because consumers bought it before, and for absolutely no other reason.
In a scientific environment, however, that’s not how things work. The need is for clear new factual information. Not “Greatest Hits of Whatever the Hell it Was We Published Before As If We Cared.” The fiction market is also hardly subject to severe peer review by every scientist in a given field.
Another little problem that may have simpered past scrutiny is that publishers of scientific journals do NOT like slop. The reputation of many journals has suffered for publishing vast numbers of retracted scientific studies. This garbage has been cluttering up people’s time for way to long.
That really is nuts.
That’s why it’s news.
There’s just one little problem.
Nuts isn’t good enough.
Ever.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
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