Comments on: Pop Goes the Media http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/07/19/pop-goes-the-media/ For a greater understanding of the encultured brain and body... Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:12:25 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: decrepitoldfool http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/07/19/pop-goes-the-media/#comment-2801 Sun, 03 Aug 2008 03:26:09 +0000 http://neuroanthropology.wordpress.com/?p=630#comment-2801 It isn’t difficult to imagine a set of genes tied to aggressive behavior. A person with those genes might, for instance, function best in an entirely different kind of classroom than someone without them. End up in different professions. Stuffing everyone into a one-size-fits-all education and lifestyle is asking for some bad outcomes.

News articles on scientific themes often leave me sputtering, though. There’s no lower limit to the simplification that reporters on deadline will apply to a story.

]]> By: The glorious 46th ed of 4SH « Testimony of the spade http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/07/19/pop-goes-the-media/#comment-2781 Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:24:19 +0000 http://neuroanthropology.wordpress.com/?p=630#comment-2781 [...] got tips on two separate post at Neuroanthropology, first; Pop goes the media – which is an interesting post on the difficulty of how research gets [...]

]]> By: gregdowney http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/07/19/pop-goes-the-media/#comment-2676 Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:47:16 +0000 http://neuroanthropology.wordpress.com/?p=630#comment-2676 Pretty amazing stuff, Daniel. And the link to NewsNet14, news for people of European descent, was just jaw dropping. I had no idea that this media channel even existed, and the format and look of the thing conceals just how flat out bonkers the thing is.
You’re right though on many levels. The Reuters piece focuses immediately on drugs for ‘delinquency prevention’ — has no one learned anything from the disaster of mass ritalin prescription or the scandal surrounding psychiatrist Joseph Biederman’s receipt of money from drug companies to encourage en masse diagnosis of childhood ‘psychiatric disorders’?!
There’s something deeply wrong with science literacy when even science reporters can’t get basic facts straight and jump to the most ridiculous conclusions from half-baked understandings of basic research. Obviously, there are exceptions (I tend to really enjoy Carl Zimmer and Gina Kolata, for example), but it so often seems like science illiterates are writing science news. Maybe the Canadians do a better job of writing headlines, but if the feed from Reuters is such a mess, it would be hard to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Nothing like having mass distributed misperception. Thanks Reuters — you’re helping folks like NewsNet14, news for white people, do their job.

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