I don’t care how far a person is from understanding a scientific concept or finding. I don’t care how complex and nuanced such a finding is. As long as the science is in an area that I comfortable with as a scientist, educator, and science communicator, I’ll take up the challenge of transforming scientific mumbo jumbo into normal descriptive language or an appropriate story, so the person gets from not having a clue to getting the basic idea. That’s for regular people having an honest conversation, which generally includes students.

But that is often not how it goes.

A common theme in the non-honest conversation is false balance. The fact that there is an opposing view, regardless of its merits or lack of merit, is sufficient to insist that that view be on the table and given a fair hearing. Someone recently said that global warming is not real because CO2 molecules are the same temperature as the other molecules in the atmosphere, an utterly irrelevant thing meant to confuse and misdirect. That statement is not a required part of an honest conversation, it is utterly non-honest, and should be ignored as nefarious yammering. But, we often see media giving equal weight to such yammering, ignoring the motives behind it.

You already know that the New York Times has hired an OpEd columnist who has a history of denial of science, including climate science. He also has a history of analyses of social or political things that has offended a lot of people.

When pressed to reconsider, by the scientific community widespread, the New York Times responded that lots of people agree with this columnist about climate change, therefore his hire is legit. Here, the New York Times is guilty of false balance, of giving credence to senseless yammering as though it was the same as real science.

I personally don’t like the idea of having a lot of far right wing (or even medium right wing) columnists in a publication that I pay for, so I don’t subscribe to such publications. But, major national media outlets are going to have a range of columnists and commenters, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. That is why I am happy to subscribe to the Washington Post even though there are a few right wing columnists there.

But here’s the thing. A columnist with a hard right viewpoint is one thing. An Editorial Staff that allows columnists, of any political stripe, to abuse reality and misstate facts about science in order to make a political point is incompetent.

Readers should expect editors to strictly enforce the concept that columnists are very much entitled to their own opinions, but in no way entitled to their own facts. The New York Times is making the mistake of confusing objections to this columnist with an attempt to silence a particular point of view. That is not what it is. Rather, the objections are to the New York Times editorial policy, on the OpEd page, supporting alt-facts.

The facts at risk of denigration and dismissal here are widely accepted and established, usually. In some cases, there are uncertainties that are dishonestly exploited and incorrectly characterized, which is pretty much the same thing as trying to have one’s opinions and one’s facts at the same time: not valid commentary and bad journalistic practice. This particular columnist has exploited the fact that there is variation in nature to assert that there is variation in scientific opinion. This is a misreading of both nature and science, coming from someone who knows little about either, and that misreading is being sanctioned by the people who run the New York Times.

I don’t care, and I think most don’t care, if he New York Times has a right winger like Bret Stephens on the OpEd staff. But if the editors of that section of this news outlet allow this individual or any columnist to misrepresent important aspects of reality, as he very much did in his very first column just out, then that editorial staff is acting unprofessionally and should probably look for a job at one of those entertainment outlets that disguises itself as “news.”

I’m pretty sure that at this time the editors at the New York Times do not understand this distinction. Keep your conservative columnist, Grey Lady, that’s up to you. Some will like that, some will not. But do know that you can’t keep being thought of as the paper of record if you allow frequent and unchecked abuse of facts and reality within that discourse. That is just a bad idea, beneath such a widely respected publication, and I and others expect it to stop soon.

The cave/mine distinction is important in this case. The holes in the earth into which the children had gone, set a camp fire, and suffocated on the carbon monoxide from that fire, were dug as mines by a company once known as Minnesota Mining and Manufacture, now known to you as 3M (Scotch Tape, Scotchguard, Post-Its, and more importantly, sandpaper). The fact that the reporters were early on as the story developed randomly switching between calling the holes caves or mines, mentioned early on during the multi-hour ordeal that they were 3M mines, then stopped talking about 3M and referred to them thereafter only as caves, causes me to guess (but I do not know) that influential voices in the reporter’s ears directed them towards discretion and away from truth. That could just be me not trusting enormous wealthy corporations.

But never mind that. It was the count of the dead bodies that were being taken from the mines that relates to the present discussion. To make a long story short here is what I saw happening as I watched the live news reports on three different channels:

The bluff was heavily wooded, with pathways leading up to the mines from a road down below, and down to the mines from above, with streets and structures both above and below the steep bluff face. Police had the area closed off to everyone, including reporters, at the top and bottom, and there were emergency vehicles all over the place. Reporters, including camera-operators, were therefore all stationed in a ring around the cordoned off zone, watching rescue workers going in and out but not seeing what was actually happening in the mine or at the mine’s entrance. But they could see first responders dragging stretchers in and out. On more than one occasion, a stretcher with a body on it was seen being carried out of the woods. But, it was seen by more than one reporter, one above the bluffs and one below the bluffs. So it went, roughly, like this:

News Anchor: “Joe Carpenter, you’re above the action there, what do you see from the residential neighborhood above the caves?”

Joe: “That’s Right, Mary, I’m looking down on the site of this tragic event and I am seeing right now …. our camera is showing it, I think …. emergency rescue workers taking … carrying … a stretcher with what looks like a person on it.”

News Anchor: “Joe, can you tell us what else you see … oh wait, hold on a second Joe, Gladys Day is down with the Sheriff below the cliff and has something to report … Gladys, what have you got?”

Gladys: “That’s right, Mary, I’m standing here near the Sheriff’s operation’s center and the Sheriff is not telling us anything yet, but I can tell you that moments ago a stretcher with a person on it was pulled out of the woods and put in an ambulance, but the ambulance is not going anywhere, and the form I saw on the stretcher was totally covered up. I think that means, sadly, that a deceased person has been recovered from the cave.

News Anchor: “For those just tuning in, we are witnessing, a ‘Get More on News Four’ exclusive, as two individuals have been removed from the cave on the Mississippi River Cliffs in Saint Paul. One is believed to be deceased, and the other, we are not sure of…”

Thusly, one body was counted as two, one dead, one perhaps alive. And this sort of absurd mixup continued as the body count went up and down and all over the place for several hours. At one point, if I recall correctly, a handful of empty stretchers were carried out by rescue workers … they were done taking out bodies and had no need of them … and the death count shot up temporarily by that number.

You’ve seen this happen.

The Breaking News this morning in the Twin Cities was showing on all three news stations that I was cruising for a weather report:

Channel 5: “An armored car has been robbed in the 900 block of University Avenue….”

Channel 9: “An armored car has been robbed in at the corner of Rice and Larpentuer….”

Channel 12: “An armored car has been robbed in on Energy Park Drive….”

Holy crap! Three armored car robberies, in three different locations in Saint Paul! Wow!

All three, of course, were the same car, and in this case, Channel 12 had it right.

Today, someone bothered to write a story about how astrological signs were all wrong, that the planets were not really in the constellations astrologers claim them to be in, and there really are 13, not 12, constellations. The main point is that the stars have moved continuously in relation to each other and the earth (as expected) and the cosmic geometry that underlies Astrology never accounted for that movement. It is as though all the astrologers are waiting for a bus but unaware that the bus schedule has been radically altered.

So, Astrology, as it turns out, not only can’t work, and doesn’t work, but it’s being done wrong anyway.

I’ve always wondered why Astrologers didn’t bother to adjust for the actual movements of the planets and stars. I’ve asked some of them. They don’t know either. I know they know that the actual movement of heavenly bodies is not what the ephemera show. There must be some reason they haven’t fixed that. Of course, if they do fix it, if they do add the 13th constellation and take account of the actual movement of stars and planets, maybe it will work!!! That would totally make me LOL. I might even ROFL. But I’m not betting on it.

Anyway, it was interesting to hear the following coming from a national news reporter this morning: “It turns out that due to a wobble in the earth, a thirteenth constellation has moved into the Zodiac, and this has caused all of the other Astrological observations to go off and require adjustments.”

So, the Astrology can’t work. And it doesn’t work. And, it’s broken. And, the news reporters can’t get straight how it’s broken right. Not that it really matters that we understand exactly how something like Astrology does not work. But still….

Recently, NASA affiliated scientists shocked the esoteric world of biochemistry with the finding that a bacterium could successfully replace arsenic with phosphorus in key molecules, such as DNA, and make that work. Although arsenic is often incorporated into bio tissues, no one has been able to point to a prior study that clearly demonstrates that this is possible. This is very interesting science with all sorts of implications, if it works out. There are important as yet unknown details and open questions. The ultimate importance of this research remains to be seen, like any new scientific research, but if it is demonstrated to be as stated, this is very cool, new, and interesting science.

In this case, NASA produced one small press release, the substantive parts of which are reproduced here:

WASHINGTON — NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.

The news conference will be held at the NASA Headquarters auditorium at 300 E St. SW, in Washington. It will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency’s website at http://www.nasa.gov.

Participants are:
– Mary Voytek, director, Astrobiology Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington
– Felisa Wolfe-Simon, NASA astrobiology research fellow, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, Calif.
– Pamela Conrad, astrobiologist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
– Steven Benner, distinguished fellow, Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Gainesville, Fla.
– James Elser, professor, Arizona State University, Tempe

That’s it. Prior to this press conference, the blogsophere went moderately wild (I’ve seen more wild) discussing and predicting what the find might be, talking about aliens, extraterrestrial life, etc. etc. Then, when the finding was reported in a paper released at the same time as the press conference (which is normal) and discussed in the press conference, most bloggers wrote about how NASA had totally screwed the pooch, putting out a press release (the one above) that caused widespread craszsiness in teh blogosphere.

I don’t agree. I think the widespread craziness was caused by the blogosphere itself, not by the press release above. I don’t think NASA needed to say less, or more, in this press release, but rather, those doing the wild speculation needed to read the actual press release and stick to what it says. Some did, by the way … several science bloggers pretty accurately predicted what the press conference was going to be about because they looked up who the participants were and did the math, as it were.

So, once again If find myself thinking one thing while the entire planet is thinking something different. I don’t think NASA screwed up this press release. (To reiterate: I don’t think NASA screwed up this press release. .. I did not mention the press conference or the research itself.) But many do.

So, I want to be edumucated. I want you to change my mind. Rather than stating that NASA did it wrong, prove it. In the comments below, reproduce a part of the press release, then cite a report in the blogosphere that came from this wording that was incorrect and over the top (about aliens or whatever) and show how a thoughtful rational expert or semi-expert in science or science writing can make the link that was made. Show us, in other words, how this press release caused some web site to say that NASA had found alien life, or whatever. Clearly distinguish between the press release being badly done in a way that caused the reaction vs. the blog or web site or press agency in question simply saying stupid crap because it was better press.

As a second exercise, and this would probably be more useful than the first (and the first exercise will not go well, I’m sure) try this: Simply rewrite the press release. This could be useful. I personally know people at NASA in public relations and elsewhere. I’ll make sure that anybody who is anybody sees the best of the rewrites.

And, if someone else has bothered to rewrite the press release in the comments, feel free to critique that press release too! We might as well get this right!