Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Journalists tend to understate — not exaggerate — scientific findings, study finds

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This is another one of those studies where the answer you get it really depends on how you ask the question. We've all seen journalists couch researchers' findings in the language of probability, hesitating (as they should) to state that they are certain about their results. Hence, for example, "the findings presented in the science news are actually lower than the certainty of the same scientific findings presented in the paper extracts." At the same time, however, we've also seen journalists present one single study as being widely descriptive, instead of narrow and narrowly focused. So I think there's a lot more at work here that simply 'certainty levels'. There's also a link to the original study (53 page PDF - the paper is 9 pages, and there are 40 pages of data).

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Nov 23, 2024 09:10 a.m.

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