{"id":13529,"date":"2023-04-15T04:15:57","date_gmt":"2023-04-15T04:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialpanic.org\/?p=13529"},"modified":"2023-06-24T00:13:14","modified_gmt":"2023-06-24T00:13:14","slug":"another-one-why-do-science-and-health-reporters-lack-background-in-their-subject","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2023\/04\/15\/another-one-why-do-science-and-health-reporters-lack-background-in-their-subject\/","title":{"rendered":"Another one: Why do science and health reporters lack backgrounds in their subject?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adding\u00a0 couple more: Another one: Why do science and health reporters lack background in their subject?<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Troy Farah is the “Science and Health Reporter” for Salon.com<\/a>. He has a BA in journalism<\/a> and won an award for article on why people in Phoenix should be dancing at concerts.<\/p>\n

Meredith Broussard<\/a> is labeled an “AI Expert<\/a>” but her LinkedIn page hides her degrees, saying only a “BA” from Harvard and MFA from Columbia (no subjects listed).<\/p>\n

The problem: such individuals lack the expertise to skeptically question true experts. Historically, this is why reporters defer to most anyone with a PhD (often in any subject!) It enables reporters to be spun – and is a well known issue in journalism.<\/p>\n

By comparison, Axios science reporter Alison Snyder<\/a> has a degree in chemical engineering and a Masters in botany and evolutionary biology, which gives significant credibility to her science reporting.<\/p>\n

By comparison, my own experience is that when I asked questions and raised issues (all of which history proved spot on and correct), I was told, in so many words, “But Lawrence has a Stanford MBA and you don’t, so why should I believe you?”[1] It’s called credential-ism and it warps people’s views of the world and into believing something is true based on who said it, not on the truth of a fact, or logic. As Bertrand Russell noted, a fact is true regardless of who says it. Arguments, he said, rest on facts and logic, not who makes the argument.<\/p>\n

Literally – every job I ever held had examples like the above – where I was told my lack of a graduate degree meant I was not permitted to hold a position, or my perspective, even if correct, was down weighted. Yet in journalism, it is routine for reporters to have no relevant training in the fields they report on.<\/p>\n

[1] That was literally the day I decided I would earn an MBA, which I began two years later. Still later I went on to complete an MS in software engineering, and nearly as many additional graduate credits in medical informatics and computer security.<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/strong><\/p>\n

And another one.\u00a0 Harri Weber is the Senior Climate Writer at Tech Crunch<\/a>. From her LinkedIn bio, she has no college degree, but had studied Design and Technology at the School of Design – The New School, for a year. She did not graduate. She is now the “Expert” “Senior climate writer” at Tech Crunch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More “Science and Health” reporters with no training in either science or health. One positions herself as an “AI expert”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appeal-to-authority","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}