You could make it realistic and take the hard case of a contemporary
scientific controversy and imaginatively apply your guidelines, or indeed
Carl Sagan's, to it. OK, it would soon reveal that the scientific experts
are no better at detecting baloney from their peers than your stereotyical
journalist is, but maybe that's a valuable tip in itself and you'd at least
get topicality as an added extra! And you would avoid the elephant trap into
which it's so easy for workshops of this sort to fall when they rely on
historical case studies - hindsight.
One spat that's very topical just now - thanks to Physical Review E's recent
announcement of its imminent publication of a new paper by Rusi Taleyarkhan
et al. - is the sonofusion (or, as I've seen it called, star-in-a-jar)
controversy.
Chris
--
Chris Stokes
-----Original Message-----
From: psci-com: on the public understanding of science
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of zoe dunford (IFR)
Sent: 15 March 2004 13:03
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PSCI-COM] How to judge credible science
Dear PSCI-Com
At the end of this month, I will give a training session to trainee
journalists (NB not science correspondents) on the subject of how to judge
credible science. This will hopefully give them some points to think about
as they wade through some of the claims and counter-claims they’ll come
across in their careers.
[...]
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