• cosecantphi [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I swear, this type of reporting probably hurts science outreach more than it helps. As typified by this thread, when a scientist builds up a hype train for some announcement, the average person is going to get excited thinking about the big questions. Aliens, time travel, quantum gravity, etc.

      More often than not the real announcement ends up being totally inscrutable to the average person. A lot of the time it isn't totally conclusive either, leading to later refutations that get not even a fraction of the media exposure. A big one recently was the report of phosphine on Venus that implied the existence of microbial life, later determined to be a false alarm months after the media circus.

      It all just makes people so jaded to science reporting in general.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Chill comrade killjoy. People can still hear about how space aliens stole my dog and vaguely defined racialized mystics have uncovered the secret to immortality on tiktok. Let the scientists have their fun.

      • iie [they/them, he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Probably scientists are just unable to keep shit to themselves until the results are ready to officially announce, they probably let it leak before all the analysis is done or reviewed or something