Freethinking for Dummies

Another Example of Bad Science Reporting

The newspaper, The Telegraph, has published a story with the exciting title, Large Hadron Collider rumoured to have found God Particle.   What makes this bad science reporting is that the actually text of the article is more along these lines:

“It is far too early to say if there is anything to it or not. There are 3,000 scientists working on ATLAS and they divide the analysis work up between them.

“This is an internal communication that highlights something interesting, but it has to go through several stages of assessment by the scientific team before it will be released as an official result by the collaborative team.

“The majority of these things turn out to be nothing at all. It is very speculative at this stage, but there is a great deal of excitement and anticipation that something will be found which is probably why this has found its way onto the internet.”

What the story is really about is this:

Despite the official caution, there was intense speculation on internet blogs and scientific websites that the results described in the memo signalled the first discovery of the Higgs boson.

This is a story about the rumors of the discovery of the Higgs boson, not about the actually discovery it’s self.  This is not science reporting, this is rumor mongering.  Isn’t the current state of the general public’s science knowledge bad enough without the media having to sensationalize a non-story?

April 26, 2011 - Posted by James Walker | Science, Skepticism | Science, scientific, skepticism