Media cycles for science stories

Here’s something amusing and educational I found in Mike Masnick’s Aug. 27, 2012 posting on Techdirt,

Originally published 05/18/2009 on the PhD comics website (http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174)

You can find the full size version here at the PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) Comics website, which features insight into the graduate school experience rendered in comic book style.

This particular ‘strip’ about a science story news cycle can be true but more usually, a science story will pass through without any or very little notice.

Scientists are usually in the position of trying to attract attention for their work. Sometimes that can lead to another kind of science story where the scientists have been overenthusiastic and reached exciting conclusions, which are unsupported by the data. Arsenic life is a good example. In my Dec. 8, 2010 posting, I apologized for getting caught up in the frenzy and included analysis from at least one other source as to how the frenzy started in the first place.

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