
Online comments hurt science understanding, study finds - molf
http://www.jsonline.com/features/health/online-comments-hurt-science-understanding-study-finds-ib88cor-185610641.html
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benbataille
Does someone have read the original article ? I am curious about how the
reader evaluation of potential risk was assessed. Was there a control group
which didn't see any comment to compare variance amongst this group to the
other groups variances ? How was the sampling done ? Were people with
knowledge of science equitably balanced amongst groups ? How many of them was
there ? At which level is the variance difference amongst groups significant ?
2000 subjects can lead to average results depending of the sampling.

The jsonline article does quite a lousy job with details.

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twentysix
The title of the original article is "Science, new media, and the public"
published in the Science Magazine.
<https://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6115/40>. If you google the title you
can find the full text.

Here is a detailed article on the same topic >
[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/a-blog-around-the-
clock/...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/a-blog-around-the-
clock/2013/01/28/commenting-threads-good-bad-or-not-at-all/)

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36er
Interesting.

The fact that people get (strongly) influenced by comments by non-experts is
not new and definitely not limited to science. The same holds true (though to
a smaller extent) with TV.

Here in France, news shows will typically interview random people on the
street on whatever subject they are discussing (politics, science, culture...)
and air the 15-20 sec answers to millions of viewers. These people have no
particular knowledge but their reaction/opinion is shown at the same level as
that of a field expert. Thus conveying far too much weight to their opinion
and hurting viewers' understanding.

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mooism2
Not only in France. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI> (2min
English language satire)

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TazeTSchnitzel
I remember him saying on the same programme (NewsWipe) that people on the
street used to be more serious in their responses, perhaps because they
thought the News should be serious and factual.

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oyvindeh
I wonder how this translates to peoples understanding of medicine, and
alternative medicine in particular. Those discussions tend to get very heated.

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VLM
Diet specifically, even on HN.

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mhaymo
Not much worse than being influenced by the articles themselves. Science
reporting is just awful, universally as far as I can tell.

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cup
Youre absolutely right and its not helped by the fact that many scientists are
incredibly poor communicators. Its a shame because there is some really
interesting work happening in the scientific world which lay people are
missing out on.

I just think about the laboratory I work in and professors above me who fail
to recognise that non scientific people arnt stupid, they just havent
undergone 12 years of tertiary education training to allow them to understand
the language of science without a translator.

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anu7df
What you say is true. However the often overlooked issue with science
reporting is that it is watered down to a point that even basic facts are
conveyed wrong

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VLM
"read a balanced news report about nanotechnology"

I would enjoy being able to read the article. If its any good, it would not
accurately reflect typical journalist science reporting where viewers are
better off reading the comments. If the article is garbage, then it would not
accurately reflect nanotechnology, in which case viewers are better off
reading the comments. I think this is a pretty big hole in the study, unless
the conclusion was determined before the study, in which case they did a
pretty good job of manufacturing the selected result.

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mnsc
Oh the comments here from readers commenting the comments on the linked
description of scientific research that has researched how comments on
description of scientific research influences the readers understanding of the
sciende in question is gon b gud.

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sdfjkl
I stopped reading comments a long time ago. There's a slim chance they add
something to an article, but it's not worth wading through all that garbage to
find the one nugget of wisdom. Perhaps they contain some feedback useful to
the original author, although personally I've turned them off on my blog long
ago.

Edit: Of course HN is special :)

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patatino
I often find myself in the comments looking for sources indicate some mistakes
in the article. Can be quite helpful sometimes.

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cpa
And yet, here I am on the comments page.

