This is one of the worst "articles" I have experienced reading since joining Hacker News.
TL;DR This is all personal opinion: My main issue is with the journalism here. To me this article was disrespectful to readers, scientists and the people of Flint. Without making any accusations, I would be curious to know how this article was researched and in what capacity the journalist and the scientist this article is about knew each other before the article was written? Were they friends or classmates? (I don't have a problem if a journalist wants to write about one of their friends per se, especially if that person is part of an interesting story worth telling, but from an ethics and respect for readers standpoint I think that should be disclosed).
I like The New Yorker and read it regularly but after reading this long, long piece something felt very off. There was a noticeable lack of substance and accuracy, along with flowery misleading writing when it came to the science/behavioral science stuff suggesting the article was under-researched. But then the tenor of the writing about the scientist was a completely incongruity to the rest of the article (the language often felt like a letter of recommendation to a grad school on behalf of a friend).
Honestly, I have no idea if there was conflict of interest and I don't really care. The writing just made it feel like something fishy is going on. I think most importantly, behavioral science is interesting and has potential to do good work in many areas and all. But the people of Flint have fucking lead in their water...So a fluff piece connecting behavioral science to the Flint water issue is misleading at best and potentially harmful. It's misleading about what behavioral science can and can't accomplish; Flint was a government fuck-up in a place with serious systemic issues that need to be addressed. Plus 99% of what the article connects to behavioral science is really just people paying attention and helping other people in person. No behavioral science magic involved. Also the fucking "write a song" part of the article was a joke, that's an idea any Joanne Shmoe can come up with, that part of the story was not real behavioral science and pretty disrespectful to everyone.
Also New Yorker: I get your readers might not be interested in detailed science articles and they might prefer people stories. But I am very confident they want accurate stories whatever the topic. If you waste their time overly long articles of bullshit you will lose more readers. Come on.
TL;DR This is all personal opinion: My main issue is with the journalism here. To me this article was disrespectful to readers, scientists and the people of Flint. Without making any accusations, I would be curious to know how this article was researched and in what capacity the journalist and the scientist this article is about knew each other before the article was written? Were they friends or classmates? (I don't have a problem if a journalist wants to write about one of their friends per se, especially if that person is part of an interesting story worth telling, but from an ethics and respect for readers standpoint I think that should be disclosed).
I like The New Yorker and read it regularly but after reading this long, long piece something felt very off. There was a noticeable lack of substance and accuracy, along with flowery misleading writing when it came to the science/behavioral science stuff suggesting the article was under-researched. But then the tenor of the writing about the scientist was a completely incongruity to the rest of the article (the language often felt like a letter of recommendation to a grad school on behalf of a friend).
Honestly, I have no idea if there was conflict of interest and I don't really care. The writing just made it feel like something fishy is going on. I think most importantly, behavioral science is interesting and has potential to do good work in many areas and all. But the people of Flint have fucking lead in their water...So a fluff piece connecting behavioral science to the Flint water issue is misleading at best and potentially harmful. It's misleading about what behavioral science can and can't accomplish; Flint was a government fuck-up in a place with serious systemic issues that need to be addressed. Plus 99% of what the article connects to behavioral science is really just people paying attention and helping other people in person. No behavioral science magic involved. Also the fucking "write a song" part of the article was a joke, that's an idea any Joanne Shmoe can come up with, that part of the story was not real behavioral science and pretty disrespectful to everyone.
Also New Yorker: I get your readers might not be interested in detailed science articles and they might prefer people stories. But I am very confident they want accurate stories whatever the topic. If you waste their time overly long articles of bullshit you will lose more readers. Come on.