Ron attributes to malice here that which can be more easily explained by indifference. I think Physicists have largely given up on trying to correct media's portrayals of QM as they either see it as not being important or because they see it as tilting at windmills.
The majority of experts I know feel like it's futile to try and correct the media's representation of their field. I think QM has it doubly hard as it has all the issues of other technical field, while suffering from both the problem of its ontology being foreign to the lay-person and certain key points of its ontology are still debated within the field.
I think you're on to something, but it goes even farther than that.
I'm sure a lot of scientists don't mind media-hyped and somewhat inaccurate coverage of science news because it's actually interesting to the layperson. The reality is that the general population is pretty blasé about even fluff science reporting - let alone accurate reporting.
So a little hype, even if inaccurate, probably goes a long way towards getting people interested in science. And that's a good thing for a) producing future scientists and b) securing funding.
In general I agree with you. But this case is different. This is not the popular press publishing this false information, it's NASA itself. I think they ought to hold themselves to a higher standard.
I guess I mentally put whatever part of NASA published this in the same category as university PR departments. You almost certainly know more about how NASA works than I do.
Your analogy is not wrong, but I think university PR departments ought to be held to a higher standard too. If a university PR department issued a press release that denied anthropogenic climate change or evolution there would be an uproar. Why should it suddenly be OK to play fast-and-loose with the truth just because the topic is physics rather than biology or climate science?
I had to think a bit before responding, but university PR departments regularly report questionable findings. The two you picked are obviously highly politicized topics, so it's obvious why that would cause an uproar.
I agree that they ought to be held to a higher standard, but I think that the motivation of scientists for not doing so is more out of apathy, and less out of a desire to seem more mysterious.
The majority of experts I know feel like it's futile to try and correct the media's representation of their field. I think QM has it doubly hard as it has all the issues of other technical field, while suffering from both the problem of its ontology being foreign to the lay-person and certain key points of its ontology are still debated within the field.