Science article follow up pet peeve

[Janx]

I just saw the thread about gliese 581d. Its like the third reference ive seen in as many days. And folks act like its all big news.

Despite last years thread about imagining a dnd world on a tidally locked planet based on an article about gliese 581.

Its lime people have blinders on with science articles. They dont know whats new, or addendum.

And these articles don't do any followup. So you'll never see anything saying "remember that planet we found last year, well we think it might support life"

All these science articles are like filler news. Its short, teasing and often speculative.

Like the aircar i read about over 10 years ago. It really exists, but cant be flight tested. And you'll see articles and pics of it from time to time. Has nothing ever come of this?

Or the various popular science articles. I remember reading an article about memory being the size of a credit card and holding at least a GB. What became of that technology? How did it contribute to the memory technologies of today?

 

[Umbran]

All these science articles are like filler news. Its short, teasing and often speculative.

Yep. Each news outlet has an audience. The authors for that outlet are writing with their audience in mind.

If the news item is coming from Yahoo, or CNN, or some other mass-media source, the readers may be expected to be intrigued by the item, but are not expected to be deeply into the science, or so deeply interested that they'd want follow-up. A little frill piece that provokes a bit of thought, or maybe gets them to look elsewhere for deeper information, is sufficient for such outlets.

If you want deeper reporting on science topics, you need to go to science-minded outlets, not mass media.