DO THE PAPERS LIE ABOUT SCIENCE?
[Dr. Edwin E. Slosson, director of Science Service, which supplies a daily bulletin service on scientific subjects to the newspapers, says that on the whole the newspapers do not lie about science. He gives an interesting resume of the results of a survey made of the treatment of biological subjects. The resume is herewith reproduced.]
PROFESSORS as a rule have a poor opinion of the press. They are apt to think that editors are not merely regardless of the truth of the scientific “stories” they print but that they publish by preference the most absurd and
many different cities from Boston to Los
Angela were taken for a month and all
the articles dealing with biological topics
were clipped and classified.
The number of biological articles found
during the month was 3,961, and of these
sensational stuff to be found.
only 14 were classed as “fictitious.” Four of these appeared in one paper, (San
It is a
common faculty saying about newspaper science that “what is new is not true and
what is true is not new.”
It is also a
common complaint in pedagogical circles
that the newspapers do not pay much attention to science anyhow, that what little they do publish is antiquated and un reliable, and altogether unworthy the no tice of educators. But it has occurred to two scientific men to apply the scientific test to the prev alent opinion of scientists and see wheth
er it is true or false.
Or, rather, to find
out to what extent it is true and false, for
Francisco). Of the others, two at least cannot be regarded as serious and delib
erate attempts to deceive. One is a hum orous account of a hoodoo black cat on Hallowe’en and the other tells of a rooster who had been named Harding and taught to smoke cigarets. But I have known very strange things to happen on Hallowe’en,
even on the campus, and I have been told by a reputable scientist of a rooster that would eat cigarets, and surely chewing tobacco is as hard as smoking it, espe
cially when one is toothless.
to the scientist everything is relative and must be measured. The place where this experimental
Pmzss KEEPS UP To Dara
Fortunately the fakes are short. There
method was tried was, as we might antic
are 25,596 inches in the total and the fic
ipate, the experimental school of Teachers College, Columbia. called the Lincoln School, which, although a new institution, has already exploded several scholastic fallacies.
titious matter only measures 48, so that
Lr1'rna Ixacounacr Fouxo The School has now another such scalp to its credit, for its director, Otis W.
according to space one would have to read on the average 500 inches of newspaper
biology before he would strike an inch of fiction. Not of course that the biologists are willing to O. K. in detail all the other 499 inches. But they say that “gross mis statements of fact were
not
common”
and on many of the dubious points there
Caldwell, in collaboration with Charles
was room for honest differences of opin
W. Finley, has just reported the results of their statistical study of “Biology in
ion. As for its being antiquated stuff, Messrs. Finley and Caldwell affirm that “newspapers appear to be more up-to
the Public Press,” which shows that scien tists, in this field at least, have less rea son to complain than they thought they had. Fourteen prominent papers in as
date in things biological than are college and high school texts in the subject,” and
in conclusion they turn tables on the
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