I think your economics example may work in the opposite direction to the rest: I'd probably expect a more serious article if Adam Smith were mentioned without invoking the "invisible hand".

Humanities students and later journalists do seem familiar with brand names rather than the concepts of other disciplines, but these brands seem to be personalised (Darwin, Einstein) only in the case of the natural sciences. For journalists discussing social sciences, especially economics, namedropping the concept itself seems the preferred way to signal learning.

Good stuff agnostic. I was interested most by how the four graphs differ, than how they are the same. The ones for evolution seem to speak to the recent resurgence of biology, thanks partly to the breakthroughs in molecular biology and sequencing of the human genome. But what you see there is that it peaked around the mid-nineties and has flat-lined mostly since then.

The big bang graph doesn't follow this trend, it looks pretty linear, signaling that the dissemination of physics (and most hard sciences presumably) is increasing steadily.

The "invisible hand" graph shows the capriciousness of reporting on the social sciences. What you said about the NYT could probably apply to most publications: they have terrible coverage of the health sciences, psychology, etc. Most of the time it's silly headlines like: "Study finds chocolate eaters live longer" that confuses correlation with causation and simply appeals to the tabloid curiosity of the readers instead of their scientific acumen.

I'd probably expect a more serious article if Adam Smith were mentioned without invoking the "invisible hand".

Ha, yes, that could be true. Perhaps it's an example of what I said about social science coverage declining in substance over time.

The weakness of the social "sciences" is not just in reporting of them, but among practitioners themselves as well. I remember when I was in grad school a fellow student explained reviewing a study whose authors' data proved them wrong, yet, she explained, they still "believed" in their hypothesis.

I nearly fell out of the chair.

Can you honestly call it "inquiry" if you won't accept the results of your own analysis if it conflicts with what you "want" the answer to be?

Seeing social "scientists" in action served only to reinforce my already heavily skeptical nature.

Anyway, thanks so much for that article. I am always trying to tell my friends that much of that stuff is bs.

What difference does it make how well science is reported if it's not carefully thought out and understood by the public?

People aren't just passive recipients of media - or more precisely, scientific thinkers aren't. Whether people act as scientific thinkers or not depends on choices they make, not on how information is presented to them.

Whether people act as scientific thinkers or not depends on choices they make, not on how information is presented to them.

Listen to what you just said -- carefully thinking out and understanding a scientific topic does not depend on whether they're just hearing names and stories vs. having Carl Zimmer or Nick Wade walk them through the concept.

Obviously it doesn't ensure that the public would ace a science test, but give me a break about "does not depend."

sg: I think you are asking a bit much that social scientists should operate the same way as hard scientists (although I think it's a good ideal to have). There is bias in both areas. The difference is that with human-based research areas that people's feelings naturally get in the way more often than in the esoteric, no-immediate-impact-on-people's-lives work that goes on in the basic sciences.

Of course we want our researchers to be unbiased and objective, but what is even more important is that there is significant dialogue and debate in order to keep a balanced view from the field in general. Systematic bias is a much worse problem than individual bias. You could argue that the social sciences have more of both, but that is mainly due, in my opinion, to the nature of the topic. The more human-based, the more controversial and ideological the work becomes. You just have to look at the humanities' to see what I'm talking about.

But just because there's more bias in a field, doesn't make it worthless scientifically. You just have to be more conscious of it, and there are still plenty of nuggets of truth to be found. And if you spend time in the social sciences, like I have, you'll realize that the questions being asked there are actually of more importance to more people than, for example, whether dark matter is involved in the formation of galaxies, or whether birds evolved from dinosaurs. I don't mean to wax all poetic here, but I'm sure you see my point that the social sciences still have great potential that shouldn't be simply dismissed due to the perception of bias.

It's "educable," by the way.

Nah, educatable gets plenty of Google hits. And the morphology is more transparent -- capable of being educated.

Orion,

I agree social sciences have great potential, but to expand that potential, standards must improve. One point of the post was that social science reporting was poor. I simply added that social sciences tolerate a compromised level of honesty in inquiry, which biased reporting further amplifies.

Listen to what you just said

I know what I just said. Now, you listen:

Providing the public with high-quality information will not help them to understand it if they don't want to understand and seek to understand. Providing them with low-quality information won't stop the people who are genuinely interested from learning - although it will make it less convenient.

The people who would be dissuaded by minor inconvenience aren't worth much at all in terms of effective governance and priority-setting.

Your data does not support your thesis that there is better scientific reporting because it does not follow from mentioning a scientists name and a theory, that a deep (or an intelligent, or a correct) version of that theory is being discussed. Seems from your methodology that an article on X saying something like "X is famous for having developed the Y theory. X was born... " would qualify even if it were only a "biographical piece (that) presents the social history of the scientists, rather than digest what their contributions were and convey that substance to the readers". As you say yourself, such articles would contain the name, the theory but not the substance.