Andart

I will be a bit nicer to science journalists in the future

Spin city: why improving collective epistemology matters | Practical Ethics - I riff on the recent paper showing that there is plenty of spin already in the paper abstracts in science, adding to the existing distorting effects of science reporting.

Figuring out how to make our collective information processing better matters a lot, especially when it comes to science. If the reporting and understanding of the results is bad, that means that our decisions will be distorted - including further decisions about what is important to fund or report on. I suspect that the impact on total knowledge production and dissemination even from a slightly better collective epistemology would be significant. Research funding bodies might be better off funding development of better trust and reputation systems than many currently fashionable topics, if only to create an environment where it becomes easier to tell what is actually worthwhile.