More "churnalism"

At the risk of starting to sound like a old curmudgeon (ok - what risk - who am I kidding?), there's another lovely example of "churnalism" out there today.

Right now there's a breaking news story reporting a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, in which climate modelling of exoplanet Gliese 581d shows that it might be habitable.

Gliese 581d is about 20 light years from Earth.  The original press release mentions how it would take Voyager-1, our furthest-travelled spacecraft, around 300 000 years to get there.  A nice bit of info to include to give some perspective etc.

But hey, somewhere a "correspondent" writing up the story for newswire service AFP has embellished this with the observation that "A spaceship travelling close to light speed would take more than 20 years to get there".

However, when you're dealing with travel close to the speed of light, you need to define your frame of reference.  Thanks to time dilation of special relativity, very little time would actually pass for passengers on a spaceship travelling to Gliese near the speed of light.  But more than 20 years would pass for us left here on Earth.  So that statement is really not accurate, and gives the erroneous impression of a 20-year journey for passengers on the spaceship.

Ok, I'm being a pedant (no apologies for that; I'm a scientist).  But this is basic, GCSE stuff (or it should be).  Does anyone remember the great episode in Carl Sagan's Cosmos where he explains all this?  That series is long overdue for a re-run.  Or perhaps Prof Brian Cox could cover it (if he hasn't already; time dilation of special relativity is surely one of the wonders of the Universe)?

Anyway, in the meantime, we can track the erroneous statement spreading on the interweb, to show how common "churnalism" has become.

Right now the following supposedly-illustrious outlets are running it:

- The Daily Telegraph

- ABC News

- Cosmos magazine

- Discovery.com

- Space Daily (who even give the newswire article a byline of "by Staff Writers", which might make you think someone at Space Daily - who really ought to know better - wrote it)

- Plus Sydney Morning Herald, Brisbane Times, to name a few so far.

Reader comments on some of those websites do point out the error.  And of course, if those outlets actually had proper reporters covering the story, and contacting the researchers to ask questions and check facts, the error would be corrected.

When this lovely recent poll in the US asked "who does the public want bringing them their information on science news, related policies, and impacts on society?", the answer was "A majority want the scientists themselves". 

Perhaps churnalism is one of the reasons people want to hear about the latest research findings more "from the horse's mouth", rather than at the end of a long chain of whispers.  Good news for us, however, *if* we are equipped for and supported in that task.

There are still damn good science journalists out there, producing excellent, accurate copy with balanced, independent comment.  But their numbers have fallen in cutbacks, while media outlets try to figure out how to make money from online news. I for one would happily pay for old-school quality - and happily abandon "free" churnalism-based "news" on the internet.