Accepting Bad Science?

[fumster]

People in the media are mostly breathtakingly stupid. But yet they project the illusion of knowing something. This has really been apparent lately with the coverage of the reactors in Japan. I heard an exchange like this:

“and this particular isotope has a half life of 10 years”.
“So it won’t be safe for another 10 years then?”.

Not to mention the differences among beta, gamma, and alpha radiation or the concept of a rate vs a quantity.

[Chronos]

Quoth DHMO (mind if I call you Hydroxic Acid?):

In one case that stands out in my mind, there was a group of researchers who had gotten funding from the US EPA to determine 1. Whether unicellular organisms which died in the Gulf waters released their nuclear material intact into the environment, 2. If (1.), whether other organisms took up the released nuclear material and 3. Expressed the proteins encoded by the uptaken nuclear material. The point of the research was to understand a possible vector of mutations occuring in the natural environment. The answers were: 1. Yes 2. Yes and 3. Yes.

All of the major local media had covered the story—the Tampa Tribune, the St. Pete Times, the Tampa Bay Business Journal, several local news channels and a few cable news outlets. Without fail, they had all reported that the researchers were genetically modifying the nuclear material of living organisms and then releasing them into the environment, effectively creating a Frankenstein-Monster scenario in the Gulf of Mexico.

And I shudder to think what those reporters were doing with the term “nuclear material”.