Science...Non-Science

Environmental & Science Education
Literacy
Edward Hessler

Steve Jennings
[CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

A day doesn't pass without a newscaster saying "a new study released today shows...." But does it show anything of the sort reported? Is it to be trusted? Has it been replicated? How was it designed? What is the difference between the press release and the paper which reported the findings?

John Oliver strikes again with this video on the reporting of scientific research as well as the nature of more "studies" than we want to believe exist.

Oliver offers an alternative to TED talks. These are TODD (Trends, Observations, and Dangerous Drivel) Talks. In a format just like TED talks TODD talks expose "the intellectual rigor of morning news shows."

Trigger alert: cursing, innuendo, clear talk about scientific thinking and religious thinking, etc. I think it is overly long by about 10 minutes and the TODD Talks were not nearly as close to a TED talk as they might have been while still capturing their sometimes and all too often vacuity.

h/t: Huffington Post