I enjoyed this funny article about science-journalism cliches. Via Andrew Gelman. At the moment it has 643 comments. The five posts that preceded it (none of which Andrew linked to) have 19, 7, 6, 11, and 20 comments. Correlation or causation?
Last night someone asked me if it was hard to write scientific articles. I said no. As a friend said to me about her copy-editing job at The New Yorker, a trained monkey could do it. My articles are just as formulaic as everyone else’s. I hope the content isn’t formulaic, but the structure is.
How about TV science doucheumentaries? Scientist-as-sleuth, like it’s The Da Vinci Code. So pompus, blegh. I watched a Stephen Hawking documentary a few days ago; it was an utter waste of time – full of pointless whizz-bang graphics and patronising exposition that could have been condensed into a single simple diagram.
And cliche-a-go-go: “is AMAZING possibiliy X really possible? [30 mins of ponderous, self-important investigations] No. It is not. But this other much less amazing possibility is possible.” And you know they knew this from the bloody get-go and did not have to fly over the pyramids in a helicopter to find out.
The author may have been inspired by this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z4b_KMNpfs&feature=related