Information is power they say, and so it follows that when information is mischaracterized, inaccurate and worse, misleading, power becomes manipulative and oftentimes self-serving.
Headlines as attention grabbers in this age of short attention spans and skimmed reading only make matters worse.
I’ve written before, as in the case of the uncoupling of IQ and Dyslexia, on how science reporting can grossly sway a reader’s attention towards the opposite of the central theme of a study or finding.
In this NPR piece, headlights are shining on purposeful misrepresentations of truth and findings that can occur in science reporting.
Not just mistakes, but misdeeds.
A newly published analysis finds that more than two-thirds of biomedical papers retracted over the past four decades were the result of misconduct, not error. That’s much higher than previous studies of retractions had found.