6. Humans are narrative-consuming animals, which is why anecdotes are powerful things. In reporting they have to be used responsibly.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
7. To some degree, science is an attempt to move beyond anecdotage into a higher order of generalization, scrubbed of distorting specificity
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Replying to @HeerJeet
8. In Star article, anecdotes were set in contrast to statistics (as spurious balance). It's the anecdotes that will live in reader's mind
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Replying to @HeerJeet
9. What makes the Star article so dangerous is that in traditional sense the reporting is "good" (i.e. vivid, heart-breaking stories).
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Replying to @HeerJeet
10. One problem with the Star is that it adopted crusading investigative mode of "we're-going-to-get-to-bottom-of-this"
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Replying to @HeerJeet
11. Under Michael Cooke, crusading investigative mode has worked well for breaking huge stories (Ford, Ghomeshi, Ornge).
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Replying to @HeerJeet
12. For science journalism, crusading investigative mode is far less useful than for political and celebrity scandals.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
13. To be sure, crusading investigative mode good for stories like cigarette companies lying about health consequences of smoking.
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14. But most science stories are not like Watergate. They take place in public debates, not private conspiracies.
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15. Most science develops slowly, cumulatively, in fits and starts with backtracking, but with little real scandal.
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16. So: it's a struggle to make science fit the narrative patterns of journalism. We need to recognize science has its own stories.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
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@HeerJeet This is Mike Hulme’s (http://www.mikehulme.org/ ) argument re:climate change. Scientists need to tell stories. http://www.historyapplied.com/2014/11/hulme-human-geography-and-many-voices.html …0 replies 0 retweets 0 likesThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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