Humor aside, it really concerns me that so much of the information in mainstream science news articles can mislead readers.

More worrying is that it's often not possible to persuade someone who is swayed in the wrong direction, because they just don't have the base level of knowledge to allow it.

On this point I almost want to say that every person who graduates from High School ought to have gone through a rigorous class in logic and another in statistics. It's all well and good to say everyone should have "critical thinking" skills, but you can't get there without some pretty solid intellectual tools.

In cases like this I think it would be helpful if the reporter (probably with the help of the scientist) laid out all the possible explanations for this finding. In this case it would include 'people with a smaller nucleus accumbens are more likely to smoke pot.' Showing people all the possible interpretations of a scientific result is hard, even for scientists. We often miss interpretations that in retrospect seem obvious given the data. Science news needs to report about the science first and about any human elements second.

As a reporter I've found that striking a balance between accuracy and reasonable summary can be extremely difficult, and sometimes a headline that has to be less than 45 characters or so ends up being more suggestive than it should. But I hate this kind of story as much as others do, and I'm proud to say I've rejected quite a few stories the editors wanted because of salacious write-ups, and I'm careful to use the language of the study itself or check with the researchers, almost all of whom are happy to discuss their work. We also have a phenomenally well-informed science/space editor where I work, who has been in the press since they were printing the newspaper in the basement of the building. So that helps.

It's worse to have to be the guy who points stuff like this out on Facebook, where you end up sounding like the science equivalent of a grammar nazi - but I've grown to be fine with it, since there's much less room for interpretation in the results of a limited and specific piece of research.

I don't think this problem can be addressed without talking about the fundamental difference in incentives between the groups.

Reporters are incentivized to get the story to sell. Especially as there are more & more freelancers, competition is becoming intense. And let's face it, by nature, we as consumers of information are drawn to the outlandish and sensational. There was an HN a few weeks ago about someone who put out fake crazy headlines and got crazy CTR on Twitter.

Scientists are incentivized to be objective in finding the truth. Scientists avoid making claims about causation until the last possible moment just so they can be sure all the variables have been controlled for and the results are not outliers.

I don't have any well-thought through answers... but thoughts?

You're a reporter. Your career is helped if your articles sell a lot. Of course you have an incentive to put a bit of "kick" in the title, or even in the content of the article, if that will help your baseline.

Money-driven outcomes are not always optimal.

StarTalk Radio (hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson) has covered this topic together with Miles O' Brien in the two most recent episodes. I'm a fan of the show, but I can imagine some might find it too humorous for their tastes.

http://www.startalkradio.net/show/reporting-on-science-part-...

EDIT: By "this topic" I meant science reporting, not marijuana.

To some of the older folks on HN - is this a new problem?

The last few years have brought on a whole different type of newsmedia hybrid (the buzzfeeds, huffpos and gawkers) organization that is driven primarily by clicks and do not hold themselves to the standards of traditional print news. While there were dubious options on paper before (Daily Posts, National Enquirers), the internet is far greater venue for propagating bullshit with clickbait headlines. Some of the newer sites I'm seeing people post on Facebook have skipped the truth part altogether, they go straight to fabricating stories. TV has gone the same direction with news-entertainment.

I'm pretty concerned. When its too hard to find signal in all the noise, I'm afraid folks will give up altogether. With Buzzfeed putting out longform articles and NYT putting up quizzes, its already hard to discern who cares about delivering real news and who will do anything for clicks.

But maybe I'm just young (25), and people have always found echo chambers, and yellow journalism is always something we've had to wade through to find the facts. What do you guys think? Has anything actually changed?

What makes this problem even worse is that articles almost never cite the original research (or provide a link). If they did this then it would be far easier to look at the original paper. Just reading the abstract of most papers is often enough to give the lay person a relativly good understanding of the scope and actual result of the research.

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I think the point should be, this study should not have been published at all. The sample size was way too small with results open to misinterpretation.

After a scan, I think the Boston Globe article is well written.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2014/04...

The title is "Study finds brain changes in young marijuana users". Maybe it should read "differences" instead of "changes".

> Lots of people smoke pot. They do so, presumably, because it affects their brains, and not despite that fact. It would be astonishing and inexplicable to find that getting high didn't bring about changes in the brain. But are those changes lasting? Are they permanent? We don't know and we'd like to know.

The study didn't even find that the brains had changed at all, just that they were different.

As the sample was so small, they could just have well concluded that brown hair made a difference or people who prefer broccoli to cheese are more likely to smoke pot.

I use this to try to show people what I mean by "correlation is not causation"

http://twentytwowords.com/funny-graphs-show-correlation-betw...

I've seen many a publication where the scientist urge restraint in interpreting results, but then the newspapers completely ignore their pleas and go instead to proclaim "Study of 10 subjects proves X could make you immortal!". It's irresponsible journalism.

It's quite ironic for NPR to say some news outlets twist facts and headlines to get a point across. Considering the main stream media does this on a daily basis and nobody bats an eye about it.

If you want to talk about misreporting something, you should start there, not a few articles on people casually using weed.

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Scientific journalism is masturbatory in nature: the focus is on the climax, rather than the foreplay that is needed to get there.

Careface.

Relevant XKCD comic, as required in these situations:

http://xkcd.com/552/