Distorted Science Part I

A person can gauge the reliability of a journalist by their grasp of subject material and usage of the English language. After all, they do put their journalistic pieces either in print or film depending on their chosen medium.

Very good measures of how reliable or trustworthy a scientist is in any field minimally are how well they can stick to and maintain basic scientific terms. These basic terms are taught to everyone throughout the world in the Elementary grades often around 4-6^th grade and sometimes as early as 1^st grade. These terms are observation, hypothesis, experiment, data, conclusion, model, theory, validated, falsified, and law. All these are well defined here.

The primary most intentionally or unintentionally misused term is the scientific theory. From the above website it is defined as: “A scientific theory or law represents an hypothesis, or a group of related hypotheses, which has been confirmed through repeated experimental tests.” A journalist can get a pass on botching up the definition due to improper training or research but it should never get past the editor. However, there is absolutely no excuse for a scientist in any field to distort the meaning. If they do, discard their statements as their bias has superseded their science.

In an article by Ana Elena Azpurua of Newsweek titled In Search of the God Particle, both the journalist and the scientist Professor Steven Weinberg come up lacking on the most crucial of terminology tests. So yes, I’m effectively calling them both out on this category.

First up and the most scathing criticism belongs to the journalist. Had the article rotated around the experiment regarding the attempt to find the “elusive particle called the Higgs boson” it would have been fine. But instead Ms. Azpurua makes a poor attempt at doing an illuminating interview regarding science and can barely veil her vitriol to any religion. This can be easily deduced from her chosen questions and some of her opening lines.

Some examples are:

• “The goal is to find signs of an elusive particle called the Higgs boson—also known as the "God particle" because it might ultimately lead to a grand theory of the universe.”
• “As we come closer to developing an ultimate theory of the universe, how will this impact religion?”
• “At some point will it be possible to find proof that God or the Ultimate Designer does not exist?”