False equivalency just is the way we report now
Scientists last year detected an odd-shaped object passing through our solar system. It was kind of exciting for people who study these kind of things because it provided some confirmation of a theory that objects like these travel through our solar system all the time.
The University of Hawaii scientists named it ‘Oumuamua (o-MOO-ah-MOO-ah), which means “scout,” because it had traveled so far and was the first interstellar object detected.
There are so many cool things about this object. For example, the place it appears to come from (Vega) wasn’t there 300,000 years ago when this object was, so there’s almost no telling its origin.
Also, it doesn’t fit very neatly into what astronomers classify as an asteroid nor does it behave like a comet (although it is most like the latter). But we know where it came in, what it did while it was here and when it will be gone (it’s set to pass beyond Jupiter in January on its outbound track).
In Depth | Oumuamua - Solar System Exploration: NASA Science
NASA's real-time science encyclopedia of deep space exploration. Our scientists and hardworking robots are exploring…solarsystem.nasa.gov
This week a pair of Harvard scientists put out a short paper that essentially said, “But what if it’s a spaceship?” The paper proposes that it’s the solar sail from a spaceship, long since detached and traveling through space like a child’s lost balloon. Or maybe even an alien probe!
The bare bones of their hypothesis is: ‘Oumuamua is from another solar system; it doesn’t conform to our expectations; it moves a little like our solar sails; it probably is a solar sail from an ancient spaceship.
It’s a pretty proposition, but there aren’t a lot of good reasons to think it. Still, it stirred up a bunch of stories about how Harvard scientists think it might be a spaceship.
People Want to Know
One of the things I miss least about journalism is this idea that because “people” are curious about something it also is worth covering as if it’s a news. I like to imagine that when professionals cover a beat, they also curate it, but that rarely seems to be the case. It’s a flaw built into the system.
Dave Barry has a great passage on how stories like this work. The upshot is, once an editor or publisher decides that something is a story it’s going to get written. Reporters don’t have to like it, but it’s part of the gig and certainly better than having a straight job.
I like to imagine the difference between pitched and assigned stories is the level of enthusiasm for the subject. I don’t know for a fact this is true in this case, but when the first part of the story is a rehash of a press release, and the rest of it is quotes debunking the headline’s premise I feel like it’s an assigned story.
What I love about a little of the reporting I’ve seen on this alien craft is it’s essentially a letter from the writer to everyone else that says, “I know what the headline probably is going to say, but this is a dumb story.”
Most of the stories just play up the “Aliens Are Coming” angle.
The paper’s authors say it’s improbable, other scientists (including the people from SETI) say it’s unlikely, even. It’s probably just a cool looking rock. The best quote (and the one that ought to have killed or at least framed the coverage) is from astronomer Coryn Bailer-Jones:
“In science, we must ask ourselves, ‘Where is the evidence?,’ not ‘Where is the lack of evidence so that I can fit in any hypothesis that I like?’”
What Separates News
If you were a regular person who didn’t have to write a story about how “scientists” thought this was an alien craft. You might still take a cursory look at available evidence and maybe even ask some scientists who are experts on the matter. Once you found out that there really was nothing to the story, you most likely would drop it.
The difficulty for reporters is that they too often just can’t. Once a story is assigned, there’s no such thing as a non-story. It’s going to get written. And if the subject matter is juicy enough, it’s going to get read. The best a reporter can do is provide all of the things that make something like this a non-story in the text, and let it just be a silly story.
So what’s a little troublesome is how few reporters actually did just let the foolishness of the story float to the top.
NBC did a pretty good job, providing much of the debunking early and convincingly in the story. Places like USA Today and the Huffington Post (predictably?) ignored the less sexy angle that it’s just a cool space rock.
What’s tough is that, even though this is a dumb story about a borderline-irrelevant scientific paper so many of these outlets still embrace false-equivalency as if it’s actual reporting. When the balance of experts and reason say something isn’t so, that has to be what the story is about.
Credibility and clicks are not mutually exclusive, but they’re not the same thing either. When you consistently trade one for the other on “fun” stories, you can’t complain when “real” stories don’t get traction.