Hey, it’s only Tuesday and we already have what I can call as the worst headline of the week!
I posted the story the other day about organic matter found on a meteorite. Some compounds necessary for life were already known to be in the rock, but it was conclusively shown that they were native to the meteorite and did not seep in after it hit the Earth. This means that perhaps the first basic building blocks of life fell from space (though I was careful to point out that they also could have been made here on Earth as well).
So yesterday Popular Science posted an article on this topic. Their headline?
"Genetic Material Found on Meteorite"
Ouch! When I read something like that, I’m thinking DNA, not the basic molecules DNA uses. That’s a poor choice of words.
It doesn’t get better with the subtitle, either: "A meteorite in Australia has been found to contain component molecules of DNA ". That’s clearer, a bit, but still murky; the letters DNA kinda leap out, and squash the component molecules part.
The article itself is fine; I’ll note that usually headlines for papers and magazines are not written by the authors (though I insisted that part of my contract here at BA is that I do all my own stunts and headlines).
Tip o’ the Whipple Shield to BABloggee Jelle Kouwenhoven, whom I suspect sent me that article not for the headline but for the content. Bonus!
June 17th, 2008 at 9:21 am
(though I insisted that part of my contract here at BA is that I do all my own stunts and headlines)
And we have suffered your horrible puns ever since.
June 17th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Phil, although I agree that title totally exaggerated, unfornately, one can see similarly inflated titles all around the web. The reason people use this technique is quiet easy to guess. Besides stuff like google page ranking, the editors just wanna come up with something that immediately grabs one’s attention (to generate more traffic to their sites, get more ad revenue etc.).
Personally, I believe the extraterrestrial origins of life theory is the most probable explanation for how life started on the “blue marble” if for nothing else, then only that it will be another big blow for creationists and their alikes.
June 17th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Believe me, it makes me just as sick as it does you. Everyone has to have the more dramatic headline than the other guy, and they will push it to the legal limit so long as they can keep some faint connection to the article while overblowing the headling as much as possible to get people to read.
I saw something on the news that completely illustrates this point, although it’s a pretty common and well-known practice. On the cover of one of those ridiculous entertainment magazines they showed a picture of what looked like Angelina Jolie tripping and falling while she was pregnant, with the headline “ANGELINA FALLS WHILE PREGNANT” or something of that nature. Turns out the cover picture was of someone helping her up slowly after she was sitting down quietly on the beach. Of course the magazine simply said that they had a microscopic caption under the picture, which was their legal loophole in the event someone called them out on their intentionally misleading caption all in the desperate attempt to get people to read their pathetic magazine.
It’s the same reason that “reality TV” is completely engineered in the editing room and bears absolutely no resemblance to the events that actually take place. The media is a joke. There is no discipline and no standard. Ratings equal money, and everyone will do anything to scam as many people as possible into surrendering their attention. The sad thing is that most people don’t even realize they’re being made a fool of. When watching these reality TV shows, they don’t even understand the practice of taking clips from entirely different times of filming and piecing them together to make everything seem as though it’s happening the way the producers of the show want it to.
As I said, most people know by now, after so many years of the “reality TV” style of entertainment, how shameless the media is when it comes to this. But you, me, and people like your readers are too intelligent to be duped by this stuff. And regardless of whether or not you can blame the writer of the article itself, it’s still a problem that we all know won’t go away any time soon.
June 17th, 2008 at 9:36 am
“I do all my own stunts”
C’mon Phil. Credit where it’s due you get a little help from the brave little Marshmallow of Science that does all the DANGEROUS stuff!
June 17th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Yup… I still shake my head and groan every time of think of my favorite most recent BA punchline… err… headline…
Cheeses of Nazareth
June 17th, 2008 at 10:03 am
“Genetic Material Found on Meteorite”
That headline is an outright lie: “genetic material” means “the presence of genes in this material.” My understanding is that they found some compounds that can be precursors to DNA. You can have intact, complete, biologic DNA in double helix B-form that is not genetic material simply by not including the sequence of a gene in the nucleotides of the strands present. Genes are higher level organization.
Somebody should smack PopSci around for a while; they need to work on the veracity of their reporting.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Genetic Material Found on Meteorite
Gives a whole new meaning to the expression “getting your rocks off”.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:20 am
“Man Bites Dog!”
Okay, so it was just a guy eating a hot dog… but the headline sold newspapers!
June 17th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Magazines have to sell as many copies as possible, to the wider possible reader circles or there won’t be around for us to read.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:36 am
There is a huge gap between some adenosine and truly genetic material.
However, when Wöhler synthesized by the first time (1820s) an organic compound (urea) from inorganic substances, Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein”.
Imagination actually consists in filling the gaps.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Same difference as “super earths.” These headlines fall into the category of “made you look.”
I disagree about the phrase “component molecules of DNA.” To me, this means exactly what was discovered in the meteorite: compounds that could lead to to DNA and RNA. In short they found the molecular equivalent of a bag of loose parts. The fact that they found a molecular bag of loose parts that might, if you hold your mouth right, eventually form DNA or RNA is what’s significant, and that significance is summed up in “subtitle.”
June 17th, 2008 at 10:56 am
“Genetic Material Found on Meteorite”
By the crack “CSI” staff, no doubt.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:59 am
And here I thought this was going to be about Ben 10.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:58 am
…and I’m sure “scientists are baffled.”
June 17th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I liked Popular Science a bit as a kid. I now view the magazine as sort of a tabloid.
June 17th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
“Genetic material” is completely wrong, as the defining characteristic of genetic material is its capability to store information, which nucleic acid monomers can’t. It’s like finding silica and saying you’ve seen a RAM chip.
June 17th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
The newspapers and magazines do tend to butcher the science. My favorite was a few years ago when the local paper, describing an upcoming Leonid meteor shower, boldly proclaimed, “Meteorite Storm Tonight!”
Had we known a little more in advance, we could have made a fortune selling helmets.
June 18th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Popular Science, New Scientist, Scientific America … etc …. rags.
It took me a while to catch on to the ‘tabloid’ factor of all these type of magazines but when I did I stopped buying them. It is a real shame that even magazines devoted to science can suffer from this sort of headline scamming so frequently seen in tabloid newspapers.
The thing is the hype and exaggeration surrounding these stories tends to spill over into other areas … sometimes even blogs.
June 18th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Equally bugging is whenever some research of this general kind provokes headlines or copy with the insinuation that people should be amazed that whatever basic material found on Earth “actually came from space”.
I mean, come ON already! If the Earth and all of it’s stuff didn’t form in space, just where is it supposed to have come from?
June 18th, 2008 at 9:06 am
George Kopeliadison:
“Magazines have to sell as many copies as possible, to the wider possible reader circles or there won’t be around for us to read.”
People buy magazines to read anyway, and most established magazines already have fairly stable readerships. The practice of hyping up a story is nothing more than an attempt to increase readership by providing something that they think is more eye-catching or intriguing to interest new readers.
But a gimmick that misleads is still a lousy way to do it, since a mag will drive about as many of their subscribers away as they attract. It’s just too bad that publishers listen more to their ADVERTISERS than they listen to their SUBSCRIBERS. (Anyone can see that increased circulation is profitable to the advertisers, and since much if not most of a magazine’s revenue is paid for by advertisers, publishers tend to defer to their arm-twisting).
Ever notice what a newsstand full of mag covers all vying for attention utilize most? A ludicrous preponderance of the color RED and as many exclamation marks as possible. It’s like facing a concentration of mini-billboards. It gives me a blinding headache every time.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
My brother prefers to call the magazine Popular Science Fiction.
June 19th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
ha!