Let's not talk about science

I considered blogging about the study indicating conservatives were more likely to have been whiny children when it was first covered a few days ago. I wanted to say something to the tune of "we have a hard enough time covering and discussing largely apolitical science, so we should just give up all hope of a reasonable discourse surrounding anything political."

Putting the substance of the study aside for a monent, here's how my favorite local tabloid opens their coverage today:

And you thought liberals were the whiners.

Yes, Jessica Fargen, we all thought liberals were the whiners. Watch Bill O'Reilly much? Great job at rising above petty stereotypes to show some objectivity and balance. Did you help out with those hit pieces on gay marriage supporters?

Getting back to the substance of the study: did you read the study itself? No? I didn't either. I didn't try hard to find it, but that's not my job. At least not my day job. I'll go out on a limb and guess 100% of the coverage on this study is based solely on press releases and interviews.

For all we know, it could be a fantastic study, full of insight. Or maybe it's complete garbage, with false conculsions and sloppy work. But no one discussing it knows, and there is no mechanism in this country for digesting and responding rationally to scientific information, so we won't know.

Coverage like this is the other side of the coin that permits credulous reporting on 'creation science'. It's not a problem that's going away anytime soon, and it's going to bite us on the ass as more and more complex issues -- stem cell research, prenatal genetic testing, energy, cloning -- become pressing policy questions.

What can we do? Let's start with a moratorium on press releases about scientific papers.