September's Topic: Science Journalists and the articles they don't read

How "first to report" and "infotainment" science damages the way that true science gets reported.

A few days ago I put out an open thread about the difficulties of reading journals and provided a poll, with one question asking what journalists/reporters can do to improve their reporting.

As of now the current 1st place response was to speak in laymen’s terms more often. That’s certainly an issue I have with how I report, although I generally make the argument that laymen’s terms can lose out on a lot of the meat of a study when ideas and concepts must be boiled down.

However, I gave the option of “other” as a response and asked for an explanation.

Surprisingly, several people asked for something that really should be expected from science journalists in the first place-- that they read the damn studies that they cover!