Science journalist retires at 98 and warns of generation of Americans who suffer from a thinking 'disability’
A 98-year-old US science journalist, who has finally decided to retire, has said a generation of Americans are suffering from a “major disability in what they can think about and understand”.
David Perlman, who has not only won awards but had them named after him , said this was one reason why so many people refused to recognise climate change was real.
Speaking to the website of the Poynter Institute , which trains the media, The San Francisco Chronicle journalist described cuts in science coverage by newspapers as “absolutely obscene”.
“Newspapers, whether online or in print, are a major factor in the ongoing education and awareness of the public, and specifically of a younger generation,” he said.
“And whether it's online or in print, the idea of failing to cover advances in science ... it creates a generation with a major disability in what they can think about and understand.”
This lack of critical thinking was being demonstrated in the US public’s reaction to scientific evidence that the world is getting warmer because of greenhouse gas emissions, largely caused by fossil fuels.
“A perfect example of that [lack of understanding of science] is the controversy over climate change, global warming and all that that implies,” Mr Perlman said.
“The failure of people to understand that this is real science, and it's just as scientifically valid as an issue today as is the fact that we're going to have an eclipse of the sun on August 21. That's not a theory — that's going to happen.
“And the climate is going to change more, and more and more.
“The resistance to an understanding of that I can understand ... which is largely generated by people whose economic interests are threatened by the fact that what's causing the changing climate is, in fact, the increasing emissions of greenhouse gases.”
A recent poll by YouGov found 57 per cent of Americans thought that a combination of human activity and natural causes were causing global warming.
According to Nasa and other scientific bodies, greenhouse gas emissions have caused the vast majority of recent warming with the world experiencing three successive, record-breaking hottest years. The natural El Nino weather cycle has had a relatively minor effect.
Mr Perlman said once there had been 50 to 75 pages in newspapers devoted to science across the US but now “there’s The New York Times on Tuesday” with only a few others having anything similar.
“I think newspapers have abdicated their responsibility by diminishing the amount of science coverage,” Mr Perlman said.
Born in 1918, he will be nearly 99 when he leaves the Chronicle in August after nearly 70 years at the paper.
He said he only began thinking about retirement last year, but then thought: “What the hell — it was too much fun still working, and I could still write good stories”.
“It was, I think, a couple of months ago, something like that, that I realised it's really time to stop."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/science-journalist-retires-98-warns-104600883.html
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At 98, he probably doesnt realize how much science news is available online, but on the other hand you could argue that the fantastic number of options online dilutes the impact of any one train of thought.
At 98, he probably doesnt realize how much science news is available online, but on the other hand you could argue that the fantastic number of options online dilutes the impact of any one train of thought.
That's a good point.
When the Internet first started to become popular, I was very optimistic-- because of the fact that it made so much information so readily available to everyone, I had thought the truth would win out, and we'd see more sensible discourse.
But unfortunately in many cases the effect has been just the opposite. (In fact, I think a major contributing factor to the political extremism that's become so common recently has been the Internet
).
While he does have a point. He has failed to think critically about the so-called evidence of Global Warming. The vast majority of it cannot pass the standards to be more than Junk Science as the precision, accuracy, and error are all below the 95th Percentile. You have the GISS data being adjusted by full degrees, thereby making that worthless as evidence. He has bought into the dogma, rather than thought scientifically about it. I have stated on Newsvine that I was a Chemistry major and had drilled into my head from all my various courses in Chemistry that if the data is not in the 95th Percentile it is worthless. Heck, you actually want it to be in the 98th Percentile.