Journalist + science = idiocy

[BlooInBloo]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/09/21/supernova.reut/index.html

I leave to you to find the obvious silliness in this article.

Hint: There's one thing for DAMN sure a physicist didn't say. lol!

[Kutjara]

1. You don't expect a journalist to be able to tell the difference...

...between mass and size, do you? I mean, we all know that big things are heavier than small things, right?

[BlooInBloo]

3. lol - that's an an ambiguity - not an outright error...

... and you didn't clarify it by using the words "size", "big", and "small" - try "volume" instead.

[Tesha]

7. Like this?

[DireStrike]

2. Science is anathema to journalists

and vice versa.

[BlooInBloo]

4. lol! nice!

[darkism]

5. Journalists have to become reasonably well-versed...

...in a huge number of topics, frequently on very short notice. The clear majority have a healthy respect for factual accuracy, despite a few flubs now and then. The reporter who wrote this may not have spent his life studying the topic, but considering the circumstances, I'd say he did a decent job.

Just because journalists don't have to deal with much complex math doesn't mean their job is any less tough than that of scientists.

[BlooInBloo]

6. lol! An eloquent defense of idiocy!

[darkism]

8. At least you thought I was eloquent.

I am going to school for journalism, after all. :)

[Orsino]

9. There's a more serious error...

...than the confusion of mass and size. A sentence like this one:

Scientists have believed that dying stars known as "white dwarfs" can't expand to more than 1.4 times the size of our sun without exploding...

...stems from misunderstandings of key points made in this way, from Wikipedia:

White dwarfs cannot independently exceed 1.4 solar masses (the Chandrasekhar limit).

The journalist has misapprehended a key point. Science isn't talking about white dwarfs growing, but about a limit on the size of ordinary star that can become a white dwarf. One might just as well say that fighter pilots can't grow above six feet tall.