It is well known that the popular and mass media have a problem with presenting science related news, often oversensationalizing studies, often distorting results and/or conclusions, but, perhaps most frustrating, providing inadequate identification of sources, for example, not giving the reference of a journal article that the article is describing.
The latest rant-inducing example of dumb journalism is by, pardon the expression, Benedict Carey of the NY Times who in an article published on June 25, 2015, goes on at length about new publication guidelines that the journal "Science" are going to try to implement that are called "TOP" for "Transparency and Openness Promotion". The article can be accessed on the NY Times website at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/26/science/journal-science-releases-guidelines-for-publishing-scientific-studies.html?mabReward=CTM&moduleDetail=recommendations-1&action=click&contentCollection=Television®ion=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&configSection=article&isLoggedIn=true&src=recg&pgtype=article or http://tinyurl.com/ncbccbd The article has embedded links to other articles on the NY Times website (e.g., to the recently retracted survey on same sex marriage). It even has a link to Retraction Watch blog; see: http://retractionwatch.com/ NOTE: Careful with those meeting abstracts And it even has a link to the Center for Open Science which has been one of the groups promoting such standards; see: http://centerforopenscience.org/ NOTE: Robert Nosek is the executive director of this nonprofit. Nosek's name may be familiar to people because of his work with Mahzarin Banaji. So, one would think that Carey would provide a link to the article he is describing or a reference for it. Sorry, you're SOL. I had to Google search for the Science article in question and it wasn't as easy as I initially thought. Here is the article that I think Carey is describing: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1422.full?sid=ee0a3f63-e21b-48c6-994c-632cb805c599 (NOTE: One can download a PDF of the article on this webpage) The Science article describes in a little more detail what TOP guideline are but is limited in what is presented. There is a link to Nosek's Center for Open Science that constitutes the "front page" to materials on TOP, including lists of the (a) journals that have signed up to adopt TOP standards and (b) organizations that subscribe to TOP standards. http://centerforopenscience.org/top/ NOTE: Hey APA! Where you at?! If someone actually wants to read the TOP guidelines, here's a link to them on the Center for Open Science website: https://osf.io/9f6gx/ Now why couldn't Carey provide the links to the Science magazine article or the webpage with TOP guidelines? Perhaps he was concerned that there were would be too much traffic to those sites and that's why he mostly used NY Times links instead. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=45552 or send a blank email to leave-45552-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
