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A comment on ‘Negative Mass’ Created at Washington State University. Parent comment

Re:‘Negative Mass’ Created at Washington State University by dwaltrip on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @01:34AM (#14095036)
It's quite unfortunate that an official university news release seems to purposefully mislead its audience.

Or do they really just assume that no one cares about the difference? I find that hard to believe.

I suppose incompetence is also a potential explanation.

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Re:‘Negative Mass’ Created at Washington State University by djsumdog on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @02:36AM (#14095324)
PhD comics really explains this pretty well:

http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174

I thought they did a video on the science/news cycle as well, but I can't seem to find it.

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Re:‘Negative Mass’ Created at Washington State University by forgotmysn on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @03:21AM (#14095514)
im sorry, but to me that comic doesn't explain it one bit. the university press in the comic doesn't (appear) to deliberately click-bait the headline, it seems to be a process in your example.

Washington State University appears to to have bypassed that process and gone straight for the misleading, click-bait title. This is disappointing because who better than the University Press themselves to try to provide as much clarity as possible. It's not like they don't have access to good sources...

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Re:‘Negative Mass’ Created at Washington State University by TeMPOraL on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @06:31AM (#14096343)
The incentives of university's PR department aren't to provide accurate reporting on what's happening in said university to other scientists; it's to generate "buzz" around the university so that ultimately it gets more money. In this way, it's no better than regular news sources, and thus the quality is more-less the same.
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Re:‘Negative Mass’ Created at Washington State University by dwaltrip on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @12:29PM (#14099237)
But they also do have more of a reputation on the line. Universities are expected to be dignified institutions, moreso than your average news org I would think.
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Re:‘Negative Mass’ Created at Washington State University by godelski on Wednesday April 19, 2017 @03:45PM (#14151088)
No model is 100% accurate. Especially when that model is a joke.
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