An experiment suggested by a PhD student may rewrite chemistry textbooks

Re:An experiment suggested by a PhD student may rewrite chem... by rubidium on Thursday June 25, 2020 @06:06AM (#23638859)

This is classic hn dismissalism. The news article isn’t great, but it did a better job than you give it credit for in stating the significance. It linked the paper and talked about birch reactions.

I don’t read Science (the journal) regularly, but news articles like this function as flags for “there may be an new paper worth reading” so I go get it from everyone’s favorite repository of scientific papers. That’s the value.

If you want to critique the state of scientific news writing that’s fine but realize you’re just whining. The fact that it’s about science news isn’t that much different than political news.

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Re:An experiment suggested by a PhD student may rewrite chem... by tomp on Thursday June 25, 2020 @09:04AM (#23640217)

If you put a title "may rewrite chemistry books" on top of an article about "a new paper worth reading", you're doing it wrong. Classical click-bait at best, fake news at worst.

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Re:An experiment suggested by a PhD student may rewrite chem... by lallysingh on Thursday June 25, 2020 @09:30AM (#23640488)

If it causes one line of chem textbooks to change, it's fit the claim. Not a very high standard, just sexy sounding.

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Re:An experiment suggested by a PhD student may rewrite chem... by snakeboy on Thursday June 25, 2020 @09:48AM (#23640705)

"rewrite" obviously implies a much larger change, in my opinion.

After passing a constitutional amendment, would it not be misleading to declare "The US rewrites the constitution" ?

If a 2nd edition of a novel includes a new preface, it would be misleading to advertise the book as "re-written".

You see it as "sexy sounding", I see it as intentionally misleading about the significance of the result.

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Re:An experiment suggested by a PhD student may rewrite chem... by willis936 on Thursday June 25, 2020 @06:33AM (#23639032)

>dismissalism

You can put -ism at the end of any word. In most cases it will just demonstrate an agenda-driven dichotomy. Criticizing a culture of critique requires a culture of critique. So no, HN does not have a problem here and the OP is not whining. This is the system working as intended.

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Re:An experiment suggested by a PhD student may rewrite chem... by turbonoobie on Thursday June 25, 2020 @08:17AM (#23639754)

imsisms is becoming a strange problem I have yet to figure out how to deal with in my day-to-day conversations.

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