This is one of the ways the media (and politicians) lie. They use words that are technically correct if you squint, but severely misleading.

Given that one of the functions of a journalist is to clearly communicate, they're either incompetent or they're deliberately misleading. And it's pretty clear it's the second.

"Deliberately misleading"? In this case the journalists are literally copying the terms the cosmologists are using.

From the preprint - "The South Pole Wall rivals the Sloan Great Wall in extent, at a distance a factor two closer. The iconic structures that have transformed our understanding of large scale structure have come from the observed distribution of galaxies assembled from redshift surveys: the Perseus−Pisces filament (Giovanelli & Haynes1982), the CfA Great Wall (de Lapparent et al.1986), the Sloan Great Wall (Gott et al. 2005)"

The point of a science article like this is for the journalist to act as an intermediate between the scientists and the public. Their job is to communicate an understanding to the lay public using familiar terms and concepts. To let the public learn some part of the wonder of the universe and to let them appreciate the work the scientists did.

To do this you have to focus on communicating understanding rather than pure technical accuracy.

The problem is the split in responsibilities. In many news organizations the article and the title are written by different people, and often one article will go through a few titles if necessary. The article is ideally written for understanding, but the title is written to draw in clicks. This split goal results in some really unfortunate titles, even if the article is well written by someone acting in good faith.

Since when does the job of a journalist not demand him to think on his own before copying headlines?

If journalists behave this way they can be used by anyone to spread their message unfiltered. This is not what I expect of quality journalism and I will not ever pay for such a careless "work".

Copying headlines can be done by machines more efficiently.

This is an article in a general newsy site without a science focus. I’m not surprised that the title is borderline click-bait.

Yeah fair, I was a little harsh. This is clickbait, though built on the confusion of a specific scientific meaning and the commonly understood meaning.

Respectfully, I’m not sure you understand the function of the press.

When has journalism ever stuck to facts? When has the “news” been more than stories and opinion?

Hint: Never

Your assumptions aren’t based in fact and smack of elitism. Press has no responsibility to meet your personal idea of competency.

Read: A History of News by Mitchell Stephens https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1854941W/A_history_of_news

Read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

Read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_French_journalism

Given that the media wants to claim to be the fourth estate and a vital part of democracy, I don't think I'm wrong to hold them to a higher standard. Washington Post's slogan is "Democracy Dies in Darkness".

And frankly when you or anyone starts with "Respectfully", you're typically not. Your post certainly only has a thin veneer.

Respectfully, I could have been nasty but chose not to.

Again, who are you that your standards are worthy meeting?

The role of press is to exist.

The sooner you understand this then you’ll have a better appreciation for all press outlets even those you disagree with.

There isn't really much of a political gain to be had from describing a large blob of galaxies as a "structure" or a "wall."

It's not even that "structure" necessarily implies planned assembly. There are "structures" in biology, geology, and meteorology, and none imply a builder or designer.

I agree that most media aim to create such click-bait titles but I think in this particular case the word "structure" comes from the original paper [0] so there isn't much the author could do. Our language is too slow to invent new words for newly discovered elements of the universe and scientists have to draw words from the common language for it to be easily interpretable.

[0] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ab9952

The noun structure should not be clickbaity. I assume you mean because structure without the adverb cosmic would imply some sort of extraterrestrial-built structure?

Scientists -> ok, but would prefer to omit that

Discovered -> "Observe" is better

Gigantic Structure -> "Cosmic structure" is better than the subjective "gigantic", as everything cosmic is by definition gigantic and it seems to imply some sort of amazement at its size

in a

Hidden Zone of Space -> "Obscured" zone of space would again be better

So how about "First Observation of Cosmic Structure in Obscured Zone of Space"

I'm not an editor, and if I can come up with a more accurate and less sensationalized title, one can only conclude that whichever editor was behind this specific headline was deliberate in their choice of its clickbaity feel

Not sure “observed” is accurate, since we can’t see it from here. Discovered seems better.

And it is one of the largest we’ve seen, and it’s very close, so there is some amazement.

that implication is, I believe, the commonly understood one.

What, "aliens" or otherwise "artificial"? Is that the 'commonly understood' implication you mean? It's okay to say it. My question is, is it “commonly understood” or is it merely a convenient and very fun implication to assume?

I suppose artificial is the commonly understood implication when one uses the term structure, but if it is found in a hidden zone of space it also somewhat implies aliens.

"Should" not, yes - though it is here, it seems to me.

The wording of the title feels a bit odd, but I doubt that it is intended to be clickbaity.

It is a feature of what is known as the large scale structure of the universe. In that context the use of the word structure is entirely appropriate since there is no ambiguity. The wording of the title feels odd because I don't recall individual parts of the large scale structure being referred to as structures, but my memory may be hazy since I have been out of the field for well over a decade.

"structure" is the technical term cosmologists use to describe these aggregations of matter in the universe I believe https://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_cosmo_struct.html

I think the bigger error is that they keep calling it a fundamental structure. It was my understanding that this structure is very much an emergent property and nothing fundamental.

It’s vice - these days they are basically only one step removed from a “celebrity is actually an alien” style tabloid.