When science is done badly (which arguably shouldn't be considered science), which then leads the public to have elevated expectations, only then for science to be done right and disprove and reject the original "findings", public trust in science is ever so slightly damaged.

PR is something we cannot control -- and avoiding releasing results in a (semi-vain?) attempt to control PR arguably does more harm than releasing them does.

The sea makes waves as it will. We can moderate as much as we are able. I think the rest is simply a matter of accepting that things happen as they do out of our control. We can only truly impact ---- and even then, not necessarily guaranteed! D: ---- -- in some potentially very small part -- whatever sphere is around us, and I feel that that's a collective individual responsibility.

Journalists are going to write nonsense, hype-filled science articles. PR flacks are going to hype puff newswire blurbs. Why? Because that's what they're paid to do.

You can curse the existence of bad incentives, if you want annoying ideologues to call you a communist.

Or you can hire your own PR flacks. Because worrying about how people will react to what you're doing is PR, and going up against professionals without your own is like going to court without a lawyer.

Or you can just, you know, do science, accept that people suck sometimes, and get on with your life.

Having had some work get incredible attention, and other work not at all, I've experienced a small slice of the volatility of the web. My most tweet chain was a semi-technical vent I wrote over the course of 30 minutes after stewing about some semi-useless technical hype that no one seemed to be addressing the flaws in. I wrote it in a way that was more attention-grabbing somewhat than my more technical posts, put it out there, and shared it in a few places.

Two days later or so, my number of Twitter followers had over quadrupled.

I think humanity can be quite finicky sometimes (a more general statement, I don't think one could conclude that from the previous anecdote alone).

This is just another example of the media’s negative effect on society. Similarly, the media endlessly poring over every detail of the Ukraine war has likely made their job much more difficult because it damages the element of surprise.

The media originally began as something quite negative with what we called “yellow journalism.” Then for a century or so we saw a kind of golden age of journalism where newspapers had strong reputations to uphold but were fairly rewarded for it through ads and classifieds.

Now the media is back to yellow journalism (clickbait) and eroding the institutions of society.

How many worse decisions are made by people who can't read and won't learn about the nuances of a topic?

Ask L Ron Hubbard?

The willingness of the crowd to believe in counterfactual things is not constrained to science, and whatever damage/risk is posed by that is not new - as Galileo can attest.