openknot

BuzzFeed News also lost credibility to me during the Trump administration, when the Mueller team publicly disputed the outlet's report on a Cohen-Trump story.

From The New Yorker [0]:

"The story was sourced to “two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.” However, once it was published, other federal officials spoke up. Mueller’s office released a rare public statement, saying that “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate.” BuzzFeed, and its editor, Ben Smith, have stood by the story."

[...]

"I recently spoke by phone with Leopold about his reporting of this story and his other work on the Trump-Russia affair. Leopold, who was previously at Vice News, is considered an expert at using Freedom of Information Act requests and was part of a team of BuzzFeed reporters who were Pulitzer Prize finalists in 2018. He has also been the subject of controversy. In 2002, Salon removed an article from its Web site after Leopold was accused of inaccuracy and plagiarism. Four years later, he incorrectly reported that Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff, had been indicted in the investigation into the outing of the C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame. (Leopold was open about past substance abuse and mental health issues in a 2006 memoir, “News Junkie.”)"

I still respect the outlet's FIFA story, but BuzzFeed News remained a step below mainstream outlets with investigations like The Washington Post.

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-buzzfeed-reporter-e...

> "If I search some review I scroll past all of the official review sites and find some random nobody who appears to be expressing their own experiences."

That strategy has been tainted for a while. Lots of seemingly legitimate comments from nobodies on social media like Reddit are actually from old accounts bought by companies, especially for product reviews (this is an explicit strategy by certain marketers). Even many enthusiastic product recommendations from YouTubers are influenced by sponsorships (oftentimes, even if they disclose that they were paid to make the sponsorship, they then say that they "genuinely" support the product even if it turns out to be defective).

The best way to evaluate a review is more based on examining the content of the review (instead of skipping to the conclusion), rather than who the person is. A person's small blog with in-depth reviews is often very reliable. YouTubers with in-depth reviews (rather than quick product recommendations) are also reliable. Certain review sites are also likely reliable (Wirecutter is okay, though sometimes their recommendations are biased towards ease-of-use rather than getting the best result from a product), but it's best to look at what the reviews actually say (as I agree that other popular review sites are influenced by undisclosed sponsorships).

In this case though, Weiner did not "literally name" the informant in The New York Times article [1]. He referred to the informant as a "retired terrorist" without giving a name.

In general, you're right about the principle of keeping sources anonymous to avoid harm. One principle in journalism ethics [2] is to "identify sources clearly" so the public can better understand a source's motives. But the other is to minimize harm ("Balance the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort.") to both the sources and the public, motivating anonymity in certain cases.

However, in this instance, Weiner didn't name the informant in the article.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/21/world/cia-re-examines-hir...

[2] This is just one ethical code, but many ethical codes are essentially very similar: https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

I read the show notes but didn't listen to the podcast. Is this really true? The linked New York Times article by Weiner never names the subject, but instead reports on a "retired terrorist" [1]. I don't see this an "outing."

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/21/world/cia-re-examines-hir...

Alternatively, through a very pragmatic lens: the interviewee is essentially saying that a military does not want unpredictable troops that violate rules of engagement, because it can cause a massive loss of public support among the citizenry and cause international pressure. This can force an end to the campaign before the military's objectives are reached.

Because it encourages recruits to cheat and hide things from leadership (instead of the only the adversary), and increases the risk of death.

In the military, one of the values is supposed to be integrity. The value of integrity isn't just idealistic: it's pragmatically important to military strategy to avoid committing war crimes, as it lessens public support for the military action among the citizenry. The public can then vote out the administration, where a future one can scale back the war effort. As evidence this is a value, the Navy SEALs in particular says [0]: "Uncompromising integrity is my standard. My character and honor are steadfast. My word is my bond."

On the health risk to recruits, from the NYTimes article : "It is hard to say what role performance-enhancing drugs played in one death when there are so many other complicating factors, said Dr. Matthew Fedoruk, the chief science officer of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. Even so, he said, the chemicals some sailors are relying on can interfere with the function of the heart, liver and other critical organs that are already under incredible stress from the brutal training.

"If enough people in a community are doping, he said, it spreads risk even to those who are clean, as the level of competition rises and more people are pushed to exhaustion and injury.

"“It makes it that much harder for the people doing the right thing to shine,” he said."

The military can either allow performance-enhancing drugs for all and provide adequate medical monitoring to avoid unnecessary deaths, or enforce the rules as written and test for it. Unnecessary deaths are in no one's interests within the country.

[0] https://www.nsw.navy.mil/NSW/SEAL-Ethos/

There was also an interesting discussion on the r/navyseals forum, frequented by applicants and veterans, which corroborates the steroid use (looks credible, with a pinch of salt as always because the comments are anonymous): https://www.reddit.com/r/navyseals/comments/x1hvaz/death_in_...

> "Sobering read. I really hope steroid use at BUDS isn't as big as this article purports it to be"

>> "It’s pretty accurate, the instructors even make jokes about it “Your roid rage is showing sir”"

>> "How could it not be, anabolics increase performance far outside the natural range and/or let you maintain what you could achieve naturally with far less effort. The effects can last well beyond when you stop taking them. You could take them from 18-21, keep training and join at 22 without testing positive but retaining a large (physical) advantage"

It's also very plausible from the NYTimes's article alone, from the report that the instructors had stopped testing for steroids, so there was no enforcement mechanism to stop the behavior.

The recruits believe it's a treatment for a lung condition where you cough up blood during training.

From the NYTimes article: "Many men were coughing up bloody fluid from a condition called swimming-induced pulmonary edema — a potentially life-threatening ailment that is so common among men training in the frigid water at BUD/S that SEALs refer to it casually by the acronym SIPE.

"[...] Seaman Mullen showed up for his second attempt at BUD/S in January with fresh determination and a used car. But by the end of the second week, he was spitting up bloody fluid and struggling to breathe.

"“I said, go to the hospital right away,” his mother recalled. “He said, ‘No, ma, if you want to go to the hospital, they will make you quit first. Besides, it’s just SIPE.’”

"Ms. Mullen said her son, on the advice of other SEAL candidates, started secretly taking the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, which was against Navy rules but used by SEALs as a potential treatment for SIPE. He recovered enough to keep training.""

It's probably lifestyle inflation (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lifestyle-inflation.asp), where spending increased in proportion or in excess to rises in income. A surgeon in the US wrote about colleagues who exhibited this behaviour in a blog (source: https://www.kevinmd.com/2019/03/why-many-doctors-live-payche...).

They weren't meant to be. I presented Nietzsche's views as evidence that there is significant writing against objective concepts of good and evil, then provided counter-arguments to his views.

You sound like someone involved in the field. If this is the case, I may see where you're coming from in terms of arguing for perfectionism, thoroughness, and notability.

However, as someone unfamiliar about the issue, the subject is still notable and interesting enough to warrant coverage in a news article. None of the information was wrong, and the article's headline only set the expectation to support the premise that 'electrocuted birds are sparking wildfires.' Plenty of users thought the article was notable enough to vote for it to appear on the front page of HN. There was nothing incorrect or unethical about the article to warrant the argument that this is an example of irresponsible reporting.

Suitably, the paper was published in the peer-reviewed "Wildlife Society Bulletin" journal, far less prestigious than Nature or Science. The news article was published in Science's news section, and wasn't a cover story or feature of the Scientific American or The New Yorker. Nothing about the work claimed to be a comprehensive treatise of the subject.

Instead of harshly criticizing the news article or paper (which presented valid data collected in a reasonable way), you could instead use your energy and expertise to either publish a better study in a more prestigious journal to add to your publication count if you're an academic, or get paid by freelancing a more in-depth article for the Scientific American or The Atlantic/equivalent magazine if you're a writer.

I'm not a philosopher or a Nietzsche expert, but Nietzsche wrote about this at length in his book "Beyond Good and Evil." It's been a while since I read the book (surface-level Wikipedia summary link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_and_Evil), but the argument he advanced was to frame morality as a means of people who lack power to feel superior over people who do have power.

For example, he speculates that gluttony may be seen as a sin, because it was a way for disempowered people to feel superiority over people who had an abundance of food and wealth. If this frame is true (a big if), then one can be guided to not care about morality, and do what is in one's best interest.

Of course, there are good psychological reasons for why it is a bad reason to throw away morality. If one's identity is tied to being a good person, doing bad acts in conflict with one's identity can cause a lot of distress. There is also a "hedonistic treadmill" where one gets used to more and more wealth, and how additional wealth at a certain point doesn't make someone happier. Lastly, there are society reasons for why morality is important (e.g. the Golden Rule as you wrote); a low-trust society where no one is moral is not a healthy society to live in.

Counter-arguments aside, there is quite a bit of writing, also by philosophers, who argue that morality does exist for dominance alone (though I disagree with this, largely from a psychological rather than a philosophical perspective, due to lacking background to make rigorous-enough philosophical arguments).

I'm an outsider, but to quote credible external sources, Science AAAS writer Derek Lowe documented that the biotech startup scene was large and relatively easier to get investments in from 1991 to 1994, with stagnation in 2012 [0].

McKinsey separately reported that there has since been another boom in the biotech sector in the 2020s [1].

[0] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/biotech-class-earl...

[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/life-sciences/our-insigh...

>"they were probably understating the problem"

The authors' claim wasn't to give a comprehensive figure of the number of electrocuted birds that caused wildfires, in a specific region over a specific time. Instead, their goal was to establish that electrocuted birds is a significant reason for wildfires, rather than very rare events.

This is useful because, even without a comprehensive figure, the article still provides convincing evidence for companies that may consider upgrading systems to prevent bird electrocution. For example, from the article: "Electric utility companies can insulate wires and install spikes to discourage perching; they could also build structures that allow for safer perching on transformers."

There is nothing wrong at all with the segments of the article you quoted. The main premise presented in the article is that electrocuted birds are a plausible cause of wildfires, in addition to human activity (the article specifically reports that human activity is the primary cause of wildfires).

The authors' methodology to find online reports was valid. They used alerts to collect online published reports of electrocuted birds, and then manually checked each report to discard any that were speculative or lacked hard evidence. After this, the authors found 44 reports of electrocuted birds causing wildfires. At most, your strongest critique is that the methods could have been more comprehensive to find additional reports. That is technically correct, but it doesn't invalidate the main premise that wildfires caused by birds do happen, and are not one-off phenomena (via the 44 reports from the described method).

>"and then they quote a guy who "has studied" it in Spain but wasn't involved with this."

It is responsible and encouraged behavior to quote someone who wasn't involved with the study. This avoids bias where the only interviewed people are affiliated with the study, and are more likely to talk it up. Interviewing uninvolved experts in the field opens the door to possible critiques.

>"Then they quote two other studies from four years ago."

Four years isn't inherently long ago enough to be irrelevant. This is especially true when the premise is that electrocuted birds have been a significant cause of wildfires, not just one-off occurrences.

Instagram can have useful business purposes. Some personal trainers/consultants/very small businesses only have an Instagram account, and seem to be doing well. Canada's public broadcaster published an article about this a while back, and the consequences when such business owners were locked out of their account due to an outage: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/facebook-instagram-outage-b...

Otherwise, in certain social groups (especially young adults), Instagram is the main way to stay to stay in touch with friends, even just for the messaging app. So, not having an account means missing out on significant social connection for some (e.g. if it's the platform where the group chats are hosted).

It really depends on your friend group, though; for many people, their social groups just aren't on Instagram or social media very much or at all, so it's easier to quit because there's nothing to miss out on (so for these people, the verification would hardly be worth it).

Yeah, unfortunately multiple reports of the impersonator's account doesn't work in practice, even though it really should. Another source confirming this is from the Bleeping Computer article (source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/instagrams-da...).

I read that the fastest way to take down the account is for the person getting impersonated to fill out a form (via Instagram's help page at https://help.instagram.com/370054663112398), which unfortunately requires a picture of the person's driver's license/government-issued ID.

>"For someone like me that has never had an Insta account nor have I logged into my FB account for over 8 years, how does one create an account without this happening?"

This is speculative, but probably try to recover your Facebook account first (because it's already verified), and then choose the option to try and create an Instagram account based on your logged-in Facebook account.

I haven't tried this in practice as I haven't created a new account in a long time, so there's no guarantee this will work. If it doesn't, then unfortunately you would have to block off time to persistently follow the instructions as closely as you can (sending your photo and a note), likely over several days to create the account.

Not to defend the practice (because your case is a false positive for a new account), but rather to speculate on why your account was banned, it's likely due to an increase in impersonation on Instagram recently.

In other words, some accounts steal the pictures of real people and then send follow requests to friends, and try to get them to tap on links that can give the bad actor access to the friends' accounts or buy cryptocurrencies. It's been spiking recently over the past couple of months (one case in a Canadian news article at: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/instagram-photos-sto...), with other prominent cases documented in the past (2019: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/24/how-i-stopped-someone-impers... and 2021: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/14/instagram-accounts-created-w...). Bleeping Computer published a deeper article on the most recent ongoing spike (describing the crypto and Onlyfans scams): https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/instagrams-da...

This doesn't justify at all the permanent deactivation of your completely new account, but just for curiosity's sake, I speculate that this is the reason your new account was banned (overly high security sensitivity on Instagram's end, due to a recent spike in false accounts that impersonate real people, to encourage others to buy cryptocurrency and/or click malicious links).

[Another] user finally ended the game with victory in 2019, seven years since the submitted post: https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/aefvp0/the_a...

Edit: Sorry, I was wrong earlier. The post linked above was written by a different user (u/TEFL_job_seeker), using the same save file as the original poster (u/Lycerius). The original user implied they stopped playing the game, since several solutions to victory was already found and shared on Reddit, mainly in a comment at [0], also implied at [1].

I mistakenly thought it was the same user due to an assertion in a discussion about it (https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/c41bpx/did_t...), but found that the users were different on a closer look.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/6uo221/will_...

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/8elqn7/is_th...

>"science is large enough and has enough history that it doesn't need the 24 hour news cycle to be interesting. In the sense that what you already know is news to most people, you can stay interesting without getting a scoop."

For additional evidence, consider how History Today articles often reach the front page of HN, about historical findings that haven't necessarily been published recently. There is certainly an interest for well-written timeless articles.

I'm not the same commenter, but I completely agree from previous experience in journalism. Many journalists who write about research findings are in the same publications who publish general news (e.g. national politics). So, many science journalists are held to newsroom policies where they can't share drafts with sources before publication, to avoid bias. This is highly relevant for sharing drafts with a politician, but much less relevant for sharing articles with a scientist.

Some newsrooms do have exceptions for scientific expertise, or have wiggle room saying that experts can verify whether quotes or sections of the article are accurate, versus the whole draft. This is a decent compromise if a publication allows it, though I'm personally in favor of having a more trusting relationship between journalists and scientists for typical articles on research findings (unless the article is investigative).

Well-funded magazines (e.g. The New Yorker) also get around this by having fact-checkers with strong scientific backgrounds. This is probably the best solution for editorial independence that avoids sharing drafts, but there's not a lot of money in media and writing as-is, so it's not a realistic solution for the vast majority of publications (especially when even big magazines have been cutting funding for their fact-checking teams, shifting more responsibility to the editors/journalists for accuracy).

Nautilus is actually an example that supports how in-depth science reporting can be difficult to monetize. I really like many of their articles in the publication, but there was a major incident a while back when they were severely (many months, even longer than a year) behind on paying their writers.

I actually happened to meet a writer who had this happen to them, but this incident was also publicized in an open letter (source: https://nwu.org/an-open-letter-from-freelancers-at-nautilus-..., with discussion about this on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/aznfusion/status/941051077922869248). This happened in 2017, and I'm not sure how long it took to get resolved.

>"you would see more of those decent articles if people were more inclined to follow a subscription model where the journal is accountable to its customers."

I think this argument holds up. For example, publications like the Scientific American and The Scientist tend to be very high quality in terms of accuracy (usually with unobtrusive citations, if I recall correctly). It's too bad their subscriptions prices are so high; they were hundreds of dollars a year if I remember correctly, versus less than 50 dollars a year for other magazines.

Ii'm not sure about how financially successful they are, but I found myself struggling to justify such a subscription price, when the purpose was essentially edu-tainment. The publications that can more easily get people to pay more, in my view, ostensibly help people make more money or find career success, which is why industry publications like STAT for biotech/medicine (and more generally, publications like the WSJ/Bloomberg) tend to be more financially successful.

>"Their "scientific expert" source list looks suspiciously like a group of the loudest voices on Twitter."

That's probably where the journalists find people to interview, likely because a large majority of journalists are active on Twitter.

This definitely isn't the only place, because there are free services like SciLine by the AAAS (source: https://www.sciline.org) and many others for connecting journalists to researchers. Many universities also have their own expert directories set up, and journalists can also find papers and contact their authors.

However, for many journalists on deadline, it's just far less effort to message vocal professors on Twitter, so this may be a reason for this effect if it's true. The people who market their research more on Twitter may be more likely to get covered in the press, and thus interviewed.

Retraction Watch (source: https://retractionwatch.com) and independent consultants like Elisabeth Bik (article about her in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01363-z) are good for this, though they aren't really traditional media. ProPublica and large newspapers (e.g. The New York Times occasionally) do publish investigative work on science topics sometimes too.

You would be surprised. Universities pay substantially better than newspapers (likely with better job security), and writing jobs are typically hard to find and low-paying in general. Many former experienced journalists end up working at university press departments because of the better working conditions.

From an enjoyment side, writing is hard, but for a lot of people, it's much easier than research. There are fewer credentials needed for a career in science journalism versus scientific research (a Bachelor's only versus a PhD for many senior scientist positions). I know a lot of people who have a natural skill at writing who decided to major in a science field for one reason or another, performed okay-ish at their courses, and tried to get back to writing work.

The end result is also similar writing for a magazine/newspaper versus a university. A university may have higher standards for accuracy and precision (especially if an interviewed scientist wants to review it, while a newspaper/magazine may have a policy to avoid sharing drafts to avoid bias in the article). However, higher-end magazines (like the New Yorker) have more prestige. There is also far less room at universities for dissent (e.g. presenting an opposing scientific view or publishing investigative work).

I once went to a journalism conference, and there was a panel where a professional science journalist strongly pushed for the view along the lines of, "you don't need a science background to be a science writer," instead of encouraging aspiring journalists to study the relevant background over the years.

I'm sure a view against credentials isn't shared by all journalists (for example, many publications do require a relevant background), but that experience was personally disheartening because it seemed to be supported in the room.

I was also disheartened by the focus on self-marketing and self-promotion in general over doing quality, accurate journalism, and a much bigger focus on having a good "narrative" and writing engagingly versus having a discussion on ethics. To some extent, I get it, because the advice likely works in helping someone succeed in their career. But there are clearly problems in science news related to precision and accuracy, and not much drive in many publications to fix it.

See: ProPublica as a great example (source: https://www.propublica.org), along with the ICIJ (behind the Pandora Papers, source: https://www.icij.org/category/investigations/) and other investigative reporting outlets.

The Investigations sections of The Washington Post (source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/investigations/), The New York Times, and investigations by local newspapers are often very good, though occasionally they can be of lower quality.

I agree with vast majority of your comment, though to nitpick a bit, a curated social media feed can show this content (e.g. ProPublica's Facebook/YouTube/Twitter, and through using carefully curated Twitter lists). Also, from a cynical perspective, I know of some people doing it for the thrill, the fame, and the power to hold otherwise-powerful people accountable instead of for higher ideals, though I don't mind so long as the results are still ethically produced and rightfully empowering to the disadvantaged.