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HarriGT and news coverage of science |
James |
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-001-11-30T00:00:00+00:00 |
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A major theme of my PhD is around how scientific work is portrayed in the media. News articles that report on scientific papers serve a number of purposes for the research community. Firstly, they broadcast academic work to a much wider audience.
A scientific paper’s purpose is to be read and understood by scientists, engineers and other specialists who are interested in reproducing, rebutting or building atop of the work (or heck, maybe they’re just curious and have a spare half hour). News articles are supposed to inform and entertain (a cynic might place the latter before the former) the general public with regard to current affairs. This difference in purpose and target audience can lead to news articles and scientific papers that refer to the same study but use very different vocabularies and writing styles.