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2
My jimmies are pretty rustled at how badly they fucked up the science. Sure, I might have made a couple of those mistakes too, but it's as if they didn't even do their research on it.
3
@2 Most of the science reporting I see has serious problems. I notice them more in my own area of expertise, but I suspect it is all science writing. The exception is when an expert writes about his/her own area of expertise. Scientific American has numerous articles like that, but most other publications get former communications majors to do the work.
4
It's just science. Accuracy is not an issue. Todd Akin told me so.
5
I did not read the whole thing. But if I read correctly, it said "...Scottish physicist Peter Higgs..." and the author takes issue with this, because while he was working in Scotland, Higgs was born in England. It doesn't say he was Scottish. really. The reader is inferring that "Scotting physicist" means his nationality is Scottish, and not his residency.
If that's our measure, then we have to disown the telephone and Alexander Graham Bell, because he was born in Scotland, lived some time in Canada, then moved to the US where he invented the phone. So the telephone, by the measure of the SA article, is a Scottish invention.
6
I'm Kindling "The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next" by Len Smolin (http://www.amazon.com/The-Trouble-With-P… ).

He says there are actually several different Higgs Bosons, including the one they think they found, which could be a lot more prosaic than a so-called God particle.
7
I take it "Kindling" is different from "reading." I'm trying to imagine how.

(While I appreciate verbing in general when it adds value to the language, I don't really see the need here, and particularly where the scrupulous use of capitalization suggests conspicuous name™ dropping. While we're on the subject, "fisking" rather bothers me also, but mostly because it's such a late term for a practice that predates the name by at least 20 years -- and also because it's obscure outside of the Sullivanistas)
8
Time nominates their person of the year like US News re-ranks a "best college" every year—if there's a positive to take away from this, it's that Time thinks science will sell magazines.

2010 was even dumber.
9
I don't want to defend Time exactly, and there are some pretty egregious mistakes in a five sentence paragraph, but fairness where it is due. This is extremely complicated material to non-scientists and very easy to screw up. I just watched theoretical physicist Sean Carroll on the Colbert Report and could not figure out why his description of the HIggs boson was correct but Time's was wrong. Much of it sounded exactly the same. This is also the same explanation that I have heard on many science programs and podcasts including Science Friday, Nature, NPR's Higgs boson reporting, and even Scientific American.
10
Of course the worse scientific topic the US media handle is the subject of climate change, when they pretend that there is significant debate among climatologists regarding climate change being man made.

There isn't.
11
There's also the minor issue that the Higg's boson is not, ya know, a person. Not that that has stopped Time in the past.
12
Time is just Highlights with less educational content.

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