The web allows modern news outlets to report about practically every press release they get. Nothing gets thrown away. If anything, new outlets today relish reporting on the least significant science results, merely because the scientists speculate about some amazing final events that “might,” “could,” or “may” happen, if their theories are right. The press eats this junk science up, because it produces great clickbait that, while as vapid as cotton candy, sounds really cool or exciting. That these speculations have no basis in reality is irrelevant.

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As you can see, Space.com is an especially bad actor in this game. Even today I could have added two more stories (here and here) from that outlet. It appears its science reporters have relatively little depth in their knowledge, and there are no experienced editors there helping them distinguish between the wheat and the chaff. Everything gets published, even if the research is nothing more than a fantasy dressed up as research.

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Their interest isn’t in reporting news, scoops of real discoveries, but of pushing narratives. In the case of the stories above, the narrative is almost always to harp on some exciting or awful future outcome, whether or not there is any real chance it may happen.

Junk science now dominates the reporting of the propaganda press – Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman

As I document, in the right column of this blog about who reports the news, the majority of reporters, including “science” reporters have degrees in English Literature, Creative Writing, history, art, journalism – only a very few have actual science backgrounds.