The inflated promise of science education
I frequently seek out the original press releases and they&#x27;re usually pretty clear, but are then dumbed down to something thought to be digestible by the general public. &quot;Masks work!&quot; say Experts. &quot;No they don&#x27;t!&quot; say these other two.<p>Which &quot;masks&quot;? &quot;Work&quot; by what metric? Under what circumstances? Or, is it as the True Believers and Most Faithfully Devoted to Science might have it: that all masks are effective against all things in all situations (or at least certainly have <i>some</i> kind of effect)?<p>With regard to &lt;masks&gt;, The Science™ really has never been controversial and has not changed significantly since the start of the pandemic, but they used &quot;masks won&#x27;t work [to keep you from inhaling it] (so don&#x27;t buy them all)&quot; early on to ease supply chain problems, followed by &quot;masks do work [like covering your mouth when you cough]&quot;, resulting in what might have been the dumbest two years of public discourse in the history of humanity, inclusive of The Burning Years, as at least it might be said that they genuinely didn&#x27;t know whether or not witches floated.<p>There was never any ambiguity or confusion among Science™ or Medicine™ or Public Health Policy™ here - only among the loud and clueless - 1000% the result of mismanaged communications and a thousand know-nothings echoing calls (largely along Red and Blue lines) to Do The Thing or Not Do The Thing.<p>Perhaps we need to create a new degree program for, among other things, interpreting and reporting on press releases such that extremely basic facts and terms of art aren&#x27;t mixed up. (See also: Fig 1a. &quot;Journalists&#x27; Guide to Aircraft&quot; and Fig 1b. &quot;Journalists&#x27; Guide to Firearms&quot;, Fig 2. Any news article with Quantum, Hacking, or Crypto- in the title)