Let’s Remember Some Publications That Said We Would Get To Mars By 2026

Good science journalism is by its nature suspicious of grand or outlandish claims. Good science journalism does not take press releases at face value, but rather investigates the evidence behind those claims and the context in which they appear. Good science journalism is more interested in the truth behind big promises, or at least the likelihood of said promises coming true. By contrast, bad science journalism functions as a hype machine, regurgitating company statements verbatim as if it were the New York Times quoting Israel's Ministry of Defense. Bad science journalism runs with shocking claims precisely because they are shocking, because shock drives clicks, and nowhere is this more apparent than in a headline. I've written about the problematic nature of this type of coverage around mammoth claims of de-extinction, such as when Time and the New Yorker both published headlines claiming that the dire wolf has returned. (Reader; it has not.) Although Colossal gives SpaceX a run for its money when it comes to sensationalism, other less technologically glitzy fields are less prone to sensational slop and arbitrary timelines; zoology is not promising a new monkey by 2027. In fact, I'd wager that space science, with its reliance on otherworldly technology and billionaire braggadocios, might be the most vulnerable to this kind of bad journalism. To this point, I recently and wholeheartedly agreed with this exchange between cosmologist Katie Mack and science journalist Dave Levitan.

Read it at Defector ↗

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