"An unexpected data signal that could change everything has particle physicists salivating."
I know I'm like an old man screaming into the wilderness, but I can't be the only one that's profoundly sad that even nature.com has to resort to this sort of horrible clickbait formulation for a headline.
Notwithstanding my aesthetic dislike of it, the thing about these headlines that makes me really upset is the fact that they aren't actually telling the truth.
Not to be pedantic, but they have not observed any particle physicists with an unusual amount of saliva, presumably. There is no anecdotal or visual evidence of people drooling, nothing.
It seems to me this is like the most horrible way to start off an article in a publication that is about the scientific method for gods sakes, where precision and accuracy is sort of the whole point.
Would it really be so hard to have a headline like "Shocking and unexpected evidence of a new particle" or something similar that actually says or at least approximates what the news is?
I got to the second sentence before getting frustrated with the integrity of an article by Nature:
"They have tried to recreate dark matter, reveal extra dimensions of and collapse matter into microscopic black holes."
The missing word was slightly irksome. I find the claim that anyone has intentionally tried to create microscopic black holes bombastic.
CERN's own site:
"According to the well-established properties of gravity, described by Einstein’s relativity, it is impossible for microscopic black holes to be produced at the LHC. There are, however, some speculative theories that predict the production of such particles at the LHC. All these theories predict that these particles would disintegrate immediately. Black holes, therefore, would have no time to start accreting matter and to cause macroscopic effects."
- http://press.web.cern.ch/backgrounders/safety-lhc
They have certainly looked into it for safety sake but if CERN's intent was to create microscopic black holes, I suspect it would be a very different machine.
> They have certainly looked into it for safety sake
Actually, when I worked at CERN there was never much fuss about such risks. The tunnel is just 100 m under, but I've yet to hear from someone worried about his house being sucked in.
They aren't worried because they looked into it. You could argue that "comparing max theoretical energy to that of cosmic rays" doesn't constitute "looking into it" but that's splitting hairs.
Ah ha! I appreciate you pointing this out. I read the sentence at least ten times trying to make sense of it and still failed to make that connection.
It still leaves me wondering what experiment at the LHC has attempted to reveal extra dimensions of, and collapse matter into a black hole. I have not been able to find any LHC experiments with this set as a goal, but I would love to be shown otherwise.
>Not to be pedantic, but they have not observed any particle physicists with an unusual amount of saliva, presumably. There is no anecdotal or visual evidence of people drooling, nothing.
So journalists shouldn't even use figures of speech? That will make for much more dull language. I really think you're picking nits here. It's obvious the article means that scientists are excited by this new data, not that they are literally salivating.
I think it was pretty obvious nobody was "salivating",etc. but that rather it is a way of saying how excited they are about studying this new phenomenom. They are just metaphors, I see nothing wrong with that. They are used all the time and are an important part of any language.
I mean, you have to admit that this 'use of metaphor' for exaggeration is being used at a startling rate. And you have to admit that clickbait being used by respected magazines and journals is a bit frightening.
It's a fad. They are trendy right now, and they work because they are new, but in 5 years that style will stop attracting people, and "clickbait headlines" will be another entry on the "10 things you remember about the '10s" lists.
If they had used your suggested headline ("Shocking and unexpected evidence of a new particle"), it would be equally fair to criticize them for not saying how much current people were "shocked" with. It is, after all, a science publication. The bit about "physicists salivating" is no more or less likely to get me to click than to know that they were "shocked".
One of the reasons this kind of language bothers me is that it's both clickbait and a part of the general project of drumming up excitement about the sciences for the usual reasons.
And while I suppose this drumming up of support is a net good for the sciences, at least from the standpoint of future and practicing physicists, it is fairly unrelated to the significance of these kinds of discoveries. This kind of news has more in common with a breakthrough in advanced mathematics that gets far less "salivating"-type coverage than anything in physics ever will.
In other words, while this news might cause some interesting talk around the water cooler about the exciting new way the universe might be operating, it's only because folks' imaginations have been stoked in a way that I think has to be admitted is a little bit disingenuous. Headlines like this contribute to that.
Sadly, Nature has been doing this for years in their articles. Nature articles (not papers) are "popular science for scientists", and as such often use hyperbole and sensationalism and fail to communicate the actual core science. It's sad that the most-sought out journal does this :|
I don't come to the comments on HN to read about people whining that journalistic headlines are too sensational. Of course they are. Ice is pretty damn cold too. Accept it and move on.
I know I'm like an old man screaming into the wilderness, but I can't be the only one that's profoundly sad that even nature.com has to resort to this sort of horrible clickbait formulation for a headline.
Notwithstanding my aesthetic dislike of it, the thing about these headlines that makes me really upset is the fact that they aren't actually telling the truth.
Not to be pedantic, but they have not observed any particle physicists with an unusual amount of saliva, presumably. There is no anecdotal or visual evidence of people drooling, nothing.
It seems to me this is like the most horrible way to start off an article in a publication that is about the scientific method for gods sakes, where precision and accuracy is sort of the whole point.
Would it really be so hard to have a headline like "Shocking and unexpected evidence of a new particle" or something similar that actually says or at least approximates what the news is?