I guess you didn’t read the article very closely. The Science editor was talking about Science News (note the capitalization) which is a well respected information resource.
Marcia McNutt, the (now former) editor-in-chief of Science, was certainly talking about the News section of Science magazine, the magazine of the AAAS.
The reason I think this is that the next sentence refers to a "Perspective" (also with initial capital, just like she used earlier with "News"):
> Third, I check to see if there is a Perspective by another scientist.
If you read Science regularly, you know there is a News section that has some "hot topic" stuff, like "Curiosity rover discovered ancient lakebeds on Mars", or "Arecibo telescope collapsed." It's right up front.
And following the News section of Science magazine, there is a Perspectives section that has contextual overviews of less "front-page" technical stuff that is still important, but more niche. ("A major advance in modeling of superconductors that could yield new materials in upcoming years" type thing.)
Perspectives are tied to a technical article, and News is sometimes, but not always.
I read the print version of Science during these years. It was outstanding. My recollection is that they didn't usually do both a "News" and a "Perspective" on the subject of a technical article. It was typically one or the other.
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My personal opinion is that this order (I look at News and then at Perspectives) is perfectly fine. In particular (@timr), Marcia McNutt is not talking about reading "the news", as in "the newspaper."
It isn't a "callow dismissal". I'm talking about science.org/news, just like you. It's written by career journalists [1]. It's fine for toilet reading.
And as far as credentialism goes...I don't care if McNutt is the Nobel-winning reincarnation of Carl Sagan. She's literally saying that her go-to for reviewing any new paper submitted to Science is to look at the work of journalists, to see if the article is noteworthy enough to continue. That's just wrong, if for no other reason than Science journalists don't cover stuff that isn't in a top journal (which is typically...Science!)
I didn't misquote her, and I'm not misinterpreting the meaning of her words. It's quite plain. All of the other responses were variations on...actually reading the paper. Hers is about using proxies to read the paper for her.
[1] Here are the bios of the writers for science.org/news:
Fond memories. I've wondered if it, and Nature's equivalent, might be used for llm training? Hoping to get correct stories, let alone insightful and integrated ones, from textbooks, reddit, and wikipedia... seems unlikely to end well. Perhaps also survey papers. And parts of doorstop-tome-on-topic's. Maybe the intro and related work sections of research papers? Pity research talk intros and Q&As are rarely captured.
OK, first...Science News is trash. Absolute trash. Maybe it's better than e.g. the current NY Times Science reporter (who is so incompetent that it's mind-blowing), but it's still just not worth reading, except maybe on the toilet. They can (and do) say nonsensical stuff all the time.
(edit: I just realized that you might be suggesting that "News" in the quote refers only to "Science News". I don't agree, but even if so, it doesn't change anything about my argument. If you are editor-in-chief of a scientific journal, you shouldn't be delegating your analysis to reporters, no matter where they work. If you aren't experienced/knowledgable enough to see why a paper is important from the work in front of you, give it to someone who can. And if you don't want to do that, then reject it.)
Well, I don’t agree with your opinion of Science News, but that’s OK. What I was pointing out is that she was indeed referring to Science News (and also Science Perspectives) as sources for her reading and understanding of a paper.
If I'm interpreting it right, no, it's not the same argument. It sounds like she said she basically checks if it's been talked about in Science besides as an existing paper. Seems reasonably for a publication to consider it's own standards of publishing as good enough.
Science reporters are probably, hopefully, scientifically literate.
