Faulty Study Left Uncorrected

It's hard to admit you made a mistake. Daniel Klein, an economics professor at George Mason University, can tell you that, but he can also tell you how to move past it. Klein wrote an opinion column over a year ago saying that liberals score much lower than conservatives on a test over basic economics, according to his newest study. He published his column in the Wall Street Journal, which headlined: "Are You Smarter than a Fifth-Grader? Self-indentified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics".
Klein later took a second look at his data and concluded that his questions were loaded, or followed what he termed the "myside bias"- human's tendency to judge an argument based off of how closely it fits to their standard political views. Klein recently recanted his earlier findings and published the new results- but not in the Wall Street Journal. The Columbia Journalism Review emailed Klein asking why the new column appeared in the Atlantic instead of WSJ, and he responded that they had "declined the idea of a follow-up".

But shouldn't that be considered irresponsible journalism? The well-respected journal now has full knowledge that it ran an erroneous article, and the author is stepping up of his own free will to correct his past mistake. For the Wall Street Journal to decline the corrections is a loss of responsibility to their readers, some of which will never see the corrections simply because they don't read the Atlantic. The editors need to swallow their pride and put their reader's needs first.

Photo credit/creativecommons.org

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The Cost of Plagiarism

Never plagiarize. This is a rule we hear about in any writing format, no matter what the class is. Professors warn us to never use Wikipedia as a source. They caution us to always use attribution whenever there is doubt. The last thing you would think that a journalist of any measure would do is to plagiarize.

According to an article on journalism.co.uk, prize-winning journalist Johann Hari did.

He attributes this error in judgement to a lack of ethics training. More like common sense training. His list of journalistic errors in judgement includes taking 545 words directly from someone else's work, elaborating quotes, and editing other journalist's Wikipedia pages to include unflattering comments about them.

He has returned the Orwell Prize he won in 2008 and is in the midst of a four month suspension. He is currently undergoing journalism training and it is expected he will resume his position after the four months is over.

Is this punishment enough to fit the crime? You have to think that his actions will affect the way readers view The Independent. When a writer does something that brings their credibility into question, they will lost their effectiveness in connecting with the audience. Readers and critics will not be so fast to forgive this lapse in judgement.

There is a long history of journalist scandals, and most of the plagiarism cases end up with either a resignation by the journalist or their employment being terminated. How will it affect The Independent if they choose to brush this issue aside and proceed as if it never happened?

What message will that send to readers of newspapers everywhere? The market for newspapers is already on the decline; it is unlikely that it can withstand a major blow. Something as simple as this could be a fatal blow for newspapers everywhere.

What do you think should happen to Johann?

Image from Creative Commons.

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Not Dumb Blonde, Dumb Newspaper

London's Sunday Times committed two major sins of journalism, on Jan. 17, 2010. The Times didn't get the facts straight and it falsified quotes, in a story on scientists doing research on blondes.

The Times claims that Dr. Aaron Sell, a researcher at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California, has done research that proves that blond women are more assertive and want things to go their way more often than brunettes and red heads. Dr. Sell, however, claims his study never mentions anything about women's hair color or hair for that matter.

In addition to these misinterpreted facts, Times also completely made-up a quote by Dr. Sell about California being "the natural habitat of the privileged blonde." Dr. Sell denies ever having saying it in his over the phone interview with John Harlow.

Since the articles printing Dr. Sell has written a letter to the Times asking it to remove all references to himself and his research from the article and that it was just not true. Dr. Sell has also posted a note a on his Web site disowning the article.

This is not the first time the Times has publish an inaccurate article, and it is not the first inaccurate article about blondes. In 2006, the Sunday Times was deceived by a false claim that a WHO study discovered blondes were going the way of the dinosaur. Two other stories about blonds written by the Times were "Recession chic: why blondes are having more fun," and "You silly boys: blondes make men act dumb."

This repeat offence of blatant inaccuracy and fabrication can only hurt the Sunday Times' and the press media's reputations. Readers rely on news to be factual and tell them the truth. When the news is only accurate part the time, it causes readers to question it the rest of the time. London's Sunday Times is the a good example for all young journalist of bad journalism.

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