Living in a white-noise world
We are awash in data, some clear and useful, and some worthless or muddled. It can be hard to know which sources are reliable, especially in an area that is new and unfamiliar to you. This course adopts a policy of openness to online materials, including in the classroom itself. An important goal of this course will be to help you learn how to navigate the information universe.
Science in the online media
Many online news sources tend to choose science stories — especially the headlines — for their sexy ‘click-through’ value. These sites are not scientific journals, after all, but pay the bills by selling subscriptions and advertising, and the effectiveness of that advertising is measured by those ‘click-throughs’.
Automated news aggregators, like Google or Apple, can be fooled by ‘hot’ stories that are really not important in the long run, if the aggregation algorithm is based on popularity. In addition, it is possible to game the rankings to some extent, as can be seen for controversial or highly politicized topics, like climate change. I typically don’t read those articles for my science, or if I do I immediately go to a more primary or secondary source for more information. Major organs like the New York Times, the Economist, or the Guardian, typically do their homework for major articles, but the topical coverage can be uneven because they choose stories they think readers will want to read (of course!).
Magazines like Science and Nature often have news and comments for major science news events that are quite readable. (Full online access is available through Swem Library’s website at http://swem.wm.edu/.)
The National Science Foundation website also has a ‘newsroom’ that provides good summaries when major discoveries are announced.
For background information on important topics you are interested in, check out sites like the US National Academy of Sciences, the UK’s Royal Society of London, etc. These organizations have as part of their mission informing the public, and they regularly provide substantial reports of studies they carry out on topics like climate change, stem cell research, etc. Because these reports are intended for the public and policy makers, they are usually quite readable, and free of charge unless you want a bound print version.
Wikipedia
This has become an extremely valuable resource to answer immediate questions that might arise when you are reading, or if a topic comes up in class and you want more background. By all means take advantage of this resource, but be careful how you use it, and be aware that some topics are carefully crafted and balanced while others are of dubious quality. Learning to tell the difference is important. I use wikipedia very often myself during the course of the day, but it is not the final word, and should be used for serious research only to get you started, and to identify further sources. (You might also want to check out the December 2005 Nature article that did a head-to-head comparison of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica: Nature 438, 900-901 (15 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/438900a; Published online 14 December 2005. You will need to login to the Swem website because this is behind a paywall.)
Google and other search engines
These have dramatically changed the way we access and gather information, and they have without a doubt revolutionized our access to good information — provided you use them wisely. As advertising has become a major source of revenue for these sites, they have evolved ‘tailored’ algorithms that optimize the results of any given search based upon your ‘preferences’, or at least what the algorithm perceives are your preferences. This has led to what are called ‘filter bubbles’. This is discussed in the 2011 TED talk by Eli Pariser ‘Beware online filter bubbles‘.
Social media
There are many ways to stay abreast of happenings in astronomy and cosmology using social media like Facebook and Twitter. Each of the major space probes from NASA or the European Space Agency (ESA) maintains a site and posts regularly as events unfold.