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Scientific Studies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

LastWeekTonight · 18.1M views · 2016-05-09 · 19:28

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Overview

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on how media outlets report incomplete or untrue findings as settled science. It covers sensational headlines, small studies and pressure on researchers.

On Hacker News

HN commenters recommend it as an entertaining and sophisticated primer on reading science reporting critically.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2016–2019

Topics

Media, journalism & propagandaScientific method & science communication
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scientific studiesmedia literacyjohn oliverreplicationsample size

What people said

idDriven · 2019-02 · Strong recommendation

If you're saying that the standard of 'reporting' on health and science in the media at large is often conflicting and distorted into a confusing and often contradictory form there is definitely validity in that. John Oliver has a great segment called 'Scientific Studies' I'll link at the end of this post, everyone should watch this. If you are able to read the journals directly and have studied how to critically evaluate scientific studies I can guarantee that there is significantly, like thousands-fold, more consistent information. [VIDEO]

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brudgers · 2016-12 · Recommendation

Generally, I think scientific studies are uninformative as news because: 1. Most people are not close enough to the science to form an informed technical opinion. 2. The scientific conclusions of most studies are impractical to implement. John Oliver's analysis is both sophisticated and entertaining: [VIDEO]

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dahart · 2016-06 · Recommendation

John Oliver did an awesome bit recently on scientific studies and how popular conceptions of them, especially media portrayals, completely distort the results. [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by LastWeekTonight, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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