www.cnet.com
Yup, it should’ve had horns and a protruding jaw at the very least.
I'm frankly dumbfounded they didn't use the word "baffled" as that's been the go to word for "something scientists don't know yet" for decades. Because they love how it undermines the validity of scientific discovery, implying all these scientists are just blundering about in lab coats, with no clue what's going on around them.
I was also sad to see he didn't look much like a Dragon.
Gotta say I love your constant fucking bashing of journalists, especially when they just make up a term on the spot as clickbai...
That's some good journalism you did there! Too bad the journalists that put this piece out didn't put it just like that, and instead went with "[researchers] make the provocative suggestion that we are closely related to Dragons". They bury the information that it's not necessarily anything new, just an exceptionally preserved specimen, 11 paragraphs down, and offer no explanation at all as to why it's called Dragon Man. Like, you see a headline that they've found the skull of Dragon Man, the single most curious thing about the headline is the name itself, and it gets no explanation.
That's some good reading comprehension you have. Able to decipher what the actual facts around the discovery are from reading the whole article instead of reading just the headline. Too bad ALL readers can't do that.
What's the worst that can happen from a misleading scientific article? Imma go with anti-vaccination movements. Just as an example.
Truly spoken like someone who has no blinding idea how anti-vaxx movements were birthed, nor how they propagate.
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I'd go so far as to agree with you there, but it isn't an apples to apples comparison in this case. To equate it to anti-vaxer bs, the journalist here would have had to GO WITH and double down on the "half man half dragon" claims. Thus spreading bad science. And frankly I don't see that happening in this instance, minus some incredibly bad reading comprehension on the part of the reader. And speaking from experience, you can't write everything assuming your reader has a kindergarten level understanding of the world.
As Tstorm already pointed out, it's the clickbait titles and bullshit filing that I take umbrage with. No one outside of academia would care about this article if not for the title being worded the way it is so as to get curiosity clicks. It's also not really bashing when it's plain facts. Journalism is a little bit of facts with a lot of fluff stuffed in it to fill out the required space for an article and making sure to hit all the important parts of whatever political faction or sub-faction they support. It's not even like in the old days where someone had to at least be sent out to a location to get information, sometimes dangerous locations, even out of wartime, now it's just reporting tweets someone made or restating what another journalist said or writing some godawful opinion piece like the news is their own personal blog.
To be fair I think the anger is less the "Dragon Man rewrites history!" claim, as its obvious embellished, but that the article itself never mentions its a Neanderthal skull named after a Dragon River, and that's the origin of its name. The article reads more like an article written based off another article, and less like one written with the intent to inform. Like the article seems to go out of its way not to explain the actual Dragon Man fossil or origin or significance.
It's not a Neanderthal. There is some speculation (mentioned in the article) that it might be a Denisovan.
