"Science journalists" continued to misrepresent science on a regular basis.
The list is pretty good, but mesons are an entire class of particle, not a particle, so although the new particle discovered is a meson it is not the meson.
And Lockheed-Martin did not claim to have invented a working fusion reactor. They claimed to have an approach that they believe will lead to a working fusion reactor in five years or so.
Those are just two that caught my eye. It's been a good year for science, and for technology, and for humanity (mod some nitwits who think that violence and faith are good ways to improve the human condition) but science journalism is still a terrible mess.
A lot of the headline-making science fair projects are complete BS. It's a shame, too, because there are actually a lot of novel and interesting research projects at high-school level science fairs. The good ones win reasonably frequently, but they're realistic enough not to make click-winning headlines.
Hm. That doesn't refute the core issue: faster germination time. It just nay-says the hype leading up to that conclusion. Again, more a criticism of science journalism than of those three scientists.
Thanks. I got quite excited for a moment, but the list is actually full of things thats don't qualify as 'science breakthroughs'.
Example:
"16 February – American science educator and engineer Bill Nye (presenter of Bill Nye the Science Guy) debates global warming with congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).[74][75][76]"
The biggest CRISPR breakthroughs were all in 2012 and 2013- while it's an exciting up and coming biotech application, it wasn't a breakthrough of 2014.
The list is pretty good, but mesons are an entire class of particle, not a particle, so although the new particle discovered is a meson it is not the meson.
And Lockheed-Martin did not claim to have invented a working fusion reactor. They claimed to have an approach that they believe will lead to a working fusion reactor in five years or so.
Those are just two that caught my eye. It's been a good year for science, and for technology, and for humanity (mod some nitwits who think that violence and faith are good ways to improve the human condition) but science journalism is still a terrible mess.