A “Schrödinger’s cat” moment in science journalism?

We seem to be trapped in what I'm thinking of as a "Schrödinger's cat" moment in science journalism. Tracker Charlie Petit's post yesterday deals with at least the third story in the past few weeks in which different news outlets have drawn opposite conclusions about the meaning of a new finding.

According to Charlie's post, a report on a new fossil discovery means that the origin of birds just got simpler (see Alicia Chang at the AP: New study restores famed fossil to "bird" branch, and others) or more complicated (see Rachel Ehrenberg at Science News: Fossil muddies the origin of birds, and more).

I also posted yesterday on coverage of a drug that either does–or does not–improve the outlook for people with Alzheimer's disease. And two weeks ago, I discussed a story on human cloning that is either "a major medical breakthrough"–or not.

In the story of Schrödinger's cat, a cat inside a box is either alive or dead, but no one can tell until the box is opened. Before the box is opened, the cat has a certain probability of being alive and a certain probability of being dead. You could almost say that it is alive and dead at the same time. Quantum mechanics talks about "a superposition of states."

We might say much the same about these stories. The findings are important–or not–and we can't be sure which is the case. Charlie notes that this happens in the case of the birds' origins because the science is so far incomplete. In other cases, as with the Alzheimer's drug, some of its benefits were confirmed and others were not, making for a mixed picture. With regard to the cloning story, scientists themselves disagree about what it means.

Whatever the explanations, we can't go on like this. Somebody needs to open the box and look at the damn cat.

-Paul Raeburn