This Is Science News?

I almost spit my coffee all over my keyboard this morning. Fox News' science and technology section had this story. It would be one thing if they mentioned the predictions of astrologers as a small part of a larger story on the eclipse, but the astrology is their story. I'm not trying to say that there is no news story here, but something like this belongs in the weird news section, not the science section. Metaphysical claptrap is not science.

The finger of shame is waggled at Fox News also because their journalism here is a bit lazy. In addition to the aforementioned offense, they link to the AFP story on Yahoo which is a bit more reasoned. For a small, blog-like news organization this is an acceptable practice. But Fox is a large news organization with many resources. Don't they have someone to write a reasoned science-y article about the eclipse? Even better, couldn't they just afford to print the AFP story in its entirety?

Shame on you Fox News. Shame on you.

Although slightly more reasoned, the AFP straddles the line with their story. It's almost like they have written this tongue-in-cheek, "hey look at what these goofy astrologers are saying," wink wink, nudge, nudge. The problem is that an uncritical reader could take this as some type of acceptance for astrology. "But the AFP thought the astrologers were knowledgeable enough in the ways of science to be quoted."

I guess the heart of my gripes lie in the cognitive disconnect between the general population and the scientific population. Since much has been written about this already, I'll just link you here.