Baffled Scientists Detect Massive Unexplained Radiation From the Sun, Study Reports

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 102 points – Baffled Scientists Detect Massive Unexplained Radiation From the Sun, Study Reports
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Baffled Scientists Detect Massive Unexplained Radiation From the Sun, Study Reports::"The Sun’s emission at high energies challenges present models," scientists say, and "decisive" new probes are needed to solve the mystery.

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I always laugh when media says scientists are baffled and have a mystery on their hands.

More often than not they pretty much know exactly what is up. But Pete says one thing, Harry says another thing, Jenna has been working on it for the past 20 years and don't forget old man Harris who did great work in the 70s. Most of the time they disagree on small details which don't even matter unless you are really into the subject. Or they have 2 theories and know for sure one of them is right, but they don't know which one. They need funding and staff for a 12 month study to figure out which one it is, but getting that funding has been an issue for the past 10 years.

Then they talk to a reporter and say well we don't really know, because they don't want to be presumptuous. So the headline says its a MYSTERY and scientists are BAFFLED.

In my experience scientist don't get baffled, they get excited and talk your ear off for hours if you let them. If you think they will stop if you stop buying them drinks, it doesn't work, they just keep going.

But I enjoy picturing a guy in a lab coat surrounded by bubbling beakers and tubes - with his head in his hands - questioning his life's work, and screaming "What the fuck sun!? God damn it!"

Tell them the next round is on them, that tends to change the conversation quickly...

This constant gamma-ray flux—which does not pose a threat to life on our planet—is far brighter than expected based on models of the Sun’s behavior, raising new questions about the mechanisms that are fueling the radiant glow.

Could they not have led with that? I hate that sites feel they need to imply an existential threat to drive clicks to a science article.

Welcome to the modern news media, where everything's a crisis and words don't mean anything.

In a headline, as soon as I see "scientists" instead of "researchers" I start getting doubtful. If scientist is preceded or followed by the word "baffled" or any of its synonyms I go straight to ignore. It's all clickbait these days

I don’t disagree (I actually do the exact same thing when I see the word “baffled”) but I’m interested in your distinction between researchers and scientists. Is it a common tactic for news articles to use “scientists”as a buzzword instead of “researchers”?

I'm not him, but now that I think about it, there is a tendency for many people to prefer the more generalized term.

Where scientists don't tend to use the word scientist as much, I can't recall ever seeing the term in a journal article for instance. (I don't read many, but I'll read an abstract here and there) I'm not sure why. I expect it's some categorization thing, where not all scientists perform research, so researcher is the more precise term. I'm just guessing as to the reason though, I do not have a PhD.

I would guess because "scientist" has no qualifying definition and is also vague. I just conducted an experiment to see if a McDonald's cups bottom would retain 4oz of Coca-Cola over the course of 5 days in a hot car (it didn't). Yay I am a scientist.

At least researcher or "research scientist" gives some idea of what the title is implying.

Late reply, sorry. Basically what others have said, "scientist" is used as a buzz word. I don't have any issue with the word itself, just how it's used in news media