Beware 'Experts:' Headlines

Updated: 2025.10.09 13D ago 9 sources
Stories that lead with 'Experts:' often rely on a narrow slice of authority to sell a counterintuitive take, flattening uncertainty into a confident claim. Singal’s 2016 pieces used a contrarian source to declare sex addiction 'not real,' a framing he now flags as overreach. — It gives readers and editors a practical heuristic to spot epistemically weak science coverage that shapes public beliefs.

Sources

The Myth of the Sommelier
Cremieux 2025.10.09 68% relevant
The article spotlights repeated cases where oenophile experts and prestige labels were contradicted by blind evaluations (1976 Paris tasting and later replications), echoing the caution that confident expert framings often rest on narrow authority and can mask bias.
Finding truth in the white smoke of consensus
David Josef Volodzko 2025.09.03 90% relevant
The article shows headlines like 'scholars say genocide' flatten uncertainty by presenting an 86% approval without revealing only 28% of members voted, exemplifying how 'experts say' framing oversells authority.
The New York Times: What's All This Fuss I Keep Hearing About Saving Soviet Jewelry?
Chris Bray 2025.09.01 70% relevant
Like Singal’s critique of overconfident 'Experts:' framings, Bray shows a New York Times columnist confidently misdescribes the Cracker Barrel story by omitting the company’s stated $700M 'strategic transformation' and founder/investor backlash, illustrating how authoritative tone can mask weak evidentiary grounding.
How the Media Influence Americans’ Support for Police
Scott Mourtgos 2025.08.25 72% relevant
Both pieces emphasize that headline framing steers public judgments; here, four short race/protest headlines cut support for legal police force, echoing concerns that headline-driven cues can override nuance and reshape opinion.
Real talk on models, moderation, and the misuse of academic authority
Nate Silver 2025.08.20 60% relevant
Silver accuses political scientists Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach of rhetorical manipulation and weak methodology in their critique of Split Ticket’s WAR metric, urging skepticism of authority-driven rebuttals that aren’t matched by transparent evidence or calibration.
New Vindication for the Regnerus Same-Sex Parenting Study
D. Paul Sullins 2025.08.20 40% relevant
It implies prior media narratives about the Regnerus study overstated certainty and selected extreme estimates, echoing the heuristic to scrutinize how 'expert' claims are framed when underlying analyses are sensitive to analytic choices.
The Daily Beast fabricated scientific findings to pathologize "homophobia"
José Duarte 2025.08.05 82% relevant
The Daily Beast’s 'Science Says “Maybe”' framing is a textbook case of selling a counterintuitive take via selective 'expert' claims; Duarte shows the article asserted associations not in the paper and omitted negative correlations, mirroring the warning that such headlines flatten uncertainty into confidence.
Singal vs. Singal: Anthony Weiner And Sex Addiction
Jesse Singal 2025.07.22 100% relevant
The New York magazine Science of Us headline 'Experts: Sex and Porn Addiction Probably Aren’t Real Mental Disorders' anchored on David Ley’s stance.
You Can't Just "Control" For Things
Cremieux 2025.07.22 70% relevant
The article explains why claims like 'Experts: X causes Y after controlling for Z' can be false—controls can open collider paths or block mediators—offering a practical check on headline-driven causal overreach.
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