Impact of Media coverage on new discoveries.

[Dominatus]

I follow a group on YouTube called D News, and they cover numerous topics involving progress and discoveries in science. I found one video that really got my attention:

This is about curing cancer with a deactivated version of HIV and reprogramming RNA. This is simply an amazing discovery, and holds great promise. Yet.. The cure for cancer is a pretty big deal, right? Even if it was an experimental test given out for the first time, it worked. Meaning that there is a good chance that it is will work again. So why didn't I hear anything about it prior to my digging up this video?

My theory is that the media, if they got ahold of it, would cover this story. They would overdo it, spamming it out every hour, because it's what the news channels do. And people would begin to protest- maybe it would be a small fraction of the population, but they would still protest it. And why would they do that? Misinformation spread by news coverage and speculation, or them being too stupid to fully comprehend what was happening with the research. Just like stem cells and cloning, this would be deemed "immoral". People would be outraged that this was used on a little girl. "It cured her? No, that was a fluke. You need more research to prove it but you can't test it on humans until it's been proven safe without a doubt." And so human testing is gone. Animal testing begins and is just as quickly stomped as "inhumane" and "violating animal rights". So now how do we test this without a living subject? Investors may have pulled out, not wanting to deal with such insanity. And this is just an example of one way it might go down if the media found out about this.

So are they keeping this from news outlets for the time being, until it's proven safe? That's what I think is going on. And I doubt this is the first time. What do you all think? Is the media being kept in the dark? Would a controversial research method for something that will change the world be protested at all?

[PakledHostage]

This is about curing cancer with a deactivated version of HIV and reprogramming RNA. This is simply an amazing discovery, and holds great promise. Yet.. The cure for cancer is a pretty big deal, right? Even if it was an experimental test given out for the first time, it worked. Meaning that there is a good chance that it is will work again. So why didn't I hear anything about it prior to my digging up this video?

That story did get a fair bit of media coverage about a year and a half ago or so. Maybe it just depends on which media outlet you pay attention to?

Fox probably focuses on stories like how Coke desecrated the US "national anthem" during the Superbowl by showing people singing "America the Beautiful" in languages other than 'merican, while the opposite end of the spectrum (i.e. NPR , etc) would be focusing more on real news and science.

Edited February 4, 2014 by PakledHostage

[John Crichton]

The BBC covered it extensively, so did Swiss news. In fact, the Swiss had an entire hour long program about it just recently.

I generally agree though, the mass media are ****e...especially comedy networks like Fox "News". Can't bring myself to watch a network that calls global warming a "hoax" or one that invites people as panelist despite them believing the earth is 6k years old.

[Thiel]

I'm pretty sure I remember the local media covering it.

Personally I'd guess something else made a bigger splash at the time, rather than some conspiracy to keep it out of the media.