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So when I think of going through any media like scientific publications, I wonder how to discern and point out the captured and biased media vs the more objective ones (or at least the ones that don't have a hidden financial motive behind them).
This is exactly the hard part: a topic which many people in more applied scientific disciplines worry about. Welcome to the real word, Neo. :-)
Again, I don't have definite answer, but rough guidelines are:
- is a result too good to be true?
- is some result coherent to results that are much more established?
- why would you assume that the author is unbiased or biased? (biases not only have financial reasons)
- which agenda does the author have (yes, deep pursuit for scientific truth is also an agenda? Nobody is free of an agenda)
- does the author make an effort to explain how the findings could be explained in an alternative way that makes the result look much less impressive?
- could the results be reproduced in other labs?
- which is the minimum amount of facts that you must believe in (like axioms) such that the result holds?
- ...
This is exactly the hard part: a topic which many people in more applied scientific disciplines worry about. Welcome to the real word, Neo. :-)
Again, I don't have definite answer, but rough guidelines are:
- is a result too good to be true?
- is some result coherent to results that are much more established?
- why would you assume that the author is unbiased or biased? (biases not only have financial reasons)
- which agenda does the author have (yes, deep pursuit for scientific truth is also an agenda? Nobody is free of an agenda)
- does the author make an effort to explain how the findings could be explained in an alternative way that makes the result look much less impressive?
- could the results be reproduced in other labs?
- which is the minimum amount of facts that you must believe in (like axioms) such that the result holds?
- ...