Good science journalism is by its nature suspicious of grand or outlandish claims. Good science journalism does not take press releases at face value, but rather investigates the evidence behind those claims and the context in which they appear. Good science journalism is more interested in the truth behind big promises, or at least the likelihood of said promises coming true. By contrast, bad science journalism functions as a hype machine, regurgitating company statements verbatim as if it were the New York Times quoting Israel’s Ministry of Defense. Bad science journalism runs with shocking claims precisely because they are shocking, because shock drives clicks, and nowhere is this more apparent than in a headline.<\/p>\n
I’ve written about the problematic nature<\/a> of this type of coverage around mammoth claims of de-extinction, such as when Time and the New Yorker both published headlines claiming that the dire wolf has returned. (Reader, it has not.) Although Colossal<\/a> gives SpaceX a run for its money when it comes to sensationalism, other less technologically glitzy fields are less prone to sensational slop and arbitrary timelines; zoology is not promising a new monkey<\/a> by 2027. In fact, I’d wager that space science, with its reliance on otherworldly technology and billionaire braggadocios<\/a>, might be the most vulnerable to this kind of bad journalism.<\/p>\n To this point, I recently and wholeheartedly agreed with this exchange between cosmologist Katie Mack<\/a> and science journalist Dave Levitan<\/a>.<\/p>\n I first entered science journalism in the mid-aughts, and I remember how ubiquitous these headlines were. At that time, I was in many ways a baby and an idiot, but even then I did not really believe them. If these prestigious publications were interested in good science journalism, perhaps they would be writing follow-up stories now about how none of these promises of speedy space colonization came true. Perhaps they would take accountability for their role in inflating the reputation and net worth of certain bloviators by giving their bullshit the veneer of scientific credibility. Oddly, these publications do not seem interested in doing this.<\/p>\n So how have those headlines aged over the years? Let’s take a quick scan.<\/p>\n Some of the earliest stupid headlines I remember revolved around the project Mars One, Bas Lansdorp’s Dutch nonprofit that in 2012 announced plans to start a permanent colony on Mars, first by 2023, then 2024, then 2025, then 2027. Many prestigious outlets took this proposal extremely, extremely seriously. Consider this 2015 explainer published in The Guardian<\/a>: “Mars One mission: a one-way trip to the red planet in 2024.” This explainer which answers real, important questions such as “How will the astronauts get to Mars?” with answers such as:<\/p>\n “Mars One will contract a rocket manufacturer to build them a rocket. That could be Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, or another company. In 2024, they will blast the crew\u2019s landing module and their main living quarters for the voyage into Earth\u2019s orbit and dock them together. The crew then launch into Earth orbit themselves, climb into the waiting Mars spacecraft, and head off for their destination.”<\/p>\n Foolish plebian, you wanted to know how the astronauts were going to get to Mars? They will simply get a rocket made for them and travel to Mars inside it! Notably, this explainer omits the most important question\u2014once on Mars, how will they live?\u2014perhaps for reasons of space.<\/p>\n Other outlets breathlessly covered Mars One’s American Idol\u2013style search for the 24 people who would be allegedly rocketed to Mars as if this were a serious proposal to be covered seriously. Consider the Washington Post<\/a>‘s 2015 headline “100 finalists have been chosen for a one-way trip to Mars.” Consider CNN<\/a>‘s very serious 2016 interview with Lansdorp, titled “Goodbye, Earth: ‘We\u2019re going to live on Mars in 2027.'”<\/p>\n The Washington Post story was published at least a year after a team from MIT issued a report<\/a> that found the first Martian settlers would suffocate and die within the first 68 days of landing on the red planet. And the CNN interview was published nearly a year after two of those MIT students, Sydney Do and Andrew Owens, brutally dismantled the Mars One plan in a debate with Lansdorp, who conceded said debate and admitted that the Mars One plan was too generalized and nonspecific, per Business Insider<\/a>. The quixotic dream of Mars One eventually dissolved in bankruptcy in 2019. Although The Guardian published profusely<\/a> on Mars One and shared many viewpoints<\/a> of the people who wished to be the first colonists, it did not publish a news story in 2019 when the company went under (an opinion columnist, Arwa Mahdawi, wrote about it<\/a>). CNN had nothing.<\/p>\n The obvious oafishness of Mars One, which was essentially an interplanetary Fyre Festival, should have been a lesson to publications everywhere that big claims require big evidence, and that, specifically, you should not run a headline saying there will be a colony on Mars by 2025 just because some guy says there will be. But, as you might be able to tell from the existence of this article, this lesson was not learned.<\/p>\n The biggest continual offender in overpromising space is, of course, SpaceX. Elon Musk has wanted to go to Mars for 25 years now, and this dream has fueled the founding of basically all his companies: SpaceX for rockets, the Boring Company to burrow under Mars, X to test how a citizen-run government might be led on Mars, and Tesla so his Martian offspring can speed around on Cybertrucks, as Kirsten Grind reported for the New York Times<\/a>. Offspring, I say, because Musk wants to “seed” this interplanetary colony with his sperm.<\/p>\n Since the mid-aughts, prestigious publications have given Musk exactly what he wanted when he gives his capricious timelines for when, exactly, he will colonize Mars by treating said timelines as if they were plausible predictions made by a rational person. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal<\/a> published an interview with Musk under the headline: “Elon Musk: We Can Put A Man On Mars In 10 Years.” In 2016, Business Insider<\/a> published their gussied-up listicle, “This is Elon Musk’s plan to begin colonizing Mars by 2022.” <\/p>\n I quickly realized there were simply too many stories to assess individually, but here is a small sampling I found to communicate the ubiquitous nature of this slop across a range of generally serious publications:<\/p>\n CBS News<\/a>, 2016: “SpaceX Chief Elon Musk Predicts People On Mars In 9 Years”Los Angeles Times<\/a>, 2016: “SpaceX could send people to Mars in 2024, Elon Musk says”Washington Post<\/a>, 2016: “SpaceX says it will fly a spacecraft to Mars as soon as 2018”The Guardian<\/a>, 2016: “SpaceX founder Elon Musk plans to get humans to Mars in six years”ABC<\/a>, 2016: “SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Wants to Send Humans to Mars by 2025, Years Ahead of NASA”Futurism<\/a>, 2016: “SpaceX Is Heading to Mars in 2018 and Sending Humans in 2025”CNET<\/a>, 2016: “Elon Musk: We\u2019ll have people on Mars by 2025”National Geographic<\/a>, 2017: “Elon Musk: In Seven Years, SpaceX Could Land Humans on Mars”CBC<\/a>, 2017: “This is how SpaceX will get humans to Mars by 2024”Wall Street Journal<\/a>, 2017: “Elon Musk Aims to Land Humans on Mars by Middle of Next Decade.”Space.com<\/a>, 2018: “A Base on Mars? It Could Happen by 2028, Elon Musk Says”Business Insider<\/a>, 2018: “Elon Musk says SpaceX is on track to launch people to Mars within 6 years \u2014 here’s the full timeline of his plans to populate the red planet”CNBC Make It<\/a>, 2019: “Elon Musk says his Mars base will have a ‘fun, outdoorsy atmosphere”CNBC Make It<\/a>, 2021: “Elon Musk: ‘I’ll be surprised if we\u2019re not landing on Mars within five years'”Business Insider<\/a>, 2020: “Elon Musk says he plans to send 1 million people to Mars by 2050 by launching 3 Starship rockets every day and creating ‘a lot of jobs’ on the red planet.”New York Times<\/a>, 2023: “Elon Musk Says SpaceX Could Land on Mars in 3 to 4 Years”<\/p>\n It’s true that these types of headlines do not state definitively that Musk will begin colonizing Mars in a given year, but this is certainly what they are suggesting, and rather uncritically. It’s also true that many of the actual stories qualify the bold claims of their headlines. In these cases, such a headline formulation is still misleading, especially if the story takes the stance that such a timeline will not actually happen. Call me crazy, but I think a headline should be able to stand alone and communicate the truth of a story. If you need your story to undercut, dilute, or downright contradict your headline, it sounds like you what you really need is another headline.<\/p>\n The same holds for headlines that simply attribute the bold claim to the unreliable source, as if this exculpates the publication for the due diligence of fact-checking. I’m talking about NBC<\/a>‘s 2016 headline, “SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Says ‘We Plan to Launch People to Mars in 2024′”, separate from NBC<\/a>‘s headline earlier that year that proposed a slightly different timeline, “Elon Musk Says SpaceX Will Send People to Mars by 2025.” The “says” playbook is an old one, merely connecting the quote to the source without any interference or judgment. But, I would argue, some interference would be welcome here, if the quote in question is the stock-pumping ravings of a man who who loves to lie. This is ostensibly the purpose of journalism.<\/p>\n The worst of the lot were the headlines that omitted the “says” entirely, or even appeared to back the prattler’s outlandish claims: Futurism<\/a>‘s 2017 headline, “Elon Musk is Officially Sending Humans to Mars in 2024,” and Time<\/a>‘s 2016 story on Musk’s plan for uncrewed landings on the red planet, “Why You Should Take Elon Musk’s 2018 Mars Shot Seriously.”<\/p>\n There were, by the way, plenty of journalists covering Musk’s grand plans in measured and responsible ways. Take, for example, Lisa Grossman’s analysis in New Scientist<\/a> in 2016: “Elon Musk\u2019s spectacular plan to colonise Mars lacks substance.” At the New York Times<\/a>, Kenneth Chang has tracked Musk’s ever-shifting timelines. As early as 2012, Reo Eveleth took a critical eye in Smithsonian<\/a>: “Elon Musk\u2019s Plan for Mars Is Really Vague But Definitely Expensive.” There are also publications that largely avoided engaging with Musk’s timelines in the first place\u2014always an option!\u2014and instead ran more general explainers that questioned the premise<\/a> that we should try to live on Mars at all, on any timeline. This, to me, feels more effective and less exhausting than publishing unpaid PR.<\/p>\n Where is Musk now with his Martian machinations? SpaceX has not sent any rockets to Mars, crewed or uncrewed, and it seems certain that the company will miss all the deadlines that have yet to expire. I suppose there are four months left in the year for Musk to make the timeline CNBC<\/a> ran with in 2020 (“Elon Musk is \u2018highly confident\u2019 SpaceX will land humans on Mars by 2026”).<\/p>\n In February of this year, perhaps revealing a rare moment of self-awareness, Musk declared that SpaceX would pivot to the Moon, specifically with the aims of building “a self-growing city” there. The new timeline? Less than 10 years, per a tweet<\/a> from Musk that CNN<\/a> cited in their story on the SpaceX pivot, as if this timeline meant anything at all. For what it’s worth, earlier this month, SpaceX finally made contact with the lunar surface: A stray SpaceX rocket segment that had been drifting off-course for 19 months crashed into the Moon<\/a>.<\/p>\n Recommended<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good science journalism is by its nature suspicious of grand or outlandish claims. 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