Seems like the "journalist" does not understand the role of academic artifacts (such as published papers) or science in general. Most academics are not trying to drive excitement in the general population with their research, but rather appeal to their peers, who by the very nature of their job must evaluate methodology and formal approaches to ascertain the quality of the findings. Sensationalizing your research before it has attained general acceptance in your discipline (or ever) might be fine with regard to PR, but terrible for your overall academic career.
> Editor's note: On a more serious note for you scientists. We love you guys, we love what you do, and we understand why these things have ended up the way they are. Thanks for being patient while we vent.
I think you are just misunderstanding discussion of why covering science is hard in a form of writing readers enjoy, for actually criticizing scientists for doing what they do.
That's a little too purely social - a better explanation might be that scientists care a lot more about being right than the public, because if the public gets something wrong they have careful scientists to set them straight, but if the scientists collectively get something wrong they'll just be wrong forever. As a result the measures of certainty matter far more than the statements themselves, because a mild-mannered truth that is indeed true is perfectly valuable while a bombastic claim in which nobody knows how confident they should be is perfectly worthless.
Lots of lazy journalists want their subjects to write their copy for them. They prefer PR departments, marketing pros, and savvy self-promoters who do as much of the work for them as possible. My wife occasionally gets contacted by publications in her field that want to feature or just mention her work. She used to send every publication a similar blurb talking about the work in her own professional voice, but over the years she figured out that they either borrow extensively from what she sends them or don't include her at all. Now if she wants the coverage she checks out the publication and sends them something customized for their audience and writing style, and they always use it.
