[colincooke]

While I agree that these theory based papers are useful, and are often the precursor to experiments, I believe the general understanding of "study has found X" in pop culture is that there is "hard evidence" of the finding being tauted. Theories are risky to place too much credence in without being steeped in the field yourself (is this a theory that most people in the field agree with, or is the one suggesting it an outlier?).

As usual science communication is never done as well as we could all hope, but I personally like this "hierarchy of evidence" approach in understanding if something is ready to be consumed by the general public, rather than requiring further discussion with the scientific community.

[jstummbillig]

Agreed. At this point I am also not willing to just let science off the hook and blame it all on the press: If our smartest people can not find ways to differentiate between ideating and good results in a way that a sensationalist press can't simply ignore, then just maybe they are not trying all that hard.

[dv_dt]

I wish sci comms practice would have a standard set of terms for stages of development/belief. Here the headline should be something like “theory proposed that …”

[birdman3131]

We have that term already. Hypothesis.