[istultus]

As with any "New York Times Journal of Medicine"-type article, the author of the article didn't understand/chose to inflate the actual research - what they did was create a system that captures the fungus's electrical activity and used those pulses to arbitrarily assign movement rules to the robot. There's no suggesting of the fungus controlling the robot - merely a showcase that we have a system to capture the electrical activity of a mushroom. For all intents and purposes we have a robot with a motor instead of any other indicator - could've been a monitor showing a graph.

[latexr]

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2009-08-30

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/science-journalism

[AtlasBarfed]

The daily show or John Oliver show should do a recurring segment mocking msm science coverage.

This is a serious problem, and only getting more serious with ai generated misinformation.

Science is a pure institution of truth, or the best approximation of it that is practically possible. Bad science reporting has for decades undermined this tapping into the inherent antiintellectual current in America culture, relegating it to no better than celebrity news and news of the weird distraction segments.

It really reflects very poorly on the fourth estate, it's not a new problem, it's existed for at least a century.

I doubt things would ever get better considering the financial war on newspapers and news reporting in general

[anonCoffee]

Why would a pillar of MSM do that?

[latexr]

Last Week Tonight (John Oliver’s show) mocks some part of mainstream media every episode. It’s the “and now this” segment. Plus they have no qualms about criticising what they see as wrong such as disguised sponsored content or “local” news all repeating the same talking points from their owner. Mocking science coverage would be peanuts.