Not having witnessed it personally does not make it hallucinated slop. Journalists very often write about things they were told happened, and are believable. Most likely the parents told the writer, or showed them a picture.
On top of that Science is a reputable publication. They have fact checkers on staff. For a sensitive article like this it would have been independently gone over with a fine tooth comb. The fact checker will have seen a photo, or spoken directly with the family. This is all standard stuff in high level journalism like this.
There are journalism 101 courses you can audit to learn more about features, fact checking and how all this works. It seems like it would go a long way in improving your knowledge. Things like accusing journalists of fabricating things is a VERY serious accusation in that world. The writer is not going to make up the lede in a Science article on something that could be easily refuted by the parents and ruin their entire career.
It’s ok to not like feature writing or be ignorant of its existence and how it gets made. Calling for extermination and characterizing it as hallucinated slop with no evidence out of that ignorance is strangely aggressive.
On top of that Science is a reputable publication. They have fact checkers on staff. For a sensitive article like this it would have been independently gone over with a fine tooth comb. The fact checker will have seen a photo, or spoken directly with the family. This is all standard stuff in high level journalism like this.
There are journalism 101 courses you can audit to learn more about features, fact checking and how all this works. It seems like it would go a long way in improving your knowledge. Things like accusing journalists of fabricating things is a VERY serious accusation in that world. The writer is not going to make up the lede in a Science article on something that could be easily refuted by the parents and ruin their entire career.
It’s ok to not like feature writing or be ignorant of its existence and how it gets made. Calling for extermination and characterizing it as hallucinated slop with no evidence out of that ignorance is strangely aggressive.