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If you want to criticise the press, you would do well to choose a real example rather than make one up and declare that if it occurred it would be a damning indictment of our media. In fact, the original initial version was first published in 2019. Not a single outlet, no matter how obscure, that I can find has covered this at all. In addition, from what I can tell this has never been published in any journal or been peer-reviewed at all. It's hard, therefore, to see this as anything other than lame culture warring. 'If this paper was picked up by the news or academic community, which it totally would, apart from the fact that it hasn't, but I know they definitely would if they hadn't, what rubes that would show them to be'. If anyone responds to this the inevitable reply will be 'the media is bad on science, look at X, Y and Z' or whatever, but then consider using one those real examples as the basis for a post rather than making up a non-existent story to get mad at.
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