I linked earlier today the Science dump of A. sediba papers.

Media outlets are still stumbling all over the evolution-specific conceptual framework that it takes to accept or understand what the studies are all about.

Examples:

AFP headline screams “Fossils uncover ‘weird’ chimp-human creature called Australopithecus sediba”, a headline which seems to imply the discovery of sediba is new (it’s not), that there are “chimp-human” creatures (it’s a phrase that is misleading at best, at least not without lots of caveats), that “creatures” is somehow different in substance than what you and me are (A. sediba is basically the same kind of living thing as we are), and so forth.

Ok, onto UPI: “Fossils suggest possible new candidate for human ancestor”, which is better but raises another whole misunderstanding - that of ancestry versus cousin-hood. The beings whose fossils are the subject of the studies may not, strictly speaking, be ancestors of humans today. What the Science papers discuss, among other things, is the physical similarities to modern and other archaic humans, in a hope of better fitting A. sediba into the family tree. I think it is important to realize that the studies published today raise more questions (which is indeed one of their goals.) At least the UPI headline uses “suggests” which does plant the idea that the questions are ongoing.

Meanwhile, over at the LA Times, we get one of the hot-button words tossed into a headline: Evidence points toward solving evolutionary ‘missing link’ . Any time the phrase “missing link” is raised the eyebrows of readers ought to follow. Anyone who has had to deal with creationists understands how “missing links” is a fundamental mis-understanding of the evolutionary process. Every offspring who reproduces is a “missing link”.

Finally, CNN went a bit more artistic: “Ancient humanlike skeleton is ‘weird mosaic’” “Humanlike”, which probably ought to be written as “human-like”, sounds nice and sensational without being too far afield. “Weird mosaic” I blame on scientists who are careless with their words, but I can understand how a news outlet would just pick up any catchy phrase that shows up in an interview or essay.

Communicating science - it’s harder than one thinks. In this case half the audience thinks evolution is a hoax or lie from satan, and the other half may not have the background to understand why the differences between Australopithecus sediba and Australopithecus afarensis is something over which physical anthropologists argue, and thus any news article is going to require some background material, and that means a long article, and that turns some of the potential readers off from reading the article in the first place.