Parsing Science: The unpublished stories behind the world’s most compelling science, as told by the researchers themselves.

How much can you trust people's retelling of information the've read? In episode 95, Shiri Melumad from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business discusses her research showing that when – much like the children’s game “telephone” – news is repeatedly retold, it undergoes a stylistic transformation through which the original facts are increasingly replaced by opinions and interpretations, with a slant toward negativity. Her article “The dynamics of distortion: How successive summarization alters the retelling of news”, was published with Robert Meyer and Yoon Duk Kim, on January 7, 2021 in the Journal of Marketing Research.

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Websites and other resources

Shiri's website and Twitter

Shiri on Knowledge @ Wharton

Vox article on Shiri's research into the effect space constraints have on what people share

News and Media

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Hosts / Producers

Doug Leigh & Ryan Watkins

How to Cite

Leigh, D., Watkins, R., & Melumad, S.. (2021). Parsing Science - Positively Negative. doi: 10.6084/m9.figshare.