Scientific Studies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Why HN readers recommended it

HN commenters recommend it as an entertaining and sophisticated primer on reading science reporting critically.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

LastWeekTonight

Topic

science reporting

Format

comedy

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

3

HN mentions in dataset

7

Recommendation years in dataset

2016–2019

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• If you're saying that the standard of 'reporting' on health and science in the media at large is often conflicting and distorted into a confusing and often contradictory form there is definitely validity in that. John Oliver has a great segment called 'Scientific Studies' I'll …

• John Oliver did an awesome bit recently on scientific studies and how popular conceptions of them, especially media portrayals, completely distort the results. [VIDEO]

• Generally, I think scientific studies are uninformative as news because: 1. Most people are not close enough to the science to form an informed technical opinion. 2. The scientific conclusions of most studies are impractical to implement. John Oliver's analysis is both sophisticated and entertaining: …