Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/390

382 an indictment of the newspaper treatment of the weather can be made, since; although in this matter the newspaper reflects public ignorance and adds to it, in other lines of endeavor the average newspaper is quick to reflect knowledge and expertness. But with the weather it is otherwise. Instead of informing, most newspapers merely confirm popular error. Although for a generation the main facts of weather drift have been settled beyond dispute, they know nothing of it; they are still in the swaddling clothes of belief, and still accept the concepts of their grandfathers, who swore by the 'Shepherd of Banbury's Rules,' and knew a wet moon when they saw it. As under normal circumstances this profound ignorance would give way slowly to the new science, it is regrettable that on the part of journalism there should be so gross a dereliction, and that at this late day, instead of being the harbinger of the new fact, it should still be the handmaiden of the old obscurantism. If, believing the problem of meteorology to be too difficult to understand, the newspaper would let the weather alone, things might improve. But, unfortunately, the weather will not let the newspaper alone, and so, through government forecast and actual incident and accident, the newspaper must keep pegging away at it, editorially and 'reportorially' until the present anomalous state of things is developed, for which there is no excuse in the nature of science or in the intelligence of those who 'get out' the modern newspaper. A daily journal is not a technical publication. One does not expect to see worked out in it problems in the differential calculus. One might forgive a casual error in the statement of the formulæ for hydrocarbon compounds, since organic chemistry is not served up as a daily dish, but the persistent indifference to meteorological explanations, within the capacity of a boy of fifteen, is inexcusable, and, unfortunately, as the comments on the Galveston horror show, there is no sign of a change for the better. A few, a very few, newspapers—exceptions but prove the rule—reflect expertness and evince common-sense accuracy, still at the same time losing nothing in the way of presenting the subject in an interesting and attractive manner; but, for the most part, the average newspaper fails in its duty to the public, so far as the weather is concerned, in the four following particulars:

 1. By reason of a misapprehension and misrepresentation of the simplest fundamental facts of atmospheric circulation and weather movement, effects being treated as causes, etc. 2. By reason of a constant confusion of terminology and a generally slipshod use of weather terms and facts. 3. By reason of a persistent refusal to recognize much, if any, difference between the scientist and the charlatan, between the expert and the quack; and, in fact, by a disposition—marked in some quarters—to give undue prominence to bogus weather prophets and