Good science journalism is, by nature, wary of grandiose or extravagant claims. Good science journalism does not take press releases at face value, but rather investigates the evidence behind those claims and the context in which they appear. Good science journalism is more interested in the truth behind big promises, or at least the likelihood that those promises will come true. By contrast, bad science journalism functions as a hype machine, regurgitating company statements verbatim as if it were the New York Times quoting Israel’s Defense Ministry. Bad science journalism publishes outrageous claims precisely because they are outrageous, because shock generates clicks, and nowhere is this more evident than in a headline. I’ve written about the problematic nature of this type of coverage around gargantuan de-extinction claims, such as when Time and the New Yorker ran headlines claiming that the direwolf had returned. (Reader; you haven’t.) While Colossal gives SpaceX a run for its money when it comes to sensationalism, other less technologically flashy fields are less prone to sensational meltdowns and arbitrary timelines; Zoology doesn’t promise a new monkey by 2027. In fact, I’d bet space science, with its reliance on otherworldly technology and billion-dollar boasts, might be the most vulnerable to this kind of bad journalism. To this point, I recently wholeheartedly agreed with this exchange between cosmologist Katie Mack and science journalist Dave Levitan. I first got into science journalism in the mid-aughts, and I remember how ubiquitous these headlines were. At the time, I was in many ways a baby and an idiot, but even then I didn’t really believe them. If these prestigious publications were interested in good science journalism, perhaps they would now be writing follow-up articles about how none of these promises of rapid space colonization came true. Perhaps they would take responsibility for their role in inflating the reputations and net worth of certain inflators by giving their nonsense a veneer of scientific credibility. Interestingly, these publications don’t seem interested in doing this. So how have those headlines aged over the years? Let’s take a quick look. Some of the first stupid headlines I remember revolved around the Mars One project, Bas Lansdorp’s Dutch nonprofit that in 2012 announced plans to start a permanent colony on Mars, first in 2023, then 2024, then 2025, then 2027. Many prestigious media outlets took this proposal extremely, extremely seriously. Consider this 2015 explanation published in The Guardian: “Mars One mission: a one-way trip to the red planet in 2024.” This explanation answers real and important questions like “How will astronauts get to Mars?” with answers like: “Mars One will hire a rocket manufacturer to build them a rocket. It could be Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, or another company. In 2024, they will destroy the crew lander and its main living quarters for the trip to Earth orbit and dock them together. The crew will then launch themselves into Earth orbit, board the waiting Mars spacecraft, and head to their destination.” Silly plebian, you wanted to know how they were going the astronauts arrive. Mars? They’ll just get a rocket made for them and travel to Mars inside it! In particular, this explanation omits the most important question: once on Mars, how will they live? Perhaps for space reasons. Other outlets breathlessly covered Mars One’s American Idol-style search for the 24 people who were supposed to be sent to Mars as if it were a serious proposal that needed to be covered seriously. Consider the 2015 Washington Post headline: “100 Finalists Chosen for One-Way Trip to Mars.” Consider CNN’s very serious interview with Lansdorp in 2016, titled “Goodbye, Earth: ‘We’re Going to Live on Mars in 2027.'” The Washington Post story was published at least a year after an MIT team issued a report that found the first Martian colonists would suffocate and die within the first 68 days after landing on the red planet. And the CNN interview was published nearly a year after two of those MIT students, Sydney Do and Andrew Owens, brutally dismantled the Mars One plan in a debate with Lansdorp, who admitted to such debate and admitted that the Mars One plan was too general and non-specific, according to Business Insider. The quixotic dream of Mars One finally dissolved into bankruptcy in 2019. Although The Guardian published extensively about Mars One and shared many views of people who wanted to be the first colonists, it did not publish a story in 2019 when the company went bankrupt (an opinion columnist, Arwa Mahdawi, wrote about it). CNN had nothing. The obvious bungling of Mars One, which was essentially an interplanetary Fyre Festival, should have been a lesson to publications everywhere that big claims require big evidence and that, specifically, you shouldn’t publish a headline saying there will be a colony on Mars by 2025 just because someone says there will be. But, as can be deduced from the existence of this article, this lesson was not learned. The biggest continuing offender of over-promising in space is, of course, SpaceX. Elon Musk has wanted to go to Mars for 25 years, and this dream has fueled the founding of basically all of his companies: SpaceX for rockets, Boring Company for digging under Mars, Offspring, I say, because Musk wants to “seed” this interplanetary colony with his sperm. Since the mid-aughts, prestigious publications have given Musk exactly what he wanted when he gives his whimsical timelines for when, exactly, he will colonize Mars, treating said timelines as if they were plausible predictions made by a rational person. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal published an interview with Musk with the title: “Elon Musk: We can put a man on Mars in 10 years.” In 2016, Business Insider published its elegant list: “This is Elon Musk’s plan to start colonizing Mars in 2022.” I quickly realized that there were simply too many stories to evaluate individually, but here’s a small sampling I found to communicate the ubiquitous nature of this hogwash in a variety of generally serious publications: CBS News, 2016: “SpaceX boss Elon Musk predicts people on Mars in 9 years” Los Angeles Times, 2016: “SpaceX could send people to Mars in 2024, says Elon Musk” Washington Post, 2016: “SpaceX says it will fly a spaceship to Mars as early as 2018” The Guardian, 2016: “SpaceX founder Elon Musk plans to put humans on Mars in six years” ABC, 2016: “SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wants to send humans to Mars by 2025, years ahead of NASA” Futurism, 2016: “SpaceX heading to Mars in 2018 and sending humans in 2025″CNET, 2016: “Elon Musk: We’ll have people on Mars by 2025″National Geographic, 2017: “Elon Musk: In seven years, SpaceX could put humans on Mars”CBC, 2017: “Here’s how SpaceX will put humans on Mars by 2024″Wall Street Journal, 2017: “Elon Musk aims to put humans on Mars by the middle of the next decade.” Space.com, 2018: “A Mars base? It could happen in 2028, says Elon Musk” Business Insider, 2018: “Elon Musk says SpaceX is on track to launch people to Mars within 6 years; here’s the full timeline of its plans to populate the red planet” CNBC Make It, 2019: “Elon Musk says its Mars base will have a ‘fun, outdoor atmosphere’ CNBC Make It, 2021: “Elon Musk: ‘I’ll be surprised if we don’t land on Mars within five years'” Business Insider, 2020: “Elon Musk says he plans to send 1 million people to Mars by 2050, launching 3 Starship rockets every day and creating ‘a lot of jobs’ on the red planet.” New York Times, 2023: “Elon Musk says SpaceX could land on Mars in 3 or 4 years” It’s true that these types of headlines don’t definitively state that Musk will begin colonizing Mars in a given year, but this is certainly what they suggest, and quite uncritically. It’s also true that many of the real stories qualify the bold claims of their headlines. In these cases, that formulation of the headline is still misleading, especially if the story takes the position that that timeline won’t actually happen. Call me crazy, but I think a headline should be able to stand alone and communicate the truth of a story. undermine, dilute, or openly contradict your headline, it seems to you that what you really need is another headline. The same goes for headlines that simply attribute the bold claim to an unreliable source, as if this exonerates the publication from fact-checking due diligence. I’m referring to NBC’s 2016 headline, “SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Says ‘We Plan to Launch People to Mars in 2024,'” separate from NBC’s headline from earlier that year that. proposed a slightly different timeline, “Elon Musk says SpaceX will send people to Mars by 2025.” The “says” manual is old and simply connects the quote to the source without any interference or judgment. But I would say that some interference would be welcome here, if the quote in question is the rantings of a man who loves to lie. This is apparently the purpose of journalism. chatty: Futurism’s 2017 headline, “Elon Musk Will Officially Send Humans to Mars in 2024,” and Time’s 2016 story about Musk’s plan for uncrewed landings on the Red Planet, “Why You Should Take Elon? Musk’s 2018 Mars Launch Is Serious.” By the way, there were many journalists who covered Musk’s big plans in a measured and responsible manner. Take, for example, Lisa Grossman’s analysis in New Scientist from 2016: “Elon Musk’s spectacular plan to colonize Mars lacks substance.” At the New York Times, Kenneth Chang has followed Musk’s ever-changing timelines. Already in 2012, Reo Eveleth cast a critical eye on the Smithsonian: “Elon Musk’s plan for Mars is really vague but definitely expensive.” There are also posts that largely avoided addressing Musk’s timelines in the first place (always an option!) and instead published more general explanations that questioned the premise that we should try to live on Mars, in any timeline. This, to me, seems more effective and less exhausting than posting unpaid PR. Where is Musk now with his Martian machinations? SpaceX has not sent any rockets to Mars, crewed or unmanned, and the company seems certain to miss all deadlines that have not yet expired. I’m guessing there are four months left in the year for Musk to make the timeline CNBC followed in 2020 (“Elon Musk is ‘very confident’ SpaceX will land humans on Mars by 2026”). The new timeline? Less than 10 years, according to a tweet from Musk that CNN cited in its story on the SpaceX pivot as if this timeline means anything. For what it’s worth, earlier this month, SpaceX finally made contact with the lunar surface: a missing segment of a SpaceX rocket that had been off course for 19 months crashed into the Moon. Recommended
