"A team of Scientists" "A team of researchers" "Scientists say" "Researchers say"

Why do pop-science sources never specify the field? Are the words "researchers" and "scientists" buzzwords or do words like "biologists", "astronomers", etc. scare the brainlets similar to a Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone scenario?
This is yet another way pop-science oversimplifies everything and misleads their public. It is really not a problem for me (since I am a socially retarded Hikikomori) but I am curious

Its to prevent the reader from thinking critically. "scientist" is an authoritative term. Nobody knows anyone with the actual title "scientist". Everyone is taught from elementary school that they are the "truth finders", right? If they start naming actual professions, people might think of their idiot neighbor who works in engineering, or their niece with a psychology degree and realize that maybe, just maybe the "scientists" behind the sensational headline, are human too.

same reason every professor in a movie is an English professor

This shit pisses me off. "Experts say..." "According to scientists..."

unless it's a disaster movie. then the professor is an astrophysicist who just discovered an asteroid with a diameter of texas careening towards the earth
or a climatologist warning people about how we're overdue for a really big storm
or a geologist who recorded some anomalous seismic activity
or a virologist who spends the first 4 minutes of the movie talking about how bioweapons are fucking dangerous
or a historian who's spent the last 11 years obsessively researching a 3000 year old doomsday prophecy
or a mathematician who happens to own an assault rifle and several thousand rounds of ammunition but he didn't get his coffee and some serious shit is about to go down

" I have a Master's Degree.... In SCIENCE!"

Don't we all?

"SCIENTISTS SAY TRANSGENDER DINOSAURS WERE THE FIRST TO HARNESS SOLAR POWER"

1 BAZILLION UPVOTES ON REDDIT

OMG I LOVE SCIENCE

what word should they use instead?

>"Biologist from the University of [...]"
>"Physicists from CERN theorized [...]"
>"user, a chemist from [...], made the announcement that [...]"
Of course, that would also put into display the poor sources they use

Most articles I've read only say scientists in the headline, then they specify who they were in the body.

Too bad NormieBook Pop-Science videos never give a source.
But I know of JewTube channels and some publications that do specify the scientist in question. The fact that some other publications use such generic terms makes me think not that it is ok to use such generic therms, but that in order to stay relevant outlet have to use those therms in order to star relevant, which if true would mean that treating your public like a thinking being does not attract enough attention

>2017
>doing that thing

"Scientists Baffled"
...their favourite idiot clickbait headline.

Yeah, popsci really ruins everything. Also, sauce on the pic?

>asteroid with the diameter of texas
why is that funny :^)

I know a lot of medical docs and profs personally. I know only a couple people who actually do real science. All of them are retards in one sense or another. It really takes the piss out of just about everything ever. Like how you have to read published papers with a grain of salt instead of reading it like it is the holy bible.

kek

All our measures emerge from the same fundamental phenomenon: We like to estimate size based on the nearest common object at hand. Up to and including the hand, feet, fingers and what have you.

There are more ridiculous things out there, like something exploding "with the force of a thousand atomic bombs". Ohh, fantastic, that clarified everyting. Nevermind that atomic bombs can explode with the force of a thousand atomic bombs, no sir, that statment is accurate, unambiguous and illuminating.

At least texas has a fixed size and is relatively round (as territories go)

Google

I can vouch. I'm friends with a few doctors in real life and they are some of the most dogmatic irrational people I have ever met. It's good to have friends who are doctors though..

Appeal to authority and the "religion of science" that has little to do with actual scientific research.