2018-11-10: Scientific news and reports should cite original papers

I highly encourage all scientific news or reports cite corresponding articles. ScienceAlert usually does a good job on this. This piece of scientific news from ScienceAlert discovers two Rogue planets.  Most planets we discovered rotate around a star. A Rogue planet does not rotate around a star, but the center of the Galaxy. Because planets do not emit light, Rogue planets are extremely hard to detect. This piece of news cites a recently published paper on arXiv. Although anybody can publish papers on arXiv. Papers published by reputable organizations should be reliable.

A reliable citation is beneficial for all parties. It makes the scientific news more trustable. It gives credits to the original authors. It could also connect readers to a place to explore other interesting science.

Jian Wu