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I found this page: http://phys.org/space-news/ . It seems to me pretty good page with interesting news and so on and I like that it is free. But I noticed in comments people arguing about the validity of the information and so on. Are they just "trolls" or is this page really bad source of information, if that is so, how much can I trust it? Thanks in advance!

Vojta Klimes
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    I checked out a couple of stories - it looks ok as a source of news. Good that it publishes abstracts and gives links to actual peer-reviewed papers. – ProfRob Feb 17 '16 at 00:51
  • I've been reading and appreciating phys.org for years, and it's always rung true whenever it's discussing something I'm already familiar with. And of course almost all articles link to the actual peer-reviewed papers they discuss, except when they link to preprints in arXiv which are usually in the process of peer-review. In most if not all cases they also do their own "peer review" by quoting other established researchers in the same field who are not associated w/ work. After all these years I never knew there were comment sections. Had I known I certainly would not have payed any attention – uhoh Feb 20 '24 at 01:24
  • ...to them. Certainly some will be trolls, many more just bored people who like to "well, what I think is..." everything they encounter on the internet. Perhaps there are a few, but don't waste your time. Instead, go read the actual papers cited in the phys.org article, and if you don't understand something, use it to start a Stack Exchange question. See uhoh's use of phys.org and phys.org's – uhoh Feb 20 '24 at 01:24

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I've been reading phys.org for years. It's right up there with physics.aps and physicsworld.

All good sources that provide decent refs. Comments are often where people who like to argue, argue. Sometimes they are useful, often not.

Wayfaring Stranger
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The problem with phys.org is that it mostly just reprints press releases from universities and other research institutions, rather than doing actual journalism. (You can tell by checking the byline; if it says something like "By Santa Fe Institute", then it's a press release.)

Proper science journalism involves, at a minimum, checking with other scientists in the field who are not affiliated with the study being reported, to provide some context beyond the sort of study-author and institutional hype that press releases tend to feature.

Peter Erwin
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  • Actually, phys.org's articles frequently quote experts who are not authors nor associated with the research published. I think if you go there now and click through several articles you'll see that they generally do indeed meet your standard for "actual journalism". – uhoh Feb 20 '24 at 01:11
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    @uhoh Ok, I looked at the first 39 stories on their front page (skipping the "Corporate Sponsor" pieces). There were 4 actual articles by Phys.org staff, 4 reprints from other sources (The Conversation, LA Times, Denver Post) — and 31 press releases. That’s about 80% press releases. – Peter Erwin Feb 20 '24 at 04:05
  • Were these about Astronomy, Physics and similar hard sciences? – uhoh Feb 20 '24 at 15:48
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    The first 20 articles on the "Astronomy & Space" sub-page include 2 by Phys.org staff, 9 from other sources (AP, Orlando Sentinal, etc.), and 9 press releases. (A lot of the "other sources" articles relate to the launch industry.) For the "Physics" sub-page, it's 1 article by Phys.org and 19 press releases. For "Chemistry", it's (again) 1 by Phys.org and 19 press releases. – Peter Erwin Feb 20 '24 at 21:52
  • I've added an answer about the "Space News" section, which is what the question asks about. I'll go look at Physics now. I'm curious have you found anything at all that you think is in any way less than reliable information? I think you are trying to suggest that if something is not "proper science journalism" that that makes it less reliable. Yes, a university press-release about a recent Phys Rev Letter can have errors in it, all written material can contain errors, even peer-reviewed. But I am pretty certain these will be few and far-between, and since they link to the source material... – uhoh Feb 21 '24 at 00:24
  • which is what we really should be reading for accurate information in the first place - I think there is nothing wrong with considering a carefully c8rateed set of news items to make us aware of them. We can also turn to longer journalistic articles, or the primary sources (the papers themselves) if we want more, but few of us have the bandwidth to do that several times a day.
    • – uhoh Feb 21 '24 at 00:42