Backreaction: "Science, Writers, and the Public - A bizarre love triangle":
I meant to simply ignore the whole issue, for I find it quite bizarre. A major daily newspaper reports on an article that hardly anybody in the community cares about [the crazy Higgs-reality-distortion paper], and thereby promotes it to public attention. That in turn annoys those in the community for the reason that it sheds quite an odd light on their own research field. The topic bounces back and forth, thereby only making it seem even more important....It seems that science journalists quite frequently pick out the craziest ideas, especially in theoretical physics....They need a good story, something that creates a reaction.
It's not just evolution.
In the comments, a link to a 2001 article, "Revenge of the Science Writer" (free registration required), which describes Robert Crease's memorable run-ins with Feynman and others.
