Mooney On Scientific Reporting

A lot of the time, what's prized in [the Washington journalism] world is the ability to make a clever argument--to turn conventional wisdom on its head.

When you apply this approach to science, however, there's an utter mismatch. In science, "conventional wisdom" is a consensus perspective that has withstood repeated expert attempts to unseat it. In this context, being "counterintuitive"--especially when one is doing so well outside of the traditional channels of scientific discourse--usually amounts to little more than being just plain wrong.