I’ve just written a booklet totally attacking Laterile / laterile / ‘B17′ / amygdalin because I am so appalled with the fundamentalist quasi-religion which is Alternative Medicine / Complementary Medicine. Basically an in-law said I should believe and its laughable; but I just checked the science of it and wrote it up with massive end notes for the average reader. Yes, this is just a plug because do you know how difficult it is to get sensible scientific information on this issue? Very difficult due to the PR rubbish put out by the ACM snake doctor people.

The booklet is called ‘ Laetrile / B 17 / Amygdalin is Rubbish’ and is available on

stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=645367

And yes, a shameless plug, but in the right cause…

ThaNKS!

Looking at Charles’s blog… “From 1995 to December 2004 I was technology editor at ^^^The Independent^^^ writing about technology, science and the environment”. “As of November 25 2005, I’m the editor of the Technology supplement of The Guardian.”

www.charlesarthur.com/cv.php

So Charles Arthur was a close colleague of Jeremy Laurance. Perhaps that helped lubricate his comments here? And at the Guardian too? It was a very strange thing for Laurance to complain about. “I’d like to complain about, er, NOT being mentioned in the Bad Science Column…”

I have done that, many times, and they have never once corrected basic simple scientific errors they have made in their articles.

Presumably this is because the corrections page is there for when their friends in the journalist community complain, rather than for actually correcting facts.

Monday March 6, 2006
The Guardian

In our Bad Science column, page 13, February 25, the writer drew attention to an item in the Independent newspaper headed Miracle cures shown to work, which had said incorrectly that doctors had found statistical evidence that some alternative treatments could cure apparently terminal illness. The Guardian story failed to acknowledge that the Independent had published a correction on February 17 which made it clear that the error was not the fault of the bylined author of the article. Apologies.
Email: reader@guardian.co.uk

That’s awfully generous of the Guardian. The correction is valid until the last clause. If you look back at the correction, at post 26, it certainly did not ‘make clear’ (unless you’re a kremlinologist) that the error was not the fault of the bylined author, although it did make clear that the error was not the fault of the author of original paper. That Jeremy Laurance’s story had been hijacked was clarified in this thread (and, as far as I know, nowhere else) at post 29 by Ben.
So the Guardian corrections column (and contributors to this website, including Charles) have acted, in my opinion, to redeem Jeremy Laurance’s reputation, even though his own paper is too proud to do so.
And, of course, the correction that the Guardian refers to does not exist if you look online.

without wishing to get drawn into a petty dispute, i don’t see what you suggest i was wrong about in the original post? there was an article in the independent that was immensely foolish, and i pointed that out. it subsequently transpired that their ludicrous miracle cures piece was the responsibility of somebody other than the person listed as the author – when the independent corrected it, although after i posted about the story and rang the paper and emailed jeremy – the story about what a shameful fantasy this independent story isn’t about the identity of the author, but in any case that new information appeared in the comments section immediately, with a reference to it subsequently added in the post.

I suggest you have no idea of how a newspaper or magazine works, and how news priorities are set. It’s not random. It’s evolved. Does this blog parade its errors – because this post is itself wrong in “for all I knew Jeremy Laurance might have gone to the study’s authors and got some kind of personal on-the-phone quote that explained his bonkers riff into miracle cures.”?

Ben’s comment above in 29 shows that he knows that”s wrong. Yet he hasn’t updated the post or created a new post explaining his error. Gee, how does that work? Same as a newspaper – it’s more interesting and important to get the new stuff in.

You’ve got a point that the witchdoctor industry, which we all hate, would claim suppression. But where there’s visible correction – which is done quite easily online with the strike tag – then the whole story unrolls itself clearly.

For the Indie to pull the article shows perhaps that they thought it was just wrong. Or most likely that Jeremy Laurance persuaded them that it was wrong. The nice thing would be a re-edited version. But sometimes newspapers are just too proud to do that.

“it’s a constant pain that corrections get less prominence. Kind of hard to do though.”
…and… “finding out new stuff is more engaging.”

Firstly, readers and viewers are constantly engaged in seeing other’s errors. That’s why media sections of papers like to dish it out on their rivals, and, at a more crass level, people watch out-takes programmes and the media home in on the foibles of celebrities. Discovering that something ain’t so is ‘new stuff’. I suggest that the problem isn’t that the correction isn’t newsworthy. It’s that said publications don’t want the story given the treatment their error would be given by their rivals – exactly the opposite of Charles’ point.

It’s worth pointing out that my expressed motive in nudging Ben with this story was that the witch-doctor industry would otherwise be able to claim that the ‘truth’ was being suppressed by a world conspiracy of the media. I expect there’s a stand-in sub posting somewhere that ‘I tried to give the story the prominence that it deserved but they’ve pulled the whole thing because of backroom pressure by the medico-scientific establishment.’
And the disappearing trick is not arcane. If we believe the pundits in the Indie and elsewhere, there won’t be a printed version in a few years. Then where’s the corrections ???

As a consumer I do not expect to have to find out the mechanics of how a bad story appeared before voicing my displeasure. In my job (which for full disclosure is in the STM publishing area) I sometimes have to deal with customers of our who are upset and looking for someone to yell at. They do not care whether it is my personal fault that their journals or whatever have never arrived, they are the customer, they have paid for a product and they expect to get it. Likewise when an editor rings up and is unhappy about some aspecty of the journal that s/he edits…

RS above hits the nail on the head. And I will add to this.

You Publish – You are responsible in the eyes of your consumers. End of story. Any time you as a publisher (and I talk organisationally here) chooses to ‘Jazz things up a bit’ then you can expect to have to deal with the fall out when it all goes horribly wrong. It’s the price you pay for deciding that a story isn’t inherently attractive enough to stand on its own merits and is in need of some extra oomph or whatever. Agreed it’s a hard line to walk – boring but accurate on the one hand, snappy but possibly misleading on the other. The best policy is to put your hands up when you get it wrong and just say sorry.

And as you work for the Grauniad now, I’ll say this. Their policy on corrections is excellent and this reader at least, gives the paper as a whole much credit for their clearly stated policy. They take it seriously. It shows a responsible and humble acceptance that their readers are worthy of respect. It shows a desire to engage and to work to do better. It might all be PR, but if it is, it is good PR.

For the Indy to pull the article – that is just arrogant to be honest and shows a complete lack of respect for the readers it purports to serve. Honestly, if the Government had pulled an online item as a result of a journalist saying “Oy that’s wrong!” we would be reading a whole variety of headline items with variations on the word COVERUP!!!!. The inside pages would be filled with op-ed pieces disecting the appalling lack of respect and the erosion of trust and yaddayaddayadda. Now read this thread again.

Sometimes you dish it out, and sometimes you have to take it.

This is not a question of how big his balls are. A story appeared under his name that was in error – the story committed a rather obvious and silly mistake. The person committing this error was obviously a prat. It turns out that someone else may have been responsible for said error, and thus warrants said epithet. But he didn’t do anything about this error appearing in his name, even when the authors complained, so I was quite justified in assuming he was the prat responsible. Otherwise we’ll have to give Melanie Phillips the benefit of the doubt until we can definitively prove that no one has altered her words before they go to print.

My point was about the personal abuse that has been directed at Jeremy Laurance, who is conscientious, and sceptical in all the right ways about health claims. I was explaining the mechanics of how a wrong story (because we can agree that the intro – the first paragraph – doesn’t support the rest of the story, and vice-versa) gets into the paper.

So my point about “closing the loop” was that it’s important in these situations to find out how the bad story appeared, before hurling abuse at the person whose name is at the top.

As to prominence of correction – yeah, sure, it’s a constant pain that corrections get less prominence. Kind of hard to do though. Would you like the newspaper of July 8th last year to have given over a page to explaining how it got the details of a pub’s name wrong the previous month, or publishing a list of those known to be alive after the London bombings? News sets its own priorities, and while the examples aren’t always as clear-cut as that example I just gave, they’re more or less the same: finding out new stuff is more engaging.

You might as well ask why results of experiments where the null hypothesis is upheld don’t get more prominence in scientific journals. (Yes, I know there is the Journal of ..Negative? Results. Whateveritis.) Could it be because they want to engage their readers with results that seem more important?

Erm no, sorry I don’t have to do any such thing! Y’see I pays money to read my newspaper of choice and I expect the Journalists and editors and the whole glorious panoply of workers who come together to produce said newspaper to, erm, do their job…

Perhaps Jeremy is being unfairly lumped in with other journalists of a less reputable nature (it seems that way), but the fact is that these days, I as a consumer of news from the various branches of the media, find it increasingly difficult to distinguish cock-up from conspiracy (in terms of bad science). Add in a tendency to “Jazz it up” and you have a recipe for disaster.

And these news stories affect people. Deeply.

If you want an example other than MMR then look at the Recurrent Miscarriage boards out there and see how desperate folks are to believe in Natural Killer Cell treatments. There’s no scientific evidence for it but there are some doctors out there (and accompanying Sunday supplement articles) who are pushing it, and there are legions of desperate souls who are just hanging in there hoping for the next pregnancy to be successful.

Articles like the one discussed in this thread probably are froth to the 99.9% of readers. But for the 0.1%, the article may have a real effect. And if you are the poor bugger who has to explain that “no the article [about whatever miracle solution] is wrong or grossly overstated”… I can assure you that it is not at all nice. I speak from experience.

Exceptional Statements get exceptional responses, and require exceptional supporting evidence. Journalists and Sub-editors should remember that when dealing in hyperbole. It’s about personal responsibility. Requests to “close the loop” do not cut it.

I read the article at the top, before seeing the other comments, and – with my experience of what happens in newspapers – thought “Hmm, the intro completely isn’t supported by the rest of the story”. Which usually means that someone on the newsdesk or subs desk didn’t like the fact that the story was straightforward, and decided to jazz it up – but, say, got it mixed up with something else.

So to all you commenters calling him a “prat” or worse – are you prepared to head into a SARS zone while not entirely sure how dangerous it is? Conversely, have you ever seen your work appear with your name yet known that it’s wrong through no fault of your own? That’s what life can be like for a journalist on a daily. It is, indeed, the production process.

Ben, I’d have to say one thing: on posts like this, it is important to close the loop and pick up the phone or drop the email and ask the journalist if that’s what they meant, and not leap into print (or electrons) until you have. If they brush you off, OK, go for it. But you have to allow for the many cooks who make up the news broth, If you haven’t experienced it directly, you have no idea how frustrating it can be. But closing the loop – that is, putting the question to those you accuse – is a basic tenet of, oh, what’s it called – ah, yes, journalism.

The paper suggests that the underlying mechanism of last ditch alternative therapies is that people sometimes just get better. I am sure a lot of people in the last stages of cancer try alternative therapies, and even if they actually kill you off faster than doing nothing there’ll still be a steady trickle of written-off “survivors” to talk to the media about their “miracle cures”. The worst bit: the more people go alternative the more “miracle cures” there’ll be, until you get to the stage where people with good chances of survival refuse conventional treatment. And die.

Still, we all make stupid mistakes. It’s just that if you are a journalist working to tight deadlines with space to fill, they occasionally come back to haunt you (just as they do if you’re a doctor!). Deep down, he’s probably a good person.

Still, we all make stupid mistakes. It’s just that if you are a journalist working to tight deadlines with space to fill, they occasionally come back to haunt you (just as they do if you’re a doctor!). Deep down, he’s probably a good person.

i would say however that the criticism still stands of the independent as a system and, to my mind, the mode of correction, ie deletion of the article from the site after the letter.

Hi Ben
Just back – and got yr msg. We published a correction on Fri 17 Feb to my
report of the Macmanus study. Here it is below. Suffice to say I was
apoplectic when I saw the version of my story that appeared in the paper.
You can probably guess the rest.
I am a fan of your column. Keep it up.
All the best
Jeremy