As for editors, I sincerely don’t suppose that they are all monsters who would rather have a dodgy MMR or MrSA scare than fact or even blank space, although you have to wonder sometimes. But the press is not irredeemably addicted to fiction, surely?

And statistics – I think the subject can be understood in simple terms. I just would like to know what they are. But for anyone to make a decision – including a decision in journalism – on statistical evidence, surely they have to understand the evidence!

But…

…there does need to be some attempt at upping the content level of science coverage, and that would be one way to do it. If a National Academy of Sciences is good for anything (apart from lobbying senior civil servants sotto voce and holding convivial dinners) this arguably should be it.

The Royal Society does retain a sort of semi-mythic status in the UK – think of the fellows’ letter to NHS Trust Chief Execs about CAM and the coverage it got.

If the National Academy of Sciences whacked out a quick, well-written one page rebuttal every time one of these lame-o stories started getting MAJOR media – multiple press reports, one story covering another, “reporting the controversy” etc – it MIGHT get some play. At least it might serve to embarass the editors of the papers, or of the TV news shows – I think they are still probably a bit sensitive to being publically called “misleading” or “inaccurate” or “sloppy”.

I don’t just mean the Royal Society, BTW. The British Medical Association should have done something similar for Herceptin. But they were so busy keeping their heads down over Dame Janet Smith and the post-Shipman backlash that they just stuck their collective head in the sand and hoped it would all go away.

Finally, imagine the effect a more “combative” and immediate response over MMR might have had on public confidence in vaccines. No-one ever actually got up and said “the science in this paper is very iffy, because of (a) and (b) and (c)”-until years later – even though the Lancet editor, and people in the Royal Free, and doubtless many experts who read it, all had major reservations. And no-one from the medical establishment publicily slated the media coverage, at least not where I heard it.

Anyway, you’re right, you couldn’t force the media to run the rebuttals, but it would at least be better than all (us) scientists sitting on our hands and grumbling, as at present.

After all, if Ben’s example shows anything it is that if the rebuttal / debunking is sufficiently readable, and clear, and preferably funny, it can find the mark. But arguably we have such an epidemic of misinformation that it can’t be left to a few gifted individuals, like him and the late John Diamond, to combat it.

So you reckon the Roy Soc “should be running a New Labour style “rapid rebuttal unit” trashing every national media ludicrous science story the day it hits the news”. Great idea – but for one small thing: who’s going to print these rebuttals, exactly ?

“Second, amazingly enough we’re not paid to report stories based on “good” science. We’re paid to report good stories – and if that means writing up some crappy, non-blinded, non-randomised, confounded and underpowered research study on a sexy topic that we just KNOW the Daily Mail is going to run, then that’s just what we’re going to do. And why ? Because we’re all WAY more scared of the news editor screaming at us for missing a story than we are of some fingerwagging boffin telling us we misinterpreted a 95% confidence interval”

Bears out what one of my ex-students – now working as a regional BBC news journalist – told me. One “story” per day required by the Regional News Ed , by 10 mins ago, checking – well, who needs it. Q – does it SELL?

My Q – which I’ve posed before – is this:

If the ostensibly SERIOUS press (broadcast and paper) in th UK doesn’t feel it has a responsibility to have at least SOME content which tries to offer some proper reporting of science, with exposition and proper background… …why bother reporting science at all?

After all, celeb stories probably sell better.

Ans must be that they want to SAY they’re covering “science and technology” in an informed way. Even if they usually don’t.

But who should be holding them to doing it properly?

Personally I think the Royal Society (de facto the National Science Academy) should be running a New Labour style “rapid rebuttal unit” trashing every national media ludicrous science story the day it hits the news. Humiliate and call out the news organisations and nationals publically every time they print / broadcast inaccurate pseudo-science bollocks.

a) a PhD entails a lot of work, and a lot of boredom (playing Mah Jong on the computer)

b) HPV is an ongoing / evolving issue you could cover. Email me and I can help you with all the studies, or go through my blog for stuff for that.

c) DDT and malaria is a better one. We got rid of it because celebrities were against it, malaria shot up and became resistant to drugs, and now … we are bringing it back in.

Speaking as a poor, stoopid hack, I’d also agree with tthose who’ve already expressed their doubts about many turning up for a teach-in on stats etc. First, these days we have trouble getting our editors to pay for legit expenses, let alone the fee for some day-long thumb-suck about how to get a story “right”. Second, amazingly enough we’re not paid to report stories based on “good” science. We’re paid to report good stories – and if that means writing up some crappy, non-blinded, non-randomised, confounded and underpowered research study on a sexy topic that we just KNOW the Daily Mail is going to run, then that’s just what we’re going to do. And why ? Because we’re all WAY more scared of the news editor screaming at us for missing a story than we are of some fingerwagging boffin telling us we misinterpreted a 95% confidence interval.

One approach that might be more successful: persuading say the Roy Soc or Roy Stat Soc to run a course on the scandal of _scientists_ not knowing all this kind of stuff. Might get some coverage, plus those who rock up pick up some stats 101 in the process.

Either way, good luck.

“This will open covering simple issues like “what is a trial”, “what is a placebo”, “what does statistical significance mean”,”

Are you sure statistical significance is a simple issue? From the limited number of papers I have read – it seems to me a fair proportion of scientists don’t understand it – much less journalists. I would think this is a minefield in a short course for journalists.

Mostly sensible, but I laughed when I got to:

“Experts CAN’T:

 Make claims that go beyond their data.
 Talk outside their area of research, practice, and expertise”

But of course this is exactly what journalists WANT them to do, because it is the over-blown claims, off-the-cuff paraphrasings, and random opinionizing that make the best (splashiest) STORIES.

Take Andrew Wakefield of MMR infamy and Durham’s Madeleine Portwood – overstatement way beyond what the data justify = news coverage.

I agree with some of the comments above that the key would be to get some of the worst offenders along – but that they would be the least likely to turn up.

Useful resources including how to tell if a study is any good, and what you can and can’t expect from a real expert.

And yet these same “campaigners” for “the children who are our future” are the first to complain when they can reach their offspring on their mobiles because there isn’t a bloody signal.

So they have protests and petitions against the evil masts and the cellphone companies and give “the children who are our future (TCWAOF)” a bloody phone “for their safety” that radiates the same frequency as the mast and is clamped against their heads.

Meanwhile, stupid politicians (and I exclude myself from this lot) cave in to the demands on nothing more than “just in case” and the Councils end up paying a shedload in appeal costs that are passed onto the council taxpayer, ie, TCWAOF’s stupid parents who then moan about signal loss…….. And so it goes around and around……..

I have found that one of the most prevalent views among my medical friends about the herceptin farrago was that the drug company must be subtly egging on the patient advocacy groups and/or the news outlets.

It would certainly be of a piece with the other well-tried dodge of setting up a “patient information site” for a disease where the only (or a new) drug treatment is sold by the company, or funding a site “promoting” a newly labelled disease ripe for drug intervention (“disease mongering”)…

Remember “Social phobia” and the SSRIs? In the States social phobia and SSRIs to treat it were promoted with a big direct-to-consumer TV ad campaign fronted by an American football star. The basic pitch was “if you’re shy, get on an SSRI”. In countries with rules against direct promotion of prescription drugs to the consumer (like the UK) the company can still promote “disease awareness”.

And no doubt there are many other tactics, like the one recently written up in the BMJ about the Pharma companies producing their own pre-packaged “news segments” (typically upbeat human-interest stories prominently featuring treatment with their drugs) to sell on to US local TV stations.

Must always be borne in mind that the marketing budget (and all it buys) of Phama Companies is absolutely huge, far outstripping their R&D costs. They tend to not shout about this, for obvious reasons.

Sorry, sounding cynical here, should conclude by saying “Some of my best friends work for the pharmaceutical industry”. Honest.

We have something like this already posted on our site:

How to evaluate health risks

www.stats.org/in_depth/evaluate_healthrisks/How_eval_health_risks.htm

and a general statistical faq

www.stats.org/in_depth/faq/FAQ_intro.htm

We’e tested out a seminar on the above material on journalism students here in the U.S. to good effect (they actually found it fascinating when encouraged to think in a CSI-like manner about data, and to think of numbers as agents in a story) , and we’re hoping to expand this material into a full-blown course.

Good luck with such a project in Britain – although, what will the tabloids do without bogus health scare stories?

“what was missing from a lot of those stories was a general question that is often applicable: how good is the evidence for herceptin’s efficacy?”

Exactly. Even in broadsheets the basic NUMBERS comparing herceptin with the older cancer drugs only appeared in the first story, and never thereafter. So there was no sensible consideration of cost vs. benefit, which would actually have been an informative debate – sort of :

“How much EXTRA per yr should the health service be prepared to spend on you to give you a 4 in 5 chance of staying cancer-free, rather than a 3 in 4 chance?

(not real nos, BTW)

– and where should the extra money come from?”

– in the modern UK setting, with health costs spiralling, surely something that needs airing.

Instead what you got was “This drug will save me, otherwise I will die, they say my life’s not worth £ 20 K / yr, those b*!”ards”.

Three major lies untruths (if not more) in that sentence, but it was the essential thrust of most of the media coverage of Herceptin, especially on TV.

as for all the other people who want to learn about EBM, well now…

it’s funny, i think EBM is the most important and relevant bit of science going. people talk about how evolution is a way to teach about controversy and conflicting theories in science, that’s rubbish. diet and cancer is a relevant data rich way to teach that. the papers are full of evidence based medicine stories, epidemiology is one of the most exciting fields of science, to read the daily mail, with all the stories on what will kill or cure you. it should be taught in schools!

anyway, there’s a shed load of stuff on EBM in the legendary imaginary now almost finished book, hooked on the obvious examples from recent media. that should satisfy, but if it doesn’t, i don’t know, i’m no great expert, just a bog standard trial-consuming-and-interpreting-academic-journal-reader, but i could still do, like, er, an adult education class in basic epidemiology at the local community centre?

for the journo course, i’m not a consultancies and committees man myself, but it will take a shed of preparation, and for the first time in our lives me and my nerdy buddies will charge normal corporate rates for a corporate service, maybe some concessions if we get enough bookings to cover room/time.

“Yeah, work would probably pay for that. And I’d be able to tell my desk buddy exactly why homeopathy is bollocks.”

I think you can take that to mean:

a) He would like the course to cover a bit on the scientific method and why it’s important, plus maybe something on publication bias
b) His company would stump up a meagre amount of cash to support the event
c) He would prefer the course to be held during the day, with some drinkies at the end

He is a humanities graduate, so if you can teach him something useful I, and all his other friends, would be eternally in your debt.