One of the most aggressive anti-vaccination doctors in Sweden was interviewed in Sweden’s largest newspaper (Dagens Nyheter) a couple of years ago – and I so wish I could find the original article, so I could give you the doctor’s name and be sure the following would be correctly cited:

To me the most interesting in this article was not his connection to the antroposophic hostpital (http://www.vidarkliniken.se/). Neither his claim that vaccination can cause autism, and that sickness is a natural crisis in a childs development (http://antroposofi.org/vaccination.htm). (Sickness furthermore helps the karma and improves the child’s next life: http://www.vof.se/folkvett/20022antroposofisk-medicin—en-granskning) No news there.

In this interview, his four children are mentioned. It turns out that, despite them never having had any vaccinations, two of his children have autism, and one is diagnosed with Asperger. I don’t know what this says really. But I have to admit I smirked. And felt the need of gossiping about it.

“What I’d hope we could work towards is a climate where papers and journalists actually felt the same kind of shame about letting science-oriented rubbish see print as they would about politics or arts-related rubbish”

So we continue to be vocal, and name & shame them.

I’d like to see articles carrying more information about their provenance: not just the writer listed, but also the sub-eds and eds who also worked on it, the names of people actually interviewed, the sources of any underlying press releases, and maybe a statement about who commissioned the piece in the first place (the editor? the writer?).

I don’t care if that stuff is just in fine print: I think it could help a lot with transparency and accountability in the media.

On a wider note, I think many in society (especially journalism) need to reexamine certain ’sacred concepts’. A great many people seem to have learned that they should be skeptical (and at the same time open-minded!) and unbiased.

Sounds good, except when those nice neat principles mislead them into being skeptical of evidence and the scientific community, open-minded about supernatural gubbins, and presenting unequally-valid opinions as equally valid in the belief that this is unbiased and fair of them.

What I’d hope we could work towards is a climate where papers and journalists actually felt the same kind of shame about letting science-oriented rubbish see print as they would about politics or arts-related rubbish (can I cite the “Hitler diaries” without invoking Godwin’s Law?)

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v63/i20/p2295_1

McCarthy, John. 1982. Prosodic structure and expletive infixation. Language
58.3:574-590

for example:

A second problem with the formulation in 2 concerns the requirement of an
immediately following PRIMARY stress. Rather, it appears that any degree of
stress will do. Both spontaneous (5) and constructed (6) examples illustrate
this:
( 5 ) amalga-bloody-mated (M)
emanci-motherfuckin-pator (M)
every-bloody-body (M)
handi-bloody-cap (M)
hypo-bloody-crite (M)
kinder-goddamn-garten (M)
Lauder-damn-dale (M)

(this paper cites a chapter entitled “Where you can shove infixes” which also sounds great!).

this is why it is so important, nay, vital, that science journalism is conducted by those trained either in a scientific discipline, or at the very least in how to critically evaluate publications and how to avoid the ‘Wakefield fallacy’ of taking crappy data and extrapolating in the national press without supporting evidence to the detriment of millions of children

More seriously…

“why isn’t there adequate press regulation in terms of an obligation for journos to check their effing facts with an expert…?! (…) btw by expert i mean recognised respected published academic”

I hope a little thought will convince people that’s a bad approach. I can’t see how it would work in practice (plenty of recognised respected published academics have vocally supported batty ideas) and more importantly it lends weight to the perception of science as a monolithic establishment that suppresses dissent and insists that What We Say Is The Truth Because We’re Scientists And We Say So – which plays right into the hands of the pressure groups. Science is never ‘finished’ or ‘decided’ and it shouldn’t be presented as such: it’s all about the critical evaluation of evidence and constructing a model that best fits the evidence available at the time – and updating it as that evidence and our assessment of it is updated. One would hope that was pretty much what investigative journalists sought to do as well. It’s understandable that people on here might wish we could lay down the law and somehow punish journalists and others who misrepresent the consensus or state untruths but ultimately what’s sauce for the scientist goose is sauce for the journalist gander: you have to give people the tools and let them get on with it.

Just discovered a 5-year old article describing assorted views of Observer staff on the MMR issue. Fascinating stuff…
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,647859,00.html

I thought I spotted a pattern so I tried to break it down a bit- it’s a rush job but hey.

In “writer/reporter” category, 4 were pro-MMR (including, interestingly, not just the ’science writer’ but also the ‘arts writer’ and the ’sports writer’), 2 against and 3 inbetween.
The two “researchers” were both pro-MMR.
However out of 6 “editors/ sub-editors” and 1 “manager”, 5-6 were anti-MMR, and 1-2 were undecided.

Now this is all preliminary and I haven’t done the stats, but I think there’s a strong pattern emerging here!

Special credits go to Antony Barnett (reporter) who is “pretty sceptical of the scientific community (funded by drug companies, etc)”, Martin Love (sub-editor) who claimed that “in just five years the medical profession has gone from total denial to telling us the MMR is dangerous” (?!), and Kate Edgley (sub-editor) who was turned off MMR by the opinions of her ‘homeopath’.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=12226189

http://icrenfrewshire.icnetwork.co.uk/pde/news/tm_headline=double-trouble-for-daft-driver%26method=full%26objectid=19445281%26siteid=63858-name_page.html

http://pubs3.acs.org/acs/journals/doilookup?in_doi=10.1021/ic0352250

(Sadly not my paper!)