Ben Goldacre
The Guardian
Saturday 20 June 2009
When is a conversation public, an act of performance, and when is it private? This problem rears its head with greater frequency in the age of the internet, as more discussions are publicly accessible without necessarily, in the minds of the participants, being for the public. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Goldacre
The Guardian
Saturday 30 May 2009
Obviously we distrust the media on science: they rewrite commercial press releases from dodgy organisations as if they were health news, they lionise mavericks with poor evidence, and worse. But journalists will often say: what about those scientists with their press releases? Surely we should do something about them, running about, confusing us with their wild ideas? Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Goldacre
The Guardian
Saturday 23 May, 2009
So last week the papers were filled with more quirky, prejudice-affirming, untrue science news. Here is just one. “Man flu: it really does exist, girls†said the Daily Star. “Man flu is not a myth: Female hormones give women stronger immune systems†said the Daily Mail. The Daily Telegraph palmed this fantastical assertion off onto “scientistsâ€, saying: “Men succumb to manflu because women have stronger immune systems, claim scientistsâ€. “Women ‘fight off disease better’†said the BBC.
Now, before we get to the details, here is a question: Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Goldacre
The Guardian
Saturday 21 March 2009
Science is not difficult to explain. Today we will see how British journalists go out of their way to cherry pick which evidence they cover, and then explain the risks and benefits in what has been shown to be the single most unhelpful way possible.
I was on newsnight a second ago, debating the rather indulgent claims of Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield and Dr Aric Sigman about Facebook and Twitter. It’s 40 minutes in to the show, which can be seen here as a wmv/rm file or here on iPlayer or here:
I promised references. These can be found below. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Goldacre
Saturday February 21 2009
The Guardian
In a week where our dear Daily Mail ran with the headline “How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer”, I will exercise some self control, and write about drugs instead.
“Seven hundred British troops seized four Taliban narcotics factories containing £50m of drugs” said the Guardian on Wednesday. “Troops recovered more than 400kg of raw opium in one drug factory and nearly 800kg of heroin in another.” Lordy that is good. In the Telegraph, British forces had seized “£50 million of heroin and killed at least 20 Taliban fighters in a daring raid that dealt a significant blow to the insurgents in Afghanistan.” Everyone carried the good news. Read the rest of this entry »
The Guardian,
Saturday January 17 2009
Ben Goldacre
“Danger from just 7 cups of coffee a day” said the Express on Wednesday. “Too much coffee can make you hallucinate and sense dead people say sleep experts. The equivalent of just seven cups of instant coffee a day is enough to trigger the weird responses.” The story appeared in almost every national newspaper. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Goldacre
The Guardian,
Saturday 10 January 2009
Obviously by now you can interpolate my views on detox: meaningless, symbolic, gimmicky shortlived health gestures with a built-in expiry date, when we could be reading about the NHS’s surprisingly useful website to help you stop smoking (do it now: smokefree.nhs.uk/), or lifestyle pieces on the joys of buying a bike, and making a genuine move to integrate exercise into your daily life for the long term. I’m not trying to bore you. But after a few months of concentrating on dodgy reporting in the media, I had genuinely forgotten how far out a proper fruitcake can get.
People in the “public engagement” community often talk about how scientists should do more to communicate with the media. I take a different line: scientists have good grounds to be extremely nervous, and some entities and journalists could quite fairly be blacklisted.
Here’s just one more example. It doesn’t stand out, I get sent plenty every week, and when I get a moment I’ll find a way to archive the tips efficiently online: but I’m posting this one here because the Telegraph have misrepresented a scientists work, refused to correct it when he writes to them, and then refused even to let him post an online comment on the article which misrepresented his own work. This strikes me as harsh.
