Hard News: Bad journalism, old stories
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Bad journalism seems to be the norm for science and health reporting in the British press. Well done for exposing this particularly bad example. If this is the quality press in action what can we expect from the Mail tomorrow morning?
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In defense of the Guardian stable, at least Ben 'Bad Science' Goldacre' will be around to give the article a thrashing later in the week.
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So why, when the centre is doing such fascinating and important research work across a range of disciplines, from psychology to genetics and neuroscience, has The Observer led with "new health fears" that are simply old allegations from an associate of a discredited researcher who is about to face serious ethics charges?
While there probably are many more worthy stories I think you're going too far in your criticism. There is a real story her - that a major study on autism by Cambridge University included people well known to be cranks. Was this some sort of attempt at "even-handedness"?
I didn't get the impression that the Observer coverage was pushing the Wakefield line. This is a major study and those that set this up included 2 people with strange views. The Observer is just reporting what happened. These are old allegations but by including the likes of Stott and Scott this gives these views a current platform and The Observer is hardy to blame for that.
The story form me is not The Observer's covaerage, which does lack some background, but what on earth was in the minds of the people who set the study up.
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I didn't get the impression that the Observer coverage was pushing the Wakefield line. This is a major study and those that set this up included 2 people with strange views. The Observer is just reporting what happened.
Yes, but the story said they were "leaders" in their field, without noting that they had no competence in the area they were venturing on. The impression given was that qualified people were revisiting the MMR theory.
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Its pretty sad to see this tainted theroy still getting headlines. When mmr/autism link was big news in the UK it was the right wing press led by the ferociously anti labour Daily Mail that kept it in the headlines. Its a shame to see the Observer falling for the same con trick half a decade later. You would have to wonder what motivates these people to continue barking up the wrong tree. Money perhaps? The ambulance chasing lawyers were lining up in their droves until the theory was totally debunked if I remember rightly.
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The story form me is not The Observer's covaerage, which does lack some background, but what on earth was in the minds of the people who set the study up.
The study itself seems to be no more than a statistical survey, which sought to find the incidences of autism, not its causes. The problem is that two of the team had unorthodox opinions about causes. The journalist hung the story on these opinions.
There are so many issues to be annoyed about here. Perhaps this sort of reporting happens because every journalist wants to break another Thalidomide story.
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A wee parallel with Prof Jim Flynn comments to add birth control to the water.
http://www.odt.co.nz/article.php?refid=2007,07,09,1,00101,6ab28590335842ab78ad5a8ec415d749§=0
He states it's a joke but then at the last line backs himself again.
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A big R.E.S.P.E.C.T to the person brave enough to upload a torrent and be the initial seeder for a 78 gig file! They must have one hell of a connection....
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A big R.E.S.P.E.C.T to the person brave enough to upload a torrent and be the initial seeder for a 78 gig file! They must have one hell of a connection....
There's no need for the upload if you have a server, just cap the file straight to the server. Though seeding out 78GB... that's commitment to 'the cause'.
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Cool - I'm getting links from the autism blogs all over. And Bad Science has contacted Fiona Scott, who is reiterating that the study is unfinished and accusing the Observer of fabricating quotes. I find this unlikely, but it does suggest that Scott's name has been associated with this story without her knowledge:
I can respond to your question in terms of the following which will be the formal press release available from the National Autistic Society: The Cambridge University Autism Research Centre have not yet released the findings from their prevalence study, as the study is not yet complete. The Cambridge researchers are surprised that an unpublished report of their work was described out of context by the Observer. They are investigating how this report was made available to the Observer. They are equally surprised that the Observer fabricated comments attributed to their team. They do not
believe there is any link between rising prevalence and the MMR, or chemical toxins. It is untrue that Prof Baron-Cohen “was so concerned by the 1 in 58 figure that he proposed informing public health officials in the county “. Such journalism raises anxiety unnecessarily and is irresponsible. -
Russell - this is great stuff. Between you, Autism Diva and Ben Goldacre, I'm getting coverage that seems impossible to find elsewhere. So much so that drawing distinctions between these kinds of sites and the MSM is no longer useful. Thanks.
Re. your PPS.
The Horizon called "Colourful Notions" - about Edwin Land's theories of colour perception - is an outstanding example of great science TV. The subject by definition lends itself to the medium, and the producers didn't stuff up. It's a concise and articulate exposition of how the brain perceives constant colour despite colour temperature differences, and Land's - still speculative at the time - theory. -
In defense of the Guardian stable, at least Ben 'Bad Science' Goldacre' will be around to give the article a thrashing later in the week.
Sorry, Terence, that's just not good enough. I don't think the Guardian or Observer would have someone covering football who (to put it crudely) knew fuck all about the game, and cared even less, but is remarkably tolerant of folks reporting on science and health issues who are basically scientifically illiterate and innumerate.
I think Paul Litterick has a point - it takes no imagination to predict what "break[ing] another Thalidomide story" would do for the careers of everyone connected to it. And no media outlet has ever gone broke stroking the hypochondriac paranoia of its readers.
But perhaps The Observer should be reminded why it's propretor, The Scott Trust, was established in the first place. According to to the Guardian Media Group's own website these are it's values:
CP Scott, the famous Manchester Guardian editor, outlined the paper’s principles in his celebrated centenary leader on May 5, 1921.
The much-quoted article is still used to explain the values of the present-day newspaper, Trust and Group. It is also recognised around the world as the ultimate statement of values for a free press.
Among the many well known lines are the assertions that ‘Comment is free, but facts are sacred’, that newspapers have ‘a moral as well as a material existence’ and that ‘the voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard’.
The essential qualities that Scott believed should form the character of a newspaper have been adopted as the values of the Scott Trust and GMG.
These values are:
* honesty
* cleanness (today interpreted as integrity)
* courage
* fairness
* a sense of duty to the reader and the communityPart of the Trust’s present-day role is to ensure that these values are upheld throughout Guardian Media Group.
IMO, I find it hard to see how this story meets any of those values.
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I think Paul Litterick has a point - it takes no imagination to predict what "break[ing] another Thalidomide story" would do for the careers of everyone connected to it. And no media outlet has ever gone broke stroking the hypochondriac paranoia of its readers.
Indeed. And a particular offender on the Wakefield/MMR scare -- along with the usual suspects at the Express and the Mail -- was Private Eye, which decided it had a scandal to call its own and basically ignored evidence to the contrary over several years.
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I don't want to presume to speak for Russell, but here's what really pisses me off about stories like this: It's damn hard to make good decisions when you're being fed bad information. And the decisions folks like Russ and Fiona make where their sons are concerned have real consequences for real families.
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I don't want to presume to speak for Russell, but here's what really pisses me off about stories like this: It's damn hard to make good decisions when you're being fed bad information. And the decisions folks like Russ and Fiona make where their sons are concerned have real consequences for real families.
The good thing is that we do have access to each other. The hard work done by autism bloggers, who are often parents (Autism Diva is AS and has an adult child who is PDD-NOS), is amazing.
Ironically, it's parents -- the so-called Mercury Moms -- helping drive misinformation on the other side.
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Ironically, it's parents -- the so-called Mercury Moms -- helping drive misinformation on the other side.
I wouldn't mind so much if their misinformation resulted in them dying or being crippled by preventable diseases, rather than their kids. Or, with a breakdown of herd immunity, everyone else's.
...but is remarkably tolerant of folks reporting on science and health issues who are basically scientifically illiterate and innumerate.
Sadly, this is hardly unique to the Observer. The Economist (which seems to have been creeping futher and further from its supposed classical Liberal principles) ran a piece recently denouncing the reclassification and discovery of new specieis essentially because, umm, Linneaus didn't recognise them and he invented the modern system of taxonomy. Yes, let's ignore the last few centuries of discoveries in biology because modern molecular biology and genetic assaying tells you things you don't want to hear.
Popular science reporting is basically crap, and, as Craig notes, this is in large part because it's handled by scientific illiterates. I don't think one needs a PhD to report on science, but a few years beyond the mandatory 5th form minimum wouldn't go amiss.
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Popular science reporting is basically crap, and, as Craig notes, this is in large part because it's handled by scientific illiterates. I don't think one needs a PhD to report on science, but a few years beyond the mandatory 5th form minimum wouldn't go amiss.
Well, sure, and I've said before I wish, with 20/20 hindsight, that I'd done a lot more science and math post-School Cert. Hell, I think ti would even be worth universities making a science/math componenet a requisite of all arts/humanities degrees (and vice versa); because there was a time where it was a commonplace that the aim of a liberal education was to furnish minds where botany and astronomy occupied the same space as Virgil and Shakespeare.
But I digress... I wasn't being entirely facetious when I made the crack about sports reporting. One of the humbing things about being a baby hack is that when you're shoved into the dreaded 'general news' round, you get a violent reality check on how little you really know. But it's your job to find out, or at least start filling your contact book (and showing my age, mine really was an indexed notebook not a PDA or IPhone) with folks who do know what they're talking about. But no editor would put someone on a sports round who couldn't tell a hockey puck from a basketball, so why accept lower standards when it comes to health reporting.
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To be honest, the Observer has been a bit of an oily rag, with a wafer thin veneer of respectibility, since Tiny Rowlands took it over years ago. The Grauniad, bless it, has also gone downhill since it moved its head offices from Manchester to London in the 90s (or even 80s). Lost a lot of perspective and sanity, in my opinion.
Is anyone else confused by those surnames Stott and Scott? Very hard to follow some of the articles. Maybe if we refer to Stott as "Shit Head" it would be easier.
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Well, sure, and I've said before I wish, with 20/20 hindsight, that I'd done a lot more science and math post-School Cert
As an aside, you may need to add Latin to that 8).
Seriously, though, my high school had, as part of Social Studies and English course, analysis of advertising and the language of politics, which seem to me to be crucial for navigating the modern world; in a similar vein, I don't think anyone should leave high school without having been given the chance to get a decent grounding in statistics and the scientific method , and why they'd want them in day to day life. The world is full of snake oil salesmen of one stripe or another, and Orwell, Hooke, and Huygens are our best defence.
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Craig,
I agree: simply publishing Ben Goldacre does not change the fact that the story is nonsense. Nor will the mauling that it is destined to receive from the readers' editor for that matter.
All I'm saying is that Ben Goldacre is invaluable and I for one am grateful to the Guardian for publishing him. No other English newspaper that I'm aware of has a columnist doing this sort of debunking.
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I don't think anyone should leave high school without having been given the chance to get a decent grounding in statistics and the scientific method , and why they'd want them in day to day life. The world is full of snake oil salesmen of one stripe or another, and Orwell, Hooke, and Huygens are our best defence.
Actually, I think statistics is a much more important part of the secondary school curriculum than it used to be, for the very reasons you outline. When I was at school, I remember that even the bright maths kids used to be thrown by Statistics when they first encountered it at university. I told a conference of media studies teachers last week that giving kids skills to evaluate information is probably the most important thing they could do.
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All I'm saying is that Ben Goldacre is invaluable and I for one am grateful to the Guardian for publishing him. No other English newspaper that I'm aware of has a columnist doing this sort of debunking.
Fair enough, I just think the Guardian Media Group would do even more of a public service if Dr. Goldacre was also hired to do some remedial staff training. As Rodgerd say, you don't need a newsroom stuffed with Ph.Ds - just people who are scientifically and statistically literate enough to recognise bullshit when it's being shoved in their faces.
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Stott is a psychologist and is about as qualified to comment on diseases of the gut, immunology and PCR testing (all of which are relevant to the MMR claims) as I am.
While I think the MMR/mercury/autism thing is epically epically bad, and I don't agree with Stott, I would rather like to emphasise that psychologists are typically far better trained in statistics and methodological rigour than man, many others. Including the kind of people who are experts on the gut, immmunlogy and genetics, who will receive a far more token nod to study design and statistics than a psychology graduate. It's something medical schools are attempting to address, but I think there is some kind of fundamental conflict between what has been the massive rote-learning of knowledge by medical students, and the much more subtle information integration that is really now required of doctors and researchers.
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merc,
Everyone should have to do Statistics (as I had to, as part of a psyche degree), if only to suffer the same pain as I did, purely selfish reason, more than enough.
It was antithetical to me, but now I fully appreciate being forced to learn about The Curve et al.
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