Last week, the Daily Express had the following front page:
The main article, Lifestyle Key to a Long Life, has the lead
It’s got nothing to do with genes claim scientists
That is really a bold statement. Unfortunately, it is also completely made up. Just four sentences into the article we are told
Although genes do play a role in the risk of disease, experts say our behaviour is a far more powerful influence.
[emphasis is mine]
As you may know, I will soon be finishing my PhD and looking for a job. Today, I saw this advert for a trainee reporters job with the Daily Mail.
Daily Mail
- Britain’s most successful newspaper group is offering would-be reporters and writers an exciting and challenging yearlong training course, plus the chance to work at the Daily Mail and Mail Online
- We are looking for bright, sharp, intelligent writers who believe they can be fast-tracked to the very top
- You’ll be on the best journalism course in the business – and be paid a competitive salary while you train
- Successful applicants will probably have completed post-graduate journalism training or had experience working in newspapers
Apply by February 21, with your CV, 200 words on why you think you could be a Mail journalist, a 200-word news story and a selection of up to six cuttings and send to Sue Ryan, Trainee Reporters’ Scheme, Daily Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry St, London W8 5TT. Please send queries to sue.ryan@dailymail.co.uk
Unfortunately, it appears that both Enemies of Reason and Angry Mob have already submitted their applications (you can see their applications by clicking on the links). Based upon these two fine entries, I am not sure I fancy my chances.
Anyone familiar with the Daily Mail will know that they like to write stories about cancer. Indeed, over the last few years, the Daily Mail appears to have been on a quest to classify every thing known to man as either a cause or preventer of cancer. If you think this statement might seem to be a bit of a overreaction, have a look at ‘Kill or cure?‘. This website lists over 200 things which the Daily Mail claims causes or prevents cancer. Examples include sandals (which cause cancer), pasta (which prevents cancer) and bread (which both causes and prevents cancer).
Whilst this may seem like a bit of a joke, I think there is a serious problem with this kind of reporting by the Daily Mail. By sensationalising the relatively minimal risks/benefits posed by these things, people will become confused, lost in a sea of information. Essentially they will spend so much time worrying whether bread is good or bad for them that they will ignore the basics, forget that you can’t go far wrong with fruit vegetables and a bit of exercise (whilst not eating pizza for breakfast).
I went to watch The King’s Speech at the weekend and really enjoyed it (go and see it if you haven’t already!). One thing that I did not notice during the film was an appearance by popular children’s puppet Sooty. However, as the Daily Mail asks (in a headline no less), “What is Sooty doing in The King’s Speech?“
Here is an extract from the article:
Oh, I forgot to mention The King’s Speech’s worst crime of all. One scene has Helena Bonham Carter’s bitchy Queen Elizabeth trying to strike up a rapport with Lionel Logue’s children by asking: ‘Do you like Sooty?’
Sooty . . . in the Thirties? Actually that most malevolent of glove puppets didn’t come along until 1948 with his hammer and ink squirt and magic words: ‘Izzy-wizzy, let’s get busy.’
Izzy-wizzy . . . once again a scriptwriter didn’t get busy enough.
So is this an embarrassing oversight by the scriptwriters?
As Tabloid Watch (and many of the comments on the Daily Mail article) points out, Queen Elizabeth was actually asking the child whether they liked sweeties, not Sooty. Indeed, the child in question was not even Logue’s son, but one of Logue’s patients.
How ironic that in an article criticising inaccuracies caused by poor research, the very thing upon which the article was based is completely inaccurate!
Recently, I came across an article on the BBC website. The article talks about the Power Balance bracelets worn by some of the England cricket team as in the image below.
Whilst I had never heard of the product before, it turns out they are worn by many sports stars to improve balance strength and flexibility. According to the Power Balance website
Power Balance is based on the idea of optimizing the body’s natural energy flow, similar to concepts behind many Eastern philosophies. The hologram in Power Balance is designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body.
Mmmmm… Interesting! Here is an extract from an Australian current affairs programme explaining more.
That really is amazing. So just how does it work? Well as stated on their website
Power Balance is based on the idea of optimizing the body’s natural energy flow, similar to concepts behind many…
Oh hang on, I think I already mentioned that. Yes, unfortunately that short statement is the closest Power Balance comes to a scientific explanation. Indeed, the company offers no real evidence for their spectacular claims. Of course, if they did so, they would surely be in line for a Nobel prize, having discovered previously unknown laws of physics!
After broadcasting what you saw in the last video, Today Tonight had another piece on Power Balance. This time however, they actually conduct a proper (if somewhat limited) test. Whilst I don’t want to give away the results, notice how the caption at the beginning of the clip has changed from ‘MAGIC MAGNET’ to ‘MIND POWER’.
An investigation by the BBC also reported similar results. Both the video clip and the BBC report talk briefly about the amazing power of the placebo effect. As Ben Goldacre often says, surely this explanation is far more interesting than any silly talk about ‘body energy resonance’.
You may (quite rightly in my opinion) ask what is wrong with selling a product that has the kind of effect some people are claiming, even if that effect is the result of a placebo? I am not going to try to answer that question here. What I do want to do though is to encourage people to think a little more about claims such as those made by companies such as Power Balance and the repetition of these claims in the media. Once you do that, videos like this become a bit less convincing.
Finally, I would just like to share something I found amusing.
I think I just might fill in that form now!
For an explanation on how the tricks applied by Power Balance work, watch this video.
Here is Ben Goldacre talking a bit more about the placebo effect.
For my post today, I was going to write about a recent project to create a Crokinole board. This will now have to wait until next week as I just had to put across my views of an outrageous story I came across today. It is not the story itself that I find most disturbing however (although it is always regretful when even just one person dies of flu), but the way it has been reported by the Daily Express.
For those of you not aware of the British print media, tabloids such as the Daily Express, the Daily Mail and The Sun have a bit of a reputation for bad journalism. Of particular concern to me are the ways in which these papers mislead, twist facts and blatantly lie in order to push their own agendas. There are a number of excellent websites such as Tabloid Watch that try to expose examples of poor and often dangerous reporting.
The article concerned is given particular prominence; being both on the front page of the newspaper and, at the time of writing, the lead story on the website. For starters, the use of the word ‘Plague’ in the headline immediately conjours up images of epidemics of biblical proportions. This is contradictory to the relatively small number of deaths quoted in that very same headline. To put the numbers into some kind of perspective, around 3,000 – 4,000 deaths are attributed to flu every year. Indeed, in extreme years such as 1989-1990, this can rise to over 20,000. These numbers are themselves just a small proportion of the total number of deaths each year. Last year, the Health Protection Agency reported that there were over 300,000 deaths in the UK.
So despite the fact that the current mortality rate is considerably down on previous years, the Express tries to exaggerate the extent of the problem through the use of emotive and hard-hitting language. In isolation, 50 deaths may seem considerable. Whilst any death is obviously one too many for those involved, the simple fact is that current trends can not be described as irregular, let alone as a ‘flu plague’.
The article stresses:
Almost one in three of the victims was perfectly healthy with no underlying symptoms before they fell ill.
However, as can be seen from the graph below (adapted from a report by the Health Protection Agency), the incidence of mortality from H1N1 (swine flu), to which younger and more healthy people are more susceptible, has also declined. At its peak, H1N1 was causing nearly as many deaths in a single week as the number of deaths the Express says have occurred due to all forms of flu since October.
The article continues:
Increasing public alarm at the scale of the epidemic has prompted a growing number of people to demand the seasonal flu jab from their doctor.
An herein, in my opinion, lies the problem with the article. The ‘increasing alarm’ and growing demand for the flu jab is surely perpetuated by this kind of misleading article. What has been reported by the Express, strictly speaking (in terms of numbers), is not untrue. However, the facts given have been presented in such a way as to try to provide readers with a particular conclusion.
update: For further reading on putting numbers in context, see Ben Goldacre’s excellent article on recent reporting of a contraceptive implant.
