Hot Off The Press
Relentless health scare stories deserve greater scrutiny, argues Dr Max
According to scientists, biscuits can make you infertile. They also give you cancer. But don’t worry, research shows that sunshine can cure cancer. Hang on. Ignore previous findings that suggest it might actually cause cancer. But whatever you do, don’t shave, because that’s been shown to increase the risk of cancer, along with other everyday household products like hairspray, talcum powder and sausages. And as for the research on drinking tap water? Lethal. It’s actually a wonder that any of us are still alive. According to scientists, the world we live in is a death trap.
So many of my patients come to me saying how worried they are about some health scare they’ve heard about in the news. Though the claims, however shocking, seem to be backed up by scientific evidence, even a cursory look brings up contradictions and inconsistencies. It’s voguish to blame the journalists for this, with critics saying that they wilfully distort and misrepresent science to chase headlines. But for a long time now, I’ve felt that is grossly unfair. These health stories come from somewhere. And the chilling fact is that they come from scientists, not journalists. In fact, a study in the British Medical Journal once looked at major press releases relating to health stories issued by the major universities and then at the subsequent news stories they generated. They found that many of the exaggerations that later made it into health reports actually originated from a press release. Over a third of the press releases, for example, made exaggerated claims of the impact of the research for humans when in fact the study was carried out on animals. A third also made exaggerated claims of causation when in fact the study found an association only. Particularly worrying was that many of the exaggerated claims appear to
have been written or at least approved by scientists themselves.
But, you could argue, aren’t journalists to blame for not going back to the original papers and checking out the claims themselves? The fact is though that journalists, like the public at large, have tended to believe what the geeks in white coats have told us. Why would we ever assume they’d lie? The very nature of their job is the search for the correct answer. The problem though is that they don’t exist in isolation. They have funding and grants to worry about and these days, a front page splash about your research is as important for securing future revenue as getting it into the Lancet is.
It’s also worth mentioning that every research facility or university now has a press department whose job it is to generate these headlines. They know that they have to bend the truth and make some bold and shocking claims if they are going to get people to take notice.
I think that this is a good reason to make understanding and interpreting a scientific paper a fundamental part of science in school. That way we encourage more people to examine the claims themselves and, hopefully, improve the public’s understanding of basic scientific principles. Now, recent research has shown that work can increase your risk of premature death, so with this in mind, I’m signing off.
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