The History and Effects of the Media

Science and The Media

In this episode of the BBC science podcast 'The Infinite Monkey Cage' the panel discusses the nature of poor science reporting in the media (specifically in the UK)

Is Science Under Attack?

In this documentary for the BBC's Horizon programme, Sir Paul Nurse, the head of the Royal Society (the world's oldest scientific institution) explores his perception that the public is losing faith in science and science communication.

He looks at how poor reporting of science in the media can distort public understanding and meets a HIV positive man who does not believe that the virus is the cause of AIDS. A common theme is how people are able to reach unshakable beliefs regardless of evidence or scientific consensus.

His conclusion is that today it is common for people to choose their point of view and then cherry pick data that corresponds to it.

The Difference Between Quantum Mechanics and Pseudoscience

Here's an article from the UK's Daily Mail in which a scientist claims to have found proof of the afterlife. Quantum mechanics is one of the most interesting but least understood areas of science. It is also one of the most quoted by proponents of pseudoscience who use it to support any number of claims without the need for empirical evidence. One of the most vocal is lifestyle guru Deepak Chopra, who has built a whole belief system around the idea that ill-health is caused by 'quantum imbalance' within an individual. (For these and similar claims Chopra was awarded the IgNobel Prize for Physics in 1998).

I posted something a while ago about Schrodinger's Cat and quantum weirdness. The same simple statement applies here I think: while sub-atomic particles exist in a quantum universe, cats (and people) do not and are therefore not subject to quantum laws.

I've posted a youtube clip below in which a UK physics professor refutes the Daily Mail article, and becomes increasing irate as he does so. Towards the end of his talk, he gives a nice account of how the media, by elevating pseudoscience, can change the public perception of physics and even its funding in the future.

Perhaps this is also a good point at which to quote Carl Sagan (one of the most open-minded of people himself):

"Be open-minded, but not so open minded that your brains fall out".

Quantum Physics Proves That There is an Afterlife 

Okrent's Law

Daniel Okrent (1948-) is an American writer best known as the public editor of the New York Times. During his time as a journalist he coined "Okrent's Law", which basically sets out the fallacy of false balance. He noticed that the media often try to legitimise fringe viewpoints in an attempt to appear even-handed. In my experience, this is certainly true of the popular media today, particularly when it comes to setting up a false argument between science and pseudoscience.

Okrent's Law states:

"The pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is just plain true".

Its a simple statement, but with fairly profound implications. In TOK we have to be careful that in setting up arguments and counter-arguments, each have not only equal weight, but are legitimate claims.

Celebrities and Science

The charitable trust Sense About Science has released its list of the worst celebrity science claims of 2012. Last year I posted the 2011 list, which was equally funny, but no less worrying. It is still true that celebrity science claims receive much more coverage in the popular media than real scientists and in many ways are therefore extremely influential.

Celebrities and Science 2012

The Rise of the Lifestyle Nutritionists

Nutritionism is (a rather pejorative) term which describes the idea that it's an individual nutrient, not food, that is healthy, and that effectively 'good' and 'bad' nutrients exist. While scientifically recognised experts in diet and nutrition exist in many countries (usually referred to as 'dieticians'), nutritionists are unregulated and may be self-taught.

If it is not a recognised science, and therefore not subject to scientific rigor and peer-review, is it acceptable to refer to nutritionism as pseudoscience? Ben Goldacre (author of Bad Science) argues that is is. In this two-part podcast he investigates the rise of the celebrity lifestyle nutritionist and argues that the advice they give may be dangerous and in some cases fraudulent:

episode 1
episode 2

Sylvia Browne

Sylvia Browne (born 1936) is a self-styled psychic and spiritual medium. [Sylvia Browne died November 20th, 2013]. She used to appear regularly on the Montel Williams Show where she gave audience members advice on subjects such as love, finances and missing family members. She seems to have been remarkably unsuccessful when it comes to locating missing people - In 2010 the Skeptical Inquirer Magazine analysed the 115 predictions she made on Montel Williams and claimed her success rate to be precisely zero.

Despite this, she has remained one of the US's most high profile psychics (together with James van Praagh) with a huge number of followers and admirers. However, this week she is facing her biggest challenge, and a considerable backlash on social media following the escape of Amanda Berry from her abductors ten years after she was kidnapped (together with two other women - Gina deJesus and Michelle Knight, and Amanda's own daughter). Browne told Louwana Miller, the mother of Amanda Berry, on the TV show 'She's not alive, honey. Your daughter's not the kind who wouldn't call'. Louwana Miller died in 2006 unaware that her daughter was still alive.

James Randi has been a constant critic of Sylvia Browne and consistently states that belief in psychic readings is dangerous. I think psychics are largely immune from criticism since there is a general feeling that their predictions can't do any harm and may in fact be useful. Randi argues that they prey on the vulnerable and naive and may lead people to come to false conclusions which may be damaging to individuals and families. He makes this claim in the podcast below, recorded for CBC Radio:

Bad Statistics

Paraphrasing an article originally published by Ben Goldacre on his Bad Science blog in 2008:

"In 1954 a man called Darrell Huff published a book called How to Lie with Statistics. Chapter one is called 'the sample with built in bias'.

Huff sets up his headline: 'The average Yaleman, Class of 1924, makes $25,111 a year!' said Time magazine. That figure sounded pretty high: Huff chases it, and points out the flaws. How did they find all these people they asked? Who did they miss? Losers tend to drop off the alma mater radar, whereas successful people are in Who’s Who and the College Record. Did this introduce selection bias into the sample? And how did they pose the question? Can that really be salary rather than investment income? Can you trust people when they self-declare their income? Is the figure spuriously precise? And so on.

In the intervening fifty years this book has sold one and a half million copies, it’s the greatest selling stats book of all time (a very tough market) and it remains in print."

Perhaps one and a half million copies is not going to single-handedly change public attitudes towards statistics, however, you might expect statistical reporting to have improved somewhat. This is certainly not the case in the mainstream media where spurious surveys with headline grabbing conclusions are quoted on a daily basis (I will have to try to dig out some examples to support this accusation), making the same mistakes that Huff was fighting against in the '50s. Perhaps the worst thing is that so few journalists are actually prepared to question the data and consider inbuilt bias. I suppose newspapers have effectively passed this responsibility on to the reader.

Man Regrows Finger Using Pixie Dust

In 2008, an apparently astonishing science story appeared on news programmes around the world. Lee Spievak of Cincinnati, Ohio, lost the end of the middle finger of his right hand when it was sliced off by the propeller of a model aeroplane. Over a four week period his finger regrew. The 'miraculous' regrowth was attributed to the use of a powder developed by the biotech firm Acell, which Mr. Spievak has dubbed 'pixie dust'. This is how BBC News reported it:

The story received considerable criticism. On his bad science blog, Dr. Ben Goldacre pointed out that on the pictures broadcast by the BBC, Mr. Spievak's nail bed appears to be intact and, although the injury seems quite severe, it is by no means unusual for spontaneous healing to occur in cases like this. He quotes Simon Kay, professor of hand surgery at the University of Leeds, UK: “It looked to have been an ordinary fingertip injury with quite unremarkable healing. This is junk science.”

The graphics used to explain the healing process in the story appear to be misleading as they show virtually a whole finger regrowing, rather than the tip. Furthermore, it later transpired that the accident occurred in 2005, three years before, and Mr. Spievak's brother is, in fact, the founder of Acell (which did of course gain considerable positive publicity). No proper (double-blind) medical tests had been carried out at the time to determine the efficacy of the 'pixie dust' and there was no evidence it played any part in the healing process.

Ben Goldacre maintains that this is a prime case of a false science story being misreported by being assigned not to health or science correspondents (who would have been expected to recognise its flaws) but to non-specialist, generalist journalists. This is one of his great bug-bears and something you could argue is a major barrier to the public understanding of science.

To its credit, the BBC took some steps to retract the story, and allowed Goldacre to give an interview on its flagship radio news broadcast, The Today Programme:

Women in the Film Industry

Following my previous post about sexism in the scientific community, I was reminded of similar stories which have emerged recently about the treatment of women working in the film industry. Many people were angered this year when the shortlist for the Palme d'Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival was announced and no films by female directors were included. The organisers countered that although there were women on the longlist, it wasn't thought that their films merited nomination and that all of the films were judged irrespective of the gender of their director. However, a bit of internet research has revealed to me this is the 63rd time in the festival's 65 year history that all of the nominated directors were male, so perhaps there is a little more to it.


It could be argued that women perhaps make films that don't generally sit well with male-dominated juries. However it is also true that there simply aren't many female directors (or producers). The reasons why women are either reticent to enter the industry or why so few make it into the upper echelons appear to be complex, but are perhaps deeply rooted in our cultural history which demarcates male and female roles. It may also explain why sexism and lack of representation of women could become self-perpetuating in this business.

Hollywood blockbuster movies tend to be targeted directly at a mainly young male audience and this significantly affects how women are portrayed on the big screen. I read about an amazing statistic recently which has become known as the Bechdel Test (after author Allison Bechdel, who came up with it). To pass the test, a film simply has to portray two female characters in one scene, having a meaningful conversation together about anything other than men. It is truly remarkable how many Hollywood movies fail in this respect.

Can our perception give a false impression of events?

The Meaning of 911

The Power of the Media

In an age where we take the ubiquity of the media for granted (and also at a time when communication and social media is undergoing a revolution), it is easy to forget how powerful it actually is and how easily it can shape people's beliefs and understanding. This is not necessarily a new phenomenon. Famously, in 1938, Orson Welles broadcast his radio version of H.G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds'. Due to the way Welles framed his story in the form of a real-time news programme, a large proportion of his audience believed that the Earth was under attack from Martians and mass panic broke out (perhaps also related to escalating worries of the political situation in Europe prior to the outbreak of war). Here is the original broadcast split into 6 parts:

part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6

I have summarised what happened during the broadcast below and how it made Orson Welles into a Hollywood star.

War of the Worlds

Celebrities and Science

It appears these days that there is no shortage of celebrities ready to make pronouncements on scientific subjects, and no shortage of people ready to take them seriously. Very often this is fairly harmless stuff, for example fad diets or Snooki's theory of why the sea is salty. However, republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann's recent claim that the HPV cancer vaccine is harmful, has drawn considerable criticism due to the fact that not only has she politicized a medical issue but may have damaged vaccination rates and therefore put lives at risk.

I'm interested in discussing whether celebrities should be able to use their influence to debate scientific issues, or whether this is a job only for "experts". Who are the experts, and do they sometimes lack the ability to educate and advise the public properly? Politics and medical ethics certainly come into close contact all the time, but there is a need for politicians to avoid soundbites which may ultimately harm public health.

Sense about Science is one of a number of charitable organisations which aims to promote public understanding of science and combat poor reporting and scientific ignorance in the media (The James Randi Educational Foundation has similar aims), going even as far to offer help and advice to celebrities. Sense about Science publishes a list of the worst celebrity science claims at the end of each year. Here is a round-up of the worst of 2011:

Celebrities and Science 2011

Dr. Ben Goldacre on Bad Science

Manipulation of the Media

Just to prove that manipulation of the media is as old as the media itself, here are a couple of quotations I read recently. The description is taken from a wanted notice, purportedly signed by Pontius Pilate and later quoted by the Jewish historian Josephus:

"At this time, too, there appeared a certain man of magical power, if it is permissible to call him a man, whom certain Greeks call a son of God, but his disciples the true prophet, said to raise the dead and heal all diseases.
His nature and form were human, a man of simple appearance, mature age, dark skin, small stature, three cubits high [about five feet], hunch-backed, with a long face, long nose and meeting eyebrows, so that those who see him might be affrighted, with scanty hair with a parting in the middle of the head, after the manner of Nairites, and an underdeveloped beard."

This piece was later altered by Christian historians to read:

"... ruddy skin, medium stature, six feet high, well grown, with a venerable face, handsome nose, goodly black eyebrows with good eyes so that spectators could love him, with curly hair the colour of unripe hazel nuts, with a smooth and unruffled, unmarked and unwrinkled forehead, lovely blue eyes, beautiful mouth, with a copious beard the same colour as the hair, not long, parted in the middle, arms and hands full of grace..."

Taken from A Criminal History of Mankind, by Colin Wilson (Parragon, London, 1993).

At least both of the original authors agreed that Jesus had a centre parting. Other than that, I'm still undecided on his real appearance.

Simon Singh and UK libel laws

Simon Singh is a science author and journalist based in the UK. I met him on a couple of occasions when he gave some talks in cafés in Brighton (before I ended up here in Mexico), and I've mentioned his science and maths books on this blog before. He's a terribly nice chap, but has recently fallen foul of UK libel laws following the publication of an article he wrote in his column in the Guardian newspaper.

In the article he was critical of the British Chiropractic Association (BCA). Specifically, he questioned their claims that manipulation of the spine can cure illnesses in children such as asthma, ear infections and colic, by altering the flow of blood around the body (these claims bear a striking resemblance to those made by proponents of Braingym). Its difficult to find a transcript of the original article, since many websites are scared of being sued for libel along with Dr. Singh. However, I did find a copy on a Russian blog, here.

The result of his article was a two year legal battle (costing him 200 000 pounds), after the BCA sued him. He has consistently defended himself on the basis that he had the right to "fair comment". In an initial hearing, the judge found in favour of the BCA, but this decision was reversed in the High Court a few days ago (1st April, 2010).

The most obvious result of the whole thing has been the mobilisation of science writers and bloggers in the UK in support of Singh, and the highlighting of inequities within UK libel laws. Many people (including celebrities, journalists and politicians) are currently calling for reform of the law because of their perception that it favours large organisations with the money to silence their critics. Dr. Singh has always claimed that science writers in particular must be allowed to publish without fear of being sued by the organisations they are investigating.

I wasn't previously aware of British libel law, but it seems that it has gained some notoriety over the years. The UN's Committee on Human Rights has attacked "libel tourism", where foreign businessmen and millionaires use the High Court in London to sue foreign publishers under defamation laws. Similarly, in one episode of South Park, Tom Cruise shouts at the American press "I'm gonna sue you...... in England."

Simon Singh's website can be found here, together with his petition to reform the law (which I will admit to signing myself).

Does the media distort Science?

In this article, the Guardian newspaper columnist Ben Goldacre discusses how the work of scientists is distorted (deliberately?) when reported in the media:

Cancer jabs, good or bad?

Orson Welles talks about "War of the Worlds"