Doctor debunks 500 news stories in crusade against junk science
Another review of Dr. Ben Goldacre’s new book “Bad Science,” this time in the Daily Telegraph, notes that since he started writing for the Guardian in 2003, he has debunked more than 500 news stories...
View ArticleA pox on pox parties
Once upon a time, pox parties – where children were introduced to other children infected with chickenpox – were a logical way of trying to stimulate immunity to the virus in the absence of a vaccine....
View ArticleScientists need to speak out more quickly on bad science says Financial Times
In honor of the 200-year anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and the 150-year anniversary of the publication of the Origin of the Species, the Financial Times took a swipe at a) burgeoning...
View ArticleOne percent of health reporters say health coverage in U.S. is excellent
The Association of Health Care Journalists and the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a survey and found that only 1 percent of reporters covering health thought that coverage of health in the media...
View ArticleLet’s put the first U.S. death from swine flu into perspective
It was inevitable that the first death from porcine influenza would receive a banner headline in massive 36 point, all caps type on Matt Drudge: “FIRST DEAD: MEXICAN WHO CAME TO USA FOR TREATMENT.” The...
View ArticleSwine-hounds: Porking the panic
With the number of news stories about swine flu pushing 50,000 in the past week, some journalists are beginning to wonder whether the press is suffering from swine fever. As the Los Angeles Times...
View ArticleScare-tistics and swine-fluence
Throughout the weekend, and now into Monday, CNN seems to have been turned into the influenza network, as “breaking” headlines highlighted soaring, leaping, and rising numbers of people with swine flu....
View ArticleBritannica versus Wikipedia
In our article The Internet – a sober corrective to unruly journalists, Andrew Lih, author of the “Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia,” noted how a...
View ArticleSleep off fat and other tall tales from TV health reporting
NPR’s On the Media recently had a very interesting discussion about the dismal state of television’s health and science reporting. Here’s a look at some of the examples. NBC Today show clip on losing...
View ArticleMedia Bites Manliness Marketing
By Cindy Merrick While you were busy wringing your hands over our nation’s debt crisis this summer, Combos (the Mars, Inc. brand responsible for figuring out how to shape pretzels around a glob of...
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