Welcome to the debate Ben and I'm glad you are willing to discuss these issues publicly.
Let's deal with the previous Telegraph article. You are correct, as I acknowledged at the time, that the Telegraph article misrepresented the content of a press release that was distributed to publicise the publication of an article in the journal 'Science' about 'Snowball Earth'. But you will recall that the press release made the connection between the research and today's climate change, not the journal paper itself. My complaint was that the press release was wrong to link the two as the research clearly did not have anything but a tenuous link to current climate change, which is why the journal paper did not mention it. The link was put into the press release to try to generate media coverage (which it did). You have fixated on the Telegraph's misrepresentation of the link as it was described in the press release, I'm complaining that the press release was wrong to introduce the link in the first place.
Your other comments about the current controversy surrounding the papers in the NEJM seem based on a romanticised notion of how much time and how many resources daily news journalists have. Journal papers tend to be very technical and laden with jargon. You find it easy to read many of the articles in the medical journals because of your training, but most science and health journalists haven't got your training - they are journalists not 'doctors with a column hobby' like you. If you had to write about journal papers from other disciplines, say particle physics, I'm pretty sure it would take a bit of time for you to grasp the main issues and to explain the broader significance, say for public policy (something that most journal articles do not deal with). That is part of the reason why researchers and their host institutions produce press releases, to help journalists more easily grasp the salient details of a technical journal article. Unfortunately, those releases are not always written with great objectivity and tend not to point out any flaws in the research.
More generally, Ben, I don't think your constant running down of health and science journalist is particularly helpful. Sure there are many problems, and it's good that you expose them. But why not start proposing solutions as well? It's no use wishing that daily news journalists were experts in every discipline and able to instantly grasp the strenghts and weaknesses of all journal articles. Why not start identifying ways in which journalists' jobs might be made easier to do well, for instance by raising the quality and standards of media releases produced by universities?
And lest I give the wrong impression, I think you are doing a good job with your column. But I also think that UK health and science journalists on the whole do a brilliant job as well. When was the last time you highlighted an excellent report by a science journalist, and didn't just trash a bad one?
________________________________
From: psci-com: on public engagement with science on behalf of Ben Goldacre
Sent: Sat 21/03/2009 15:07
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PSCI-COM] Ben Goldacre shoots the messenger again
##apologies, my last message was garbled formatting, this shld be clearer ###
Hi Bob Ward.
" # I see that Ben Goldacre has yet again aimed at the wrong target in his 'Bad Science' column in today's edition of 'The Guardian'"
Oh hang on, but the last time you accused me of this you were simply... wrong...
http://www.badscience.net/2009/01/the-telegraph-misrepresent-a-scientists-work-on-climate-and-then-refuse-to-correct-it-when-he-writes-to-them/
I said that the telegraph had invented a claim that greenhouses gases could cause an ice age. You said the Telegraph simply repeated this error from the press release. But this error did not occur in the press release. This was therefore such a pointless and baffling discussion that I'm a bit reluctant to get involved in another one with you.
# , blaming science and medical journalists for poor coverage of a journal paper published this week on the success or otherwise of screening tests for prostate cancer. He also called out the coverage by 'The Guardian' on his website, but the newspaper's subs clearly couldn't stomach the criticism of his paymasters and edited it out before publication (assuming that Ben didn't censor it himself).
They took it out, fair enough, up to them, it was a bit long I suppose.
# But the point is that all the problems about which he complains seem to have arisen from the media release that was distributed by the European Association of Urology and posted on AlphaGalileo, rather than from sloppy reading of the source, a paper published in the 18 March issue of 'The New England Journal of Medicine'.
So the story came from one press release? Journalists are just parrot mouthpieces? Then they should link to the press releases, and tell us that. There were lots of press releases on that subject, though, including many sensible ones (and even some fairly accurate coverage from news agencies, I haven't checked the timing but I think lots were available before UK papers went to press).
# He also complains that UK journalists "deliberately ignored" another paper by US authors in the same issue of the journal. I rather suspect that the paper was simply missed because it was not promoted through a media release to UK journalists.
When you write an entire piece about one study it seems very reasonable to look at the evidence context with a quick pubmed search, or a scan of the most up to date systematic review. This wld take a few minutes. People do it millions of times a day. This is not technical and difficult. It is a very basic skill.
# The fact is that journalists working to daily newspaper deadlines have to rely on media releases rather than on wading through technical journals.
There is nothing very technical about the papers in the NEJM, these articles were free to access and their abstracts actually expressed the risks as "numbers needed to screen" and used natural frequencies, which have been repeatedly shown to be a more comprehensible way of expressing risk than the rather unhelpful "20% less" figures used by UK journalists. They were also eminently readable.
Here is one.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMoa0810084
Here is the other:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMoa0810696
I think they're very clear.
# They have just a few hours to write their articles, not a whole week like Ben has for his column.
I think we've discussed this before as well Bob. I don't spend a week writing my column, it is a hobby, on top of my day job.
But furthermore, the media coverage on prostate screening came out on Thursday, and my column deadline is Friday morning, so I only had a day, as it happens I didn't notice the newspapers until Thursday evening. The column took from about 8pm til midnight since you ask, I certainly didn't want a late night because I knew I was going to be on call all day and then all night on Friday.
But my nerdy life is irrelevant. More importantly, the things that journalists failed to do simply do not take long. As I said, when you write an entire piece about one single study it seems very reasonable to look at the evidence context with a quick pubmed search, or a scan of the most up to date systematic review. This wld take a few minutes. People do it millions of times a day. It is very very normal and very very easy.
# And by making journalists solely culpable for what he considers to be bad reporting, he ignores the role of bad media relations by universities and scientific organisations, and promotes further ignorance and misunderstanding of how the media works.
I have also previously written about both scientists and press releases misleading the media. If you have any more good examples of that do please send them to me, [log in to unmask], it just goes straight to my gmail like all my other email addresses.
-- dr ben goldacre
[log in to unmask]
http://www.badscience.net/
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