hi bob

my expectations for the skills of journalists are fairly modest. these were often health writers writing about the prostate story. i expect them to be able to understand academic papers on the common issue of screening - not physics - and if they don't then to spend 5 minutes calling someone who does. again, tell me what is incomprehensible about the abstract here:

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMoa0810084

the first thing i do, if someone tells me there is an article this week in NEJM, is go to NEJM. here you can see both papers. both published online, free open access, before the media coverage.

http://www.badscience.net/wp-content/uploads/image62.png

the first thing i do, if someone tells me there is a new trial that gives new results that conflict with old results, is do a very quick pubmed search for the other trials, the evidence context.

it's not difficult and it's not too much to ask.

basically you seem to be saying that journalists are busy and simply rewrite press releases. i think that's a huge problem, i also dont think it saves a lot of time, but more importantly, if that is what journalists do, then they should simply be transparent and honest about it, they should say "xx happened today, according to a press release from yy" not "xx happened today, according to a paper in the NEJM". furthermore they should link to the press releases as the primary sources, so that everyone can see what they do and how they work and where this information comes from. in fact, hell, the people who read newspapers might as well just read the press releases instead, for all the value that is added.

regarding the dreary flamewar:

you say i harangue science and health journalists. since you refer repeatedly to my body of work i am surprised that you seem once again to be so unfamiliar with its contents. i repeatedly and specifically flag up the fact that specialist health and science journalists do excellent work and the problems often arise when things are put in the hands of the generalists. here are some longer examples, but it's a point i have made repeatedly and for many years:

http://www.badscience.net/2005/09/dont-dumb-me-down/
http://www.badscience.net/2006/10/newtons-apple-thinktank-launch/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Science-Ben-Goldacre/dp/0007240198/?tag=bs0b-21

Your claims about your position on the Tele article are silly and I think it would be wise to leave them. I said that the Telegraph had invented a claim that greenhouses gases could cause an ice age (and then, incidentally, they refused to take a correction, a letter, or even an online comment from the scientist concerned). You said I was wrong to blame the Telegraph beacuse the Telegraph simply repeated this error from the press release. But this error did not occur in the press release. Fin.

regarding positive advice for writers: i've done talks to newspapers, helped on courses, taught on the imperial MSc (once, they didn't ask me back), i repeatedly make pleas for writers to use "natural frequencies" and "numbers needed to treat" instead of relative risk increases, etc.

there is nothing more dreary than people who say "fine you campaign on this, why don't you also campaign on what i want you to campaign on".

go and campaign on what you think needs to be done to improve journalism.

do it.

i would love you to do it. it would be great.

we agree on a lot.

do it.

> Welcome to the debate Ben and I'm glad you are willing to discuss these issues publicly.

i write a blog, i engage in comments all over the internet, i discuss things on twitter, i respond to things in print, i've done about a dozen podcasts no matter how obscure with everyone who's asked in the past month, my email address which goes directly to me at home is at the bottom of every column, i work extremely hard to be as accessible as possible because i think these issues are incredibly important and i am pleased to see that many others feel the same way.

in all honesty, in contrast, while i value it, and read it from time to time, and enjoy it greatly, and respect many of the people on it, i regard your psci-comm discussion list as positively secluded and private.



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On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Bob Ward <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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
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http://www.badscience.net/

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