#badreporting

This topic is inspired by attempting to watch an episode of iZombie after I used a bottle of Chenin Blanc to wash down a prawn risotto and how annoyed I got by what passed for the physical anatomy of brains on said show. It fills with me with so much rage I could probably write an entire blog post just on how stupid it is, but instead we’re going to talk about the media, which in a way is also like a fantasy version of real life. I don’t know why, but I’m still often shocked by what passes for scientific news these days. Sometimes it feels like the mainstream media is purposely trying to piss me off by targeting my weak tolerance for exaggerated bullshit.

As an example let’s take a rather pointless article by lead author Scott Frank about the relationship between texting and health behaviours in teenagers. The research indicated that teens who they called ‘hyper-texters’ (attention seeking assholes who sent more than 120 messages a day) made up nearly 20% of their sample, and this hyper-texting was positively correlated to engaging in so called risky behaviours such as having tried cigarettes and alcohol, being a binge drinker, using drugs, getting into fights and being sexually active with multiple partners. Now we all know that correlation does not equal causation, so it doesn’t make much sense to say that a simple love of texting causes people to make more nefarious life choices. You could just as easily conclude that some other factor such as personality traits like extroversion or neuroticism, or economic status, or lack of parental supervision, or whatever has more impact on both texting and health behaviours than a direct correlation between the two. In fact, a quick look at the study demographics shows that the hyper-texters tended to be females from a lower socioeconomic status who had no male parental figure in the home. Golly gee, I wonder if any of these things could play into the health choices of adolescents? But getting back to the point, this is how the various media headlines played out:

‘Texting causes health risks for teens.’ (Chicago Tribune)

‘Teen texting leads to poor health.’ (ABC News 4)

‘Too much texting increases health risks in teens.’ (WebMD)

I’d like to think that even Karl Pilkington would have some words of wisdom in this situation.

Now some people would like to blame the researchers themselves for giving bad press releases, but surely your entire job as a journalist shouldn’t be to abandon common sense and just write whatever crap you’re given based on a few quotations? Or maybe I’m the one being delusional for wanting some level of standard here. And if you think this kind of irresponsible fear mongering doesn’t happen very often, then you are mistaken my friend.

Even I Fucking Love Science, which started as a fun (if not somewhat plagiarised) dose of interesting discoveries written by Elise, has grown far too big for itself and devolved into a cesspool of clickbait that should really be rebranded as I Fucking Need an Editor. You would think this was possible given that they seem to have the money to consistently recruit new staff, but it’s hard to believe that many of those staff members have actually read over an article for spelling and grammatical errors before publishing. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel the authenticity of any claims made in a piece of writing are somewhat diminished by an author’s inability to even type a sentence properly. I’m quite tipsy right now and I could probably whip out five highly acceptable IFLS stories by reading a few abstracts and using the spellcheck built into my browser, so why is the LabX Media Group not paying me?

This lack of rigorous reporting from most news outlets is made even worse by social media and every single person who is guilty of reposting stories as fact without actually fact checking. The proliferation of miscommunication and even deliberate lies can feel overwhelming if I pay enough attention. No joke, I once got into a heated argument with someone on Facebook over a picture of an owl

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This week has been an eventful one in regards to world news.

Sadly, there were sensational news being reported from Boston, with bombs having been planted at the Marathon. Killing and few and injuring hundreds. The news that was being reported, in the 'epoch' of twitter and social media channels being delivered almost instantaneously or 'live' as-it-happens style of 'citizen journalism' has created a beast for the network television channels in keeping up with the latest and most accurate updates (if accuracy is what they are striving for) in their journalistic reporting.

I personally love the website of 'The Onion', they have such a clever way of creating news stories that appear real.  And it seems that many do seem to take it a little bit too seriously.

In other news, Margaret Thatcher *dies of strike*, a typo made by the BBC earlier in the week. I think that there were many who had mixed feelings about her reign as Prime Minister- ensuring 'Thatcherism' into the UK Political sphere.

There are also various conspiracy theories surrounding different stories going around on the internet.

The site http://istwitterwrong.tumblr.com/ | https://twitter.com/IsTwitWrong has a commentary of various twitter stories in proving or disproving their authenticity.

And.. in the case of Actress Zooey Deschanel- How did her name get implicated as a Boston Marathon bomb suspect?  #fox news was at it again!