Shocking findng...science journalists mostly suck

Tonington

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 27, 2006
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Well, not really a shocking finding. The majority of science related stories are now written by reporters without any formal training in science. Financial difficulties have meant cut backs, and science reporting is kind of like art and music classes that get cut from tight education budgets.

So, Ben Goldacre and his co-authors looked at all of the articles offering dietary advice for the ten UK newspapers with the most circulation, in a randomly selected week. To evaluate the evidence supporting advice given in newspaper articles, they used two ratings criteria: one developed by World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), and another by the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN).

The results were very lopsided; of the 111 articles in the sample, 72% (WCRF) had levels of evidence below what would be considered probable or convincing.

Only 15% would be considered convincing. That is appallingly low.
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
117,414
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Low Earth Orbit
Have you ever been to a shareholders meeting and spent 3/4 an hour explaining what the last 15 minutes are going to mean so they at least have a vague idea what is going on with their money?

Try giving the gist of it to a journalist who walks in in the last 25 minutes in a minute spiel or so afterwards.