In Actual Fact

This is something that drives me nuts. There are dozens of interesting articles appearing in scientific journals every month that include pretty amazing results. Do they get reported? No, because outside the scientific community there are very few people (and apparently even fewer science editors) who can comprehend complex topics like CD4+CD25+ T regulatory cells and the like. Instead, we get a daily dose of junk science that usually includes a large serving of dubious studies involving sex (”More sex equals less prancreatic problems!”) or eating habits (”Chocolate protects your arteries!”). Usually nobody has ever heard of the authors before, experimental/statistical controls are not reported and the existing literature on the issue is completely ignored. But hey, it allows you to fill that little bit of space on the DW’s or Aunt Beep’s website or makes for an interesting teaser on the 11 o’clock local news.
Since science journalism is in such a sad state (and good science journalism is mostly ignored by audiences), it is no wonder many Germans worry whether an ampicillin resistance gene from a GMO crop could suddenly end up in bacteria or their own organism.
JCS

JCS: “it is no wonder many Germans worry whether an ampicillin resistance gene from a GMO crop could suddenly end up in bacteria or their own organism“. I’d love to tell you a conversation I had about this with a group of people on Sunday. But I’m not going to. Sorry, but I’m not putting it in an open comment thread.

As for everything else you’ve said, yes it drives me spare, I’m somewhat loathed to go into science too much on the blog except when I see something that really gets me. About 3 weeks ago there was a case in Britain where a 2 day old baby died as a result of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection. Every major news outlet in the UK described it as a superbug (annoying) a bacteria (fair enough) and a virus (what?) in the same article. Now, I know not everyone in the media studied science to a higher level, but couldn’t someone, somewhere who might possibly have an O Level or GCSE in Biology have remembered “Bacteria, viruses, not the same thing”?
I link to the Telegraph deliberately, because they’re normally slightly better with science, I’d give you the bbc link but I have to shamefully admit that for the first time in my life I went all “disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” and e-mailed them to ask “just how stupid are you?” and they changed the article.

Ditto, ditto, ditto, bleh. And it’s not something that’s ever likely to change. Heck, I even responded to an article in the Daily Mail (yes, I know, sorry) to repudiate some blatant idiocy with regard to GM; it was succint enough, but they published it in the editorial column minus a peppering of key words, and simply ended up distorting what I was saying to the point that I didn’t agree with it. It was an unintentional act of genius on their part, and I nearly had an aneurism.

I am doing my happy happy dance ’cause I just finished a manuscript in less than 5 days(only 80+ hours spent in the lab this week). It is signed, sealed and sent electronically to the editors for their “careful consideration”. The reason I bring this up is that I am taking my wife this weekend to visit our friends who are both newspaper editors. One of them was actually a science contributor but never took a single science class at university, never, not one - she majored in English. She is going to want to discuss my paper with me but doesn’t have a freakin clue what she is talking about. She would scan other science articles written by other newspaper writers as a basis for her articles. That ladies and gentlemen is how the general public gets their science information.

But this is great news surely. It means those unclean environmentalists are the cause of global warming. We can scrap Kyoto and replace it with a Head and Shoulders Treaty. Much cheaper and we can force greenies to take a shower every day.