The Daily Mail recently produced a list of questions commonly asked of parents by their naturally curious children about science and the world around them. Rather unsettlingly, the answers provided weren’t completely terrible. The questions ranged from the impressively complex: “What is a prime number?”, “What is infinity?” and “What is time?” (do children really wonder about these things?); to the classics: “How do planes fly in the sky” and “Where does the wind come from?”. I must say I was shocked to learn that wind was not caused by trees sneezing.
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In a wonderful opportunity (duly ignored) to prove our maturity as a society, both the Times and Daily Mail had headlines declaring “What an anti-climax” in relation to a study about the apparent non-existence of the female G-spot. The Register website settled for the far more restrained “In-depth probe fails to hit the G-spot”. As with any article relating to (whisper it) sex, this gave both journalists and commentators alike the perfect opportunity to wheel out every joke they could remember about vagina’s, orgasms, and men being crap in bed.
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Pack up the Bunsen burners and power down the computers because Science Is Dying! This wonderfully nonsensical claim is thanks to Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal. Bearing in mind the WSJ is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, who also run that beacon of respectable truth-telling, Fox News, Mr Henninger appears to have skillfully observed that *gasp* scientists are human! I know, I was shocked too. Here I was thinking that they were specially cloned in gleaming tanks to be unfeeling, thinking machines. But no, they’re normal, every day people like you and me. You might even have touched one once without realising it. Terrifying stuff (the geeks over at /. have a typically rambling discussion of the article up if you’re interested).
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Following all the hoo-ha we’ve seen recently over the cervical cancer vaccination, it was with some interest I noted that the Daily Mail hailed “Cervical cancer wiped out by pioneering use of ‘amazing’ osteoporosis drugs“. Journalist Fiona MacRae went on to excitedly tell us that “Cervical cancer can be destroyed by drugs used to treat breast cancer and osteoporosis, a study suggests. In results described as ‘amazing’ by researchers, one of the treatments eliminated the cancer in 11 out of 13 cases”. It almost sounds too good to be true, and indeed eight paragraphs into the article Ms MacRae mentions that “The initial results come from experiments in mice”. The actual study abstract can be found here.
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Do they fail to see the irony? This week The Daily Mail reported on a new book that dispels a number of health myths (the book is called “Don’t Swallow Your Gum: and Other Medical Myths Debunked”). They open with: “Every day you hear or read things about your body and health that are simply not true. In many cases they’ve been scientifically discredited, yet these medical myths endure.” They point out classic myths such as the one that claims we only use 10 per cent of our brains (although if this were true it may help explain why The Daily Mail is still around…), or the misconception that the flu jab can cause the flu.
The Mail seems rather bemused at the level of belief in these medical myths: as if they are not quite sure why it would be that people would believe such nonsense. Naturally, they would never be so foolish as to make any such claims that the flu jab causes the flu it is designed to prevent, although they did get pretty close just last month.
Whilst I am all for The Mail helping to dispel these sorts of things, and if they really are so clueless as to why people believe such myths, perhaps they should start by taking a good look through their own archives. A good place to start would be here, although a book debunking all of the rubbish The Mail has given us could make “War and Peace” look like a light read.
Paul | Friday, 15 January, 2010
