WHAT ARE BLACK HOLES?

A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, including light, can escape.
It is all due to gravity – the force which pulls objects towards each other. It keeps the Earth moving around the Sun, instead of flying off into space, and holds us all down on the surface of the Earth.

A black hole’s gravity is so strong that not even light can escape its pull. Because the light is dragged towards a black hole, it cannot shine and so looks completely black.

Dr Marek Kukula, Royal Observatory

WHERE DOES WATER COME FROM?

Most scientists think the Earth’s water came from water-rich asteroids (really tiny planets) and comets raining down on the planet when it was young.

Others think the oceans were home-grown – they may have formed because the young Earth had a thick blanket of a gas called hydrogen, which reacted with chemicals in the Earth’s surface to form lakes and seas.

Roger Highfield, Editor, New Scientist

It does get a bit shaky when The Daily Mail tries to answer some of the trickier questions. The Mail’s own advise columnist Bel Mooney has a crack at dealing with the existential angst of “What happens when we die?”. Apparently it’s all about plants melting, and living on in each others memories, or some such. And I must admit her description of sex (in response to the question “Where do babies come from?”) has left me wondering if I’ve been doing it wrong. “They give each other a massive cuddle because they love each other so much, and that amazing big hug is like two pieces of a jigsaw fitting together, or two bits of Lego”. Hmmm…

So, all-in-all not a bad effort from the Mail, particularly considering some of the stuff they churn out. Well done them. Maybe their journalist should continue writing articles pitched at a 6 year old level, they seem to be good at it.

See, we can be nice to the media sometimes…

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It will come as no surprise to regular readers of Ipso Factoid that in fact this study does not prove that the G-spot does not exist. The results are, in my humble opinion, far more interesting than the media would make out. The Times mentions some criticism of the results, quoting Prof. Emily Whipple, a rather big name in the world of female sexuality, as saying that “The biggest problem with their findings is that twins don’t generally have the same sexual partner”. In other words, just because a women hasn’t reported having a G-spot, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Lead author of the paper, Andrea Burri of King’s College London is happy to admit that this may in fact be correct, and that maybe “partner differences do play a role”. The subtlety the media failed to pick up on, however, is that “that is exactly what we [the research team] are saying, basically that the G-Spot is almost entirely due to unique environmental influences, so partner differences or performance is taken into account”. Importantly “That still doesn’t mean that it is an anatomical phenomenon, it could be an entirely subjective thing”.

The article never claims to prove the non-existence of the G-spot, it simply shows the lack of heritability of the self-report of a G-spot. The authors go on to postulate that this may prove the G-spot is a social rather than a physiological construct, but they are clear that more research is much needed (Ms Burri herself said she found it fascinating that the existence of the G-spot was widely accepted based on a handful of very small studies). The BBC website gets closest to covering this study properly, but they still missed the subtleties.

To be fair, it’s not necessarily immediately obvious. I’ll happily admit to being no expert when it comes to female genitalia. But in the space of about 20 minutes, spread over an afternoon exchanging e-mails with the extremely helpful Ms Burri, I was able to get even my feeble mind around the general idea. Would it be so much to ask the towering intellects of our media masters to invest similar time themselves? Ms Burri summed it up nicely when she said “Never trust the media. As soon as they start cutting information down the true message gets blurred”. Wise words indeed.

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Mr Henninger comes to his conclusion on the basis of this year’s most terribly named news phenomena: “Climategate“. Due to the fact that the private e-mails of the people at East Anglia Climate Research Unit have raised some interesting questions about their research methods (or not), our friend at The Journal thinks that “hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and “messy” as, say, gender studies.” First off, and at the risk of offending any climate researchers amongst our readers (been a tough year guys, stick in there), climatology is far from a hard science. We don’t know exactly what the weather is going to do tomorrow in London, never mind globally on a time-scale of decades. Yes we can measure it, and observe trends, and build predictive models. But a hard science? I think not.

And secondly, any person who honestly thinks that science is not politicized and messy has never spent any time with people who do science for a living! Academic conferences can get plain nasty.

Mr Henninger also writes: “The public was told repeatedly that something called “the scientific community” had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry [global warming]“. Indeed, and who exactly was it that kept telling us what the “scientific community” was thinking? Could it have possibly been the media Mr Henninger? The media who label anyone who does basic research a scientist (or a boffin, if it’s The Sun)? It is this over-simplified presentation of science as a single unified entity where all researchers are stuck with a single label, which has mislead the public into thinking that science is a series of well defined truths that are released to the press on a regular schedule. It’s for this very reason that people understandably get exasperated when the press report that “scientists” claim substance X cures cancer, only to have “scientists” a few weeks later announce substance X in fact causes cancer.

Science is not a thing, it’s a process. The sooner the media understand this, and more importantly begin to educate their readers, the sooner we’ll be done with stupid claims that science is dying.

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To be fair, she does go on to give some cautionary quotes from people who understand that this research is very much in its early stages. However the article still has a very misleading slant from the get-go, starting with an over-hyped headline. Pleasingly, The Telegraph gets this story very right, and the journalist (who’s name I can’t find, please contact me if you know who it is) gives a lesson in good science reporting. There is no screamingly exaggerated headline; they give a clear indication that this is a study in mice from the first sentence; and there is some interesting commentary on the future possibilities of this research. This is an interesting story without making it out to be something it is not. As always, the awesome Behind The Headlines gives the facts.

This is a classic example of one of the media’s favored tactics for creating over-hyped articles: Reporting the results of petri dish and animal studies as if they apply equally to humans. The Metro did just this at the end of October when they reported “Young ‘better off’ without flu shots“. In particular the Metro journalist Miles Erwin wrote: “It is beneficial to allow youngsters to contract the illness as it could afford them better protection against more dangerous pandemics in the future, experts believe”.

Mr Erwin fails to point out that this expert opinion is just that, an opinion piece in the Lancet based mostly on mice studies. The same edition of the journal also features a piece arguing that such conclusions aren’t necessarily valid (note both the above links are behind pay-walls). Janet Raloff over at Science News gives a very good summary of the issue.

I personally think pre-clinical petri and animal studies should be reported in the mainstream media. Both the possible cervical cancer breakthrough and the possibility of issues with flu vaccination are important and interesting topics. However they should be reported for what they are: Early stage studies which give us a hint that something interesting might be going on. Cells in a test tube or mice in a lab are, for fear of stating the obvious, not humans. The FDA estimates that only 0.1 of compounds pass pre-clinical trials and go on to be tested in humans. And even if they do pass this first phase, and assuming they pass all subsequent phases, it can take a drug 5-10 years to get from the lab to the market.

This kind of sensationalized reporting adds to the public perception that scientists are constantly contradicting themselves, saying something cures one week and kills the next. Perhaps if, instead, journalists met their journalistic obligation and tried to educate their readers on the complexities involved in developing a drug, then we might have a society on our hands who appreciated that there has to be more to a story than “inject drug into mouse, cure cancer”. Of course, having a readership who expects good science in their media reporting really wouldn’t be in these newspaper’s best interests, now would it?

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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.

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Naturally the article in The Sun doesn’t mention any other demographics or confounding variables; and why would they? After all, any good Sun journalist knows that correlation proves causation.  Of course, this finding was also reported in the well known broadsheet The Telegraph.  They don’t use the word boffins, or work any woeful puns into the headline, but they do report exactly the same figures, and use exactly the same quote from the lead author.  As an aside, both articles report at the end that the study also found that older women “enjoy a more fruitful sex life”.  This is a one liner; there is no detail about the scores relating to this particular finding and certainly no mention of whether or not age groups differed at all in their drinking habits.  The Telegraph (like The sun) even mention that the Female Sexual Function Index is used by doctors to assess women and sexual health, although the website for the instrument itself says “It was not designed for use as a diagnostic instrument and should not be used as a substitute for a complete sex history in clinical evaluation.”

These newspaper articles were published back in August.  The journal article in question is published in this month’s edition of the Journal of Sexual Medicine¹.  So how accurate were The Sun and the Telegraph? There were 3 groups in the study: group 1 was the daily, moderate red wine intake (one or two glasses); group 2 were teetotallers; and group 3 were those who reported occasional drinking of any sort of alcohol.  The researchers did find that group 1 had higher total FSFI scores than groups 2 or 3.  They found that group 1 had higher scores than groups 2 or 3 on desire and lubrication, but found no significant differences between groups on arousal, orgasm, satisfaction, or pain.  Despite the positive overall findings, the researchers advise caution when interpreting the results, pointing out the “small sample size, self reported data, and the lack of laboratory tests and any instrument to psychometrically address sexual distress”.

There is no intention here to belittle the research itself; rather the intention is to highlight the stunted and somewhat meaningless nature of reporting the findings, out of context, in the newspaper.  The authors of the journal article make no claim that adjusting your diet to include a higher alcohol content will improve sex life, and moreover, they advise caution in interpreting the findings whilst suggesting more research be done.  It is obvious why The Sun picked up on the article: it contained references to alcohol and sex, but they have pointlessly oversimplified a complex issue for the sake of filling column space that could potentially lead some people to believe that increasing their intake of alcohol could help their sex life.  This would surely be a little irresponsible considering the abuse of alcohol carries a number of recognised health risks.

But perhaps this is being too harsh on the Sun, maybe they were fed the story from elsewhere and had no idea that this was bad reporting.  The Daily Mail also picked up this story and published it.  Aside from the headline and opening sentence the articles are identical, word for word.  In fact, on closer inspection of the version in The Telegraph it is also a carbon copy of those in The Sun and The Daily Mail.  But this identical story doesn’t end there, just about any news outlet reporting the story had the same few paragraphs.  Maybe the newspapers are now collaborating to bring us poor scientific reporting, without having the original press release from the university it is difficult to say whether the multiple stories were taken directly from that.

1.  Mondaini, N., Cai, T., Gontero, P., Gavazzi, A., Lombardi, G., Boddi, V., Bartoletti, R (2009) Regular Moderate Intake of Red Wine Is Linked to a Better Women’s Sexual Health.  Journal of Sexual Medicine. 6:2772–2777.

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So while there was an initial, and, to be fair, understandable panic, this was short lived as the relevant authorities quickly swung into action and began reassuring the nation. Those whose job it is to make decisions based on evidence have seemingly learned from the debacle that was the MMR vaccine. The joint director for public health for NHS Coventry and Coventry city council even went as far as to release preliminary findings of the post-mortem, in an attempt to prevent the media working itself into too much of an indignant lather.

The majority of media outlets did tone down their reporting. The Mirror encouraged parents not to panic. Why-ever would they do that? The Sunday Express, however, stood firm in the face of facts, claiming that JAB ‘AS DEADLY AS THE CANCER’. They based this subtle headline on an “exclusive interview” with Dr. Diane Harper, “who was involved in the clinical trials of the controversial drug Cervarix”. They went on to write that she has claimed “The cervical cancer vaccine may be riskier and more deadly than the cancer it is designed to prevent” and quote her as saying “All this jab will do is prevent girls getting some abnormalities associated with cervical cancer which can be treated. It will not decrease cervical cancer rates at all”.

Indeed Dr. Harper has been heavily involved in a number of trials of both GlaxoSmithKline’s Cervarix and Merck’s HPV vaccine Gardasil. And indeed Dr Harper has raised concerns about the manner in which these drugs have been promoted and the risks associated with them.

However the way Dr Harper was portrayed in the article was strange given that she herself has written that “HPV vaccination of pre-pubescent girls will be effective for many girls. Vaccinating girls and women older than 12 years of age may accelerate the reduction in cervical cancer rates” and, not 2 months ago “Post-marketing surveillance of Cervarix and Gardasil continues to show that they are safe for most women despite rarely occurring serious events”.

Thus it was with unsurprising inevitability that it turned out the good Doctor had been completely misrepresented by the Express. When I contacted Dr Harper shortly after the piece was published she said she had been “burned” by UK reporters. She has now filed a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission. The paper has pulled the story from their website, and published an apology over the weekend.

It seems the media simply hasn’t learnt. When all the mainstream outlets jumped on the MMR bandwagon, even though anyone with the barest understanding of the subject could see there was nothing too it, it directly lead to a decrease in parents getting their children immunised and thus an increase in the levels of measles. Crap reporting has a direct consequence on the world, and until mainstream media realise and accept their responsibilities they will continue, in a very real sense, to put people lives at risk. The Express has not responded to my request for clarification on how they came to the conclusion that the HPV jab was more dangerous than cervical cancer. What impact their apparent misrepresentation will have on cervical cancer rates remains to be seen.

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Apparently there is scientific evidence in animals and in humans demonstrating the effects of Lactium in stress.  According to the article Lactium has only been tested on 190 volunteers but one theory of how it works is that it “acts on receptors in the brain that help control anxiety and stress”. It is not mentioned which receptors or why this might be the case.  A search of pubmed quickly reveals, well, very little.  There are no articles about Lactium or casein in relation to use in combating stress in humans.  From searching through Google it looks like the 190 volunteers who have been tested came from 5 studies that are not easy to get hold of.  One such paper by Dr Marta Santuré tested Lactium against placebo.  It is not clear which journal this study is published in, or if it is published at all.  It measured the effects of stress in 63 women who were suffering from at least 1 symptom of stress, measured by an unnamed questionnaire that is not described.  Somewhat unsurprisingly it has favourable results showing that in 5 out of 8 areas of stress (remember that the participants had to have at least 1 symptom, and since no further participant information is given, it is unclear how many participants fell into each group) Lactium was significantly better than placebo.  The researcher even suggests that the insignificant results such as in locomotive symptoms could have been significant if they hadn’t been masked by the troublesome placebo effect.  Interestingly, despite giving a ringing endorsement for Lactium, showing positive results at a dosage of 150mg/day the LactiumUSA website where this research is linked from claims that Lactium has been proven effective in humans at 167mg/day.

So how did this little known effect of Lactium find its way to the Daily Mail?  It may just be coincidence, but at the bottom of the article is the answer to the question of where to find this remarkable product in the UK: Boots.  They are selling “Equilibrium” containing Lactium at a price of £9.99 for a 14 day supply.  The boots website has this to say about it “This product contains Lactium a unique ingredient which is proven to help with the stresses of every day life, helping you through a stressful day” and “This one a day supplement contains the patented ingredient Lactium.  All Boots vitamins and suppliers are checked to ensure they meet our high quality and safety standards”.  Presumably Boots had more luck tracking down the other 4 studies showing safety and efficacy data.

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Where did it all go wrong? We were so close, you and I, and I thought you could do no wrong. I used to hang on your every word. You opened my eyes to the world outside my window; a huge world filled with adventure and excitement. You made me believe that if we just tried hard enough the little guy could triumph. The truth would out, no matter what.

And then…? Then something changed. I want to say it was you. I want to believe that you lost sight of the big picture. I used to think it was always about doing the right thing, finding the cold hard facts even when the cold hard facts didn’t want to be found. You were there to give it to me as it was, no matter how tough. But you seemed to become more self obsessed, shallower, as time went on. You cared less about the truth, and more about the entertainment factor. Sure, I love to be entertained as much as anyone, but when was that all it was based on? You didn’t have time for a meaningful relationship any more.

No matter how many times you tell me you’re just giving me what I want, you don’t seem to get it. You hold a position of responsibility; a responsibility to tell the truth as it is, not as you perceive others want it to be. Do you have any comprehension of just how unimportant, how pointless, how meaningless some of the rubbish you come out with on a daily basis is? In all honestly, how do you sleep at night knowing you are actually responsible for the putrid noise pumped into society on a minute by minute basis?

But maybe you’ve always been like this. Maybe it’s just me that’s changed and I’m losing sight off what’s really important in life. Maybe “celebrity” gossip and poor science reporting is exactly what we need to carry us forward as a culture. I just….I just don’t think it’s working out any more. It’s not you, it’s me. Well, it’s actually mostly you. But we’ll keep in touch. Oh, we’ll keep in touch…

Evan and Paul both work as researchers in the science industry. Criticising the work of others gives meaning to their otherwise empty lives.

The aim of Ipso Factoid is to pull out just some of the inadequate science based articles in the mainstream media and highlight inaccurate reporting.  There will also be some grudging acknowledgements where the journalist has got it right.  Updates will occur on a weekly basis and all comments are welcome.

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