Turns out the flu vaccine makes you Australian
More at scienceblogs.com
I hope that Desiree Jennings recovers from whatever ails her. However, the moral of the story is that science reporting is still abysmally bad and the plural of anecdote is not data.
xD.
February 11th, 2010 at 8:53 am
Not only science reporting but science itself.
February 11th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Science is abysmally bad? I’m not sure I agree at all. Science is bad at explaining itself, certainly, but the technological wonders of our age suggest that science is very good!
February 12th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Ben Goldacre in the Grauniad has written a lot about the terrible quality of science reporting, and you don’t have to go to a tabloid US TV show to find examples. But I think it is part of a wider problem with most journalism, which is that the average generalist newspaper or TV hack doesn’t have enough background knowledge and understanding to get the details right when the subject is at all technical, or to put what can sometimes be complex sets of facts into their proper context. Everyone I discuss this with agrees with me that when they read press coverage of a subject they happen to know something about, it’s usually wrong. As for what is politely called the cheaper end of the market (i.e. the gutter press), it’s simply a national disgrace of the first order.