Science and Myths: How hard it is to stay informed, stay balanced

Various things have delayed my blogging lately, even though I've had lots to think about and want to write down so I'm having a catch up at last. First thing to mention is the ever noticeable puzzling presentation of science in the media and how vulnerable we are to misinterpretation, thanks to the previous misinterpretation of those who present news summaries (which may have been previously misinterpreted by someone before them). Confused? well... no surprise. Keywords I've scribbled to put this blog together include "homebirth study, creationism, engineering C4 and daytime TV" These all tell a similar tale.

Birthplace Study
The first note, and related to the general interest area of my blog, was a recent press release regarding a substantial study on UK birthplace choice and outcomes for mother and her baby by Oxford University's National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU). See "Large study will help guide women's choices in where to give birth". I initially heard about the study on the BBC radio 2 news snippet, which mentioned greater risk for babies of first-time mothers where the child was born at home. Later summaries in the BBC news and national papers spirited in. Searching for "Birthplace study" in UK News websites today has provided various interpretations, some more dramatic than others:

• Safe to give birth? I should jolly well think so - Vicki Woods, The Telegraph, 25/11/11
• First time mothers warned over home birth risks - Rebecca Smith, The Telegraph, 25/11/11
• Home births are three times more risky than hospital births, says study - Hayden Smith, The Metro, 25/11/11
• Home birth 'carries higher risk' for first-time mothers - Branwen Jefferies, BBC News Online, 25/11/11
• Home births: 'Women need help to make the right choice' - BBC News Online, 25/11/11
• First-time mothers who opt for home birth face triple the risk of death or brain damage in child - Jenny Hope, Daily Mail, 25/11/11
• Women with low-risk pregnancies 'should have birth choices' - Sarah Boseley, The Guardian, 25/11/11
• Don't believe the propaganda about births at home - Barbara Ellen, The Observer, 27/11/11
• Deliver us from these scare stories about home births - Reader feedback to above article, The Guardian, 4/12/11

The interpretation of the original press release (and perhaps even of the source BMJ article) was varied to say the least. I'm lucky in that I have experience in research - I understand what peer reviewed journal articles go through to get published and how important it is to not just skim the abstract if you want to understand what the core outcomes of any study are. So when I hear or read a journalist's interpretation of this study, I am automatically cautious. Between the press release becoming available on the 25th November, and the article being written and published (note that the majority were on the same day), how much time has gone into carefully paraphrasing it's contents? Or was it just a copy and paste job, or worse, copy, paste and exaggerate (whether accidentally or not), due to the journalist either not being allowed or allowing themselves the time to present the results accurately. Perhaps the need for immediate publication of new news means journalists are caught up and can only ever provide a squinted interpretation of any science (which has been through the opposite process - a long, drawn out course of seeking funding, study planning and running, data collection and analysis, collaboration and conclusion-drawing, before peer review acceptance over a course of months, years).

Unfortunately most people do not know this, and can only take what they read in which ever newspaper they choose to read as telling them a reliable summary of scientific work. My friend is having her first child and planning a homebirth and pretty thrown by the announcement of this study - throwing up more questions than answers. Thanks journos.

It seems that lack of time in our lives and those whose job it is to summarise world news to us so that we don't have to work it out ourselves, is an unfortunate problem. It is likely to be the cause of most myth-building about allsorts of subject matters today.  If you have time to, the unit at Oxford who carried out the study have released a video of a 30 minute talk by Dr Jennifer Hollowell, which provides a much more useful summary, which is easier to take in than the source article, and more reliable than any of the newspaper articles above: "The Birthplace national prospective study of planned place of birth". In fact, in presenting the data, Dr Hollowell had to bring up the discrepency between media versions of the study and the true results, "For those of you that have seen the Daily Mail this morning, you're going to be getting a slightly different picture from me" "...stories in papers today about deaths are not what we're talking about here".

Creationism Research
The pattern continues in other areas: one example was finding out that there was a Creationism Research group. Although calling themselves a research organisation, the robust scientific protocol was doubtful- this was not a group that could be compared to the research going on in global academic institutions. If somebody says that they're carrying out research and that they have a group of researchers, how many are to be fooled into thinking that the data can be trusted?  It certainly got Randall Hardy a slot on Channel Four (Should Creationism be taught in schools?).

Engineering and Channel Four News
Cathy Newman highlighted a similar sort of problem by her style of hosting a discussion on a new Engineering Award set up to promote the training and employment of Engineers in the UK. Talking about how engineers should "come out of the factories", something particularly insulting to Engineer Paul Westbury. Her ignorance regarding what exactly engineers did in their professions and what impact they made was embarrassing to watch and insulting to those in the profession (my husband included). Paul Westbury pointed out that this ignorance was one of the biggest problems for the industry. He corrected her assumption that the finance sector was the biggest contributer to the economy in Britain, when actually, the Engineering sector was a major contributor. This was picked up by others in the industry too:

The Engineer magazine "Cathy Newman on Channel 4 News said: ‘We produced engineering titans of the past. Why not now? We produce experts in law, accountancy, banking. Why not engineering?’ It was up to her guest Paul Westbury, chief executive of Buro Happold, to set her straight that Britain does indeed still produce great engineers. ‘The biggest problem that the profession often has is that we’re too quiet about [our achievements],’ he said. ‘Engineers get so focused on solving the problems that are in front of them that they don’t spend enough time shouting about it.’"

This could have been a really interesting discussion about the current status of engineering in Britain and its future direction, but came across as a thrown-together hash by a journalist who didn't really have time to invest any more attention in it. It is rather ironic that her blog is called "FactCheck".  Cathy seems to be another journalist victim to giving no time to understand what she is responsible for presenting to the public, her relentless twitter stream shows how busy she is multi-tasking with little time for digestion.

I think I've got the message across now though so will end this blog here - more care needs to be put into presenting facts in the media, until this happens, we need to be careful about what we read and how much weight we attribute to it. Where possible I try to go straight to the horse's mouth. Neigh, I mean, Yey.