Bad journalism

[Brighteye]

I was reading an article in The Economist a few days ago about hypertension, and I couldn't help but notice that it had a lot of mistakes and misconceptions in it.

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9033095

And then I started wondering exactly how bad the rest of it was. The Economist is a quite well-respected publication, although obviously not a scientific journal. Has anyone else noticed glaring errors in explanations for laymen in similar magazines (like Time or National Geographic) that are actually entirely wrong?

I'd always be wary of tabloid articles, but I'd thought that I could trust these sorts of publications to give me a basic idea of the subject. It seems that this reporter has read only one research paper about hypertension, if that.

 

[Maimonides]

National Geographic screws up sometimes, but they are quick to print corrections/retractions. I remember when they caught one of their photographers dressing & posing African tribesmen for photos. They immediately told the readers & apologized.

The worst journalism I see comes from small town newspapers, radio, & TV. The newspaper in the small town where my business is located recently spelled "police" wrong five times in a single article!

 

[Perfection]

Mainstream media sucks at science.

 

[Brighteye]

Possibly, but how much? Is there a way that we can enforce better reporting? Can we insist that reporters don't just report one side of a scientific debate as fact? Should we introduce some sort of peer review into non-scientific journals too?

 

[Perfection]

Possibly, but how much?

It's generally not that bad, but it can be quite irritating

Is there a way that we can enforce better reporting?

Nope, freedom of speech and all.

Can we insist that reporters don't just report one side of a scientific debate as fact?

Most journalists aren't qualified to say what constitutes a scientific debate, much less accurately represent it

Should we introduce some sort of peer review into non-scientific journals too?

Probably would be nice, but it would be hard.

In the end, if you want good info, you find a bunch of experts on the topic and ask them, or you read scientific publications.

 

[LucyDuke]

Possibly, but how much? Is there a way that we can enforce better reporting? Can we insist that reporters don't just report one side of a scientific debate as fact? Should we introduce some sort of peer review into non-scientific journals too?

Educate people, and it'll enforce itself somewhat.

 

[Brighteye]

Educate with the sort of articles that are written at the moment? They're not very educational, it seems. It appears to be a self-perpetuating problem.

 

[Perfection]

Educate with textbooks n' stuff. Those are pretty good.

 

[Brighteye]

You say that but... even in well-regarded books like Guyton and Hall (a physiology textbook) there are mistakes. I've noticed ones in the cardiac section.
Textbooks are always out of date because it takes so long to write and edit them. I don't see that they'll make much difference either now, or even in the future.
I agree that education about the nature of science and the trustworthiness of individual papers might help, but how would you propose doing that? Should we institute a course for journalists in the same way that lawyers have to pass a bar exam?

 

[Whomp]

I guess I would write the editor questioning the journalistic integrity of the article with all of the mistakes. It's the editors responsibility to make sure their writers are putting out quality work or else people will stop reading.

I've been reading "The Economist" for over ten years and it seems to have changed quite a bit over the last five. I feel like they've gone from giving a view of the world to giving their opinion on a view of the world.

 

[Masquerouge]

My impression is that every time I read an article on a subject that I know very well, it's full of mistakes.
Which is a bit scary.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

I was reading an article in The Economist a few days ago about hypertension, and I couldn't help but notice that it had a lot of mistakes and misconceptions in it.

Looks ok to me.

 

[LucyDuke]

You say that but... even in well-regarded books like Guyton and Hall (a physiology textbook) there are mistakes. I've noticed ones in the cardiac section.
Textbooks are always out of date because it takes so long to write and edit them. I don't see that they'll make much difference either now, or even in the future.
I agree that education about the nature of science and the trustworthiness of individual papers might help, but how would you propose doing that? Should we institute a course for journalists in the same way that lawyers have to pass a bar exam?

I think you might've missed the point. The idea is to generally educate the general population. Educated people notice and point out mistakes, poor journals lose credibility, research becomes a prerequisite for writing an article again, and everybody wins. Mistakes aren't a big danger if everyone can see that they are mistakes.

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

Many times when I read an article about something I have intimate knowledgeable with I noticed factual errors or misleading statements. Usually the subject has something to do with technology.

So I take everything I read in the newspapers or elsewhere with a grain of salt.

 

[Brighteye]

Looks ok to me.

Previously, experts thought that high blood pressure was caused by the kidneys.

Well, researchers still know that hypertension is caused primarily through the kidneys.

the idea was that the kidneys failed to sense the blood pressure. This then caused the lungs to make a hormone that increases blood pressure, leading to a chain of events that raised pressure throughout the blood-vessel network...peripheral blood vessels are mistakenly told to constrict, increasing blood pressure.

Researchers also know that the kidneys directly affect fluid volume, not via angiotensin and peripheral vasoconstriction.

Yet blaming the kidneys cannot be the full explanation of what is going on, because only half the sufferers respond to blood-pressure-lowering drugs.

Dodgy logic? Yes. It's also twisting the facts, because that's for individual drugs: if we allow cocktails of up to 3 drugs, most people respond.

high blood pressure tends to run in families, although it is also caused by a poor diet. The finding also shows that the brain could increase the activity of the sympathetic nerves

Whereas poor diet doesn't run in families. Renal sympathetic nervous activity is the key to hypertension, not an afterthought, and we know that RSNA is raised in hypertension. It's not a new finding. Control of SNA passes through the NTS, so this finding probably has nothing to do with the baroreceptors (which are the focus of Professor Paton's work). He's working on acute bp control, and the article talks about hypertension, and doesn't even get his title right.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

Well, researchers still know that hypertension is caused primarily through the kidneys.

Researchers also know that the kidneys directly affect fluid volume, not via angiotensin and peripheral vasoconstriction.

That's only 1 theory and doesn't account for essential hypertension in all cases. The point of the article, although probably not well explained, is that the final explanation for hypertension may be at hand.

 

[dutchfire]

You should always read articles like these with the same caution as wikipedia articles. They might contain truth, but they might contain BS too.

 

[Brighteye]

That's only 1 theory and doesn't account for essential hypertension in all cases. The point of the article, although probably not well explained, is that the final explanation for hypertension may be at hand.

Indeed, it's a theory, but in the same sense that global warming and evolution are only theories.
It's a simple fact that unless something affects pressure natriuresis in the kidneys, high pressures will cause sodium excretion, which will take fluid with it, and reduce fluid volume, restoring pressure to normal. There is no way to work around this. It's a feedback mechanism with a huge amount of gain built into it: far more than blood vessel tone.

The point of the article is indeed that a final explanation for hypertension is at hand. It misses the fact that we already have a very good idea about what causes hypertension, and also that the research is more about the baroreflexes than chronic bp control.

 

[downtown]

It is unreasonable to expect members of the news media to be experts in everything. They know more about journalism than you do...CFC members are going to know more about physics, I am going to know more about music, etc)

If this was Nature or something, obviously, we would have the right to be upset. The Economist is not for doctors, and we even have a doctor that doesnt even think they really screwed up. Its really a rather minor error.

Our local papers screw up on *important* details that newspapers ought to get right (Who/What/When/Where/Why) all the time though, and thats worrisome (I think thats partly because its so low pay, so they can't get get reporters...they actually sub-contract a lot of the work to High-Schoolers. I used to cover sports.) If those practices become mainstream, we can worry.

If the Economist misses something like this, I'm not ready to jump up and down about bad journalism.