When I was very young (but old enough to have cooperative siblings) I used to write elaborate stories and adapt them for public performances. I was slightly hampered by the lack of props and improvised with whatever was to hand (my bricoleur years). Some of the props weaved a certain theatrical magic but others didn’t have quite the impact that I had intended.
One of the more notable failures was my recreation of the view from a hot-air balloon: my sisters’ constant requests for stories that involved fairies over-taxed my costume design and creation skills as well as resources and actual interest in fairies. Instead of fairies, I decided to include an element of high-rise excitement by offering a bit-part as Madeleine Sophie Armant Blanchard. Everyone got to share in the hot-air ballooning experience by queuing up for their turn to kneel on my grandfather’s somewhat wobbly saw horse to which I had tacked a basket weave of cardboard strips that I had stained with tea (both sides for the full illusion); from those heady heights, they could look down at the countryside below, created from Fuzzy Felt (both the floral and farm-yard edition) and some plastic farm animals and drystone walling, all laid out on a serendipitous find of a green carpet runner with a floral pattern. The early-morning mist and chill effect were to be simulated by the vapour coming off some dry ice that I had wheedled out of the ice-cream seller who came round on Sunday afternoon (the premiere was early evening). The meticulous mise-en-scene was destroyed when the vapour hugged the ground and occluded the landscape (more Hammer House of Horror and spooky moors than early dawn mist). Fortunately, the audience didn’t find it too much of a stretch to abandon one suspension of disbelief regarding the landscape for another of being above a cloud.
An embarrassing amount of media coverage of science and medical research resembles my early efforts at combining both entertainment and verisimilitude. Ben Goldacre’s frequent forays into criticising spurious mathematical formulae for almost everything[a] comes to mind. Washington Post published an opinion piece with some familiar bromides about science reporting and pressures experienced by the specialist journalist. Neuroskeptic has written a fine piece about the somewhat over-hyped media reporting of the placebo response gene study alongside some useful observations about the original research paper. Neuroskeptic closes with the conundrum of specialist reporting.
It would be wrong to blame the journalist who wrote the article for this. I’m sure they did the best they could in the time available. I’m sure that I couldn’t have done any better. The problem is that they didn’t have enough time, and probably didn’t have enough specialist knowledge, to read the study critically. It’s not their fault, it’s not even New Scientist’s fault, it’s the fault of the whole idea of science journalism, which involves getting non-experts to write, very fast, about complicated issues and make them comprehensible and interesting to the laymen even if they’re manifestly not. I used to want to be a science journalist, until I realised that that was the job description.
In short, they lack both appropriate skills and resources and have to create their own audience who may be rather half-hearted (sounds familiar).
None of this, however, is an adequate explanation for popular lifestyle gurus and writers who present themselves as having sufficient expertise to comment on their subject-matter and lard their writing with references that they imply that they have read and fully comprehended. It is unfortunate that people who make PCT funding decisions can sometimes take the fact that someone has an extensive list of popular publications as indicative of excellence and allow them to persuade them into some un-evidenced decisions. One can only express the somewhat pious hope that January 2009 and the extension of registration does not herald any PCT innovations whereby they offer patients referrals to practitioners of nutritionism rather than registered dietitians.
Notes
[a] Some notable examples.
Currently the BBC alone has “news articles” explaining the formula for the perfect piece of toast, what makes scary movies so scary, when to sack football managers, where to find the perfect shopping street, how to hold chopsticks, biscuit dunking, which bread to use for mopping gravy, the perfect holiday resort, the perfect beach, the perfect pint, the perfect romantic comedy, the perfect commentating voice, how to make chemistry on-screen, how to build sandcastles, the best method of pulling crackers and how to choose a Christmas tree, not to mention the perfect Christmas, the perfect sitcom, what makes a perfect marriage, perfect pork crackling, the perfect cup of tea, how to make the perfect film, a scientific formula for pancake flipping, the most depressing day, how to take the perfect free kick, the perfect cheese sandwich, the perfect golf swing, and the formula for perfect happiness.
Ben Goldacre: Bad Science
You’ve written something like this on several occasions now – why do you think that something like this might happen?
OT – I am beginning to understand why I scored poorly on creativity in all those tests when at school. iirc, my mother actually forbade me from telling my sisters any more bedtime stories because they usually involved pirates with swords who liked slitting noses.
It was part of the business plan that formed part of the case for Patrick Holford’s Visiting Professorship at the University of Teesside. The Northern Brain Bio Centre was supposed to apply for funding and referrals from the local PCTs for a range of mental health problems as well as ASD.
Registration comes online in 2009 and may make it more difficult to explain the difference between RDs and the more dubiously-qualified practitioners of nutritionism (there are some appropriately-qualified nutritionists).
Given the credulous behaviour of some commissioners in PCTs and the poor quality articles that they read in their ‘trade’ press, there is reason to fear that some of them might respond to increased calls for diet coaching by providing access to nutritionists rather than RDs.
Thanks for the link! – your underwhelming hot air balloon trip reminds me of when I was jealous of my (older) cousin’s BB gun and I created my own substite, namely a cardboard tube through which I could poke with a stick with a “BANG” sign on the end.
Pah.
Sometimes I get sceptical of the whole idea of popularizing science, but I think it can be done. Gould & Feynman really did it very well. Dawkins too some of the time. It’s just that it’s very difficult.
I’m impressed by the commitment and creativity shown in entertaining younger siblings. My younger sister still reminds me of how, aged about 6 or 7, I bamboozled her into contributing her meagre pocket money to assist my purchase of a certain brand of toothpast. She would, I assured her, be magically transformed (in some unspecified way) by the ring of confidence which would surely reward our dental diligence. I can’t remember how long we spent scrubbing our teeth in front of the bathroom mirror before the bitter realisation dawned that maybe the adverts on our recently acquired TV weren’t really true.