BBC Radio 5 Live had Scott Quinnell on the 6/11/09 breakfast show*, for Dyslexia Awareness Week. Unfortunately, his conversation on the breakfast show gave him an opportunity to plug Dore unchallenged. We have a number of concerns about this radio segment:
- Quinnell is allowed to state that by “stimulating…three senses” Dore “allows the neural pathways to be automatic between the cerebellum and…your thinking brain”. There is not good evidence for this claim, but Quinnell is allowed to assert it unchallenged.
- The BBC presenter talking with Quinnell comes across as supporting such claims, stating that it is “extraordinary…to think that [Dore exercises] can translate into being able to look at a page and to read”.
- There is no mention of the lack of good evidence that the Dore treatment is effective.
- There is no mention that Dore UK went into administration last year.
- There is no mention of the fact that Dore is a commercial (and rather expensive) programme, nor that Dynevor, which now owns Dore, was established by Quinnell
- The presenter has to check pronunciation of ‘Dore’ while discussing it with Quinnell on air. I am not sure if this speaks to the quality of the pre-broadcast research into Dore and dyslexia.
In response to a previous complaint, I was told that the BBC
never intended to give Quinnell a platform in any way to promote Dore
I wonder what the intention was with this national radio slot?
It is a shame that Dyslexia Awareness Week could not have been used as a reason for discussion of evidence-based approaches to dyslexia. It is not appropriate for the BBC to allow an expensive and highly time-consuming commercial dyslexia treatment – without good evidence of efficacy – to be promoted in this way. I will be complaining to the BBC about this. I would encourage readers to do the same.
* on iplayer now, about 2:56 in.
PS: apologies if there is some repetition of this post: some of the mistakes made were similar enough that I found this hard to avoid.
6 Comments
November 8, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Well done. It is a shame that the media continues to allow such unchallenged plugs for Dore. I wonder if there is an element of fear, given that Dore have previously instructed their lawyers to correspond with a number of people.* I also wonder why, if this is the case, the media don’t simply avoid the subject rather than continue to print and broadcast uncritical plugs.
*As noted by Ben Goldacre here: link.
November 8, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Thanks, I’d been wondering where to find that.
The ‘get anecdotes into the news’ approach is harder to tackle than their previous ’scienceyness’.
November 9, 2009 at 12:21 am
It definitely is a shame, and hard to tackle. I think they were making scientific claims here – just not terribly well-evidenced ones :(
November 9, 2009 at 10:58 pm
It would appear that PHA media were behind this -
http://twitter.com/PHAMedia/statuses/5452339307
- they are PR agents for Dore.
http://tinyurl.com/y8jd4qd
November 17, 2009 at 5:52 pm
I’ve now had a response to my complaint from the BBC – talking about ‘balance’. Even if the BBC’s coverage of non-evidence-based interventions for Specific Learning Difficulties does provide balance between these and more evidence-based approaches (not convinced it does) this is not a good outcome. The evidence is not balanced, so neither should the coverage be.
November 17, 2009 at 8:06 pm
[...] the balance. Jump to Comments The BBC have now responded to a complaint I submitted about howScott Quinnell was allowed to plug Dore for dyslexia on Radio 5. The substantive parts of the BBC’s response are below: It’s not always possible or [...]