Hi everyone I've just seen this http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8101403.stm Basically they've turned "if you feed rats carrots then try to give them cancer, they're a bit less likely to develop large tumors than rats that have been fed a normal lab-rat diet" into "if you cook carrots whole, humans are less likely to get cancer". You can read the original paper on PubMed. They had a sample size of 8 for each of the carrot-fed and control groups. The only bit of sense in the BBC article comes at the end where Dr Kat Arney, who actually knows what she's talking about basically says "a balanced diet is more important than going carrot mental". I'm sure Dr Arney would have had a bit more to say on the matter to the reporter who wrote the article (who, incidentally is just a presenter, not a science journalist), but the reporter would obviously rather publish something with an exciting headline. 'Cooking carrots whole helps prevent cancer' is obviously more exciting than 'research on rats with a tiny sample size shows not much'. This should be a non-story - there are much better and already proven reasons for cooking carrots whole, steaming rather than boiling, or actually eating them raw. We know that vitamins are good for us, and that cooking carrots gets rid of them. You don't need a tenuous link to a tiny study on rats to say that. However, my question is - shouldn't the BBC take more responsibilty for reporting things sensibly?
The problem is they need to appeal to the lowest common denominator unfortunately. Although quite how one almost insignificant part of the information grows to be the headline is a bit of a stumbler...
Hmmm... yeah. Although a reduction in likelihood of 33% is quite remarkable in even a small sample, you can't help but wonder about how far that would regress towards the mean in larger ones. I also have to question the comparability of artificially induced bowel tumours in experimental lab rats selectively bred for a genetic susceptibility to cancer (the BDIX rat) with naturally occuring bowel tumours in ordinary humans. Furthermore, large similarities notwithstanding, rats and humans have a considerably different metabolism in any case. Another one for Trivia Pursuit, me thinks...
I think its the case that we want everything simplified to nice easy to understand answers. Its not the BBC's fault, society now tends to see science as this baffling entity that can not be understood. Probably the fault of the advertisers who make up complex sounding names and reasons to buy their new products.
Well, if it means people eat more carrots, then it can't be all bad - unless it's only the people who already eat carrots eating more... I guess. If this kind of thing yanks your chain, you might want to read Dr Ben Goldacre's Bad Science; you will be cursing & chuntering into your Horlicks in no time at all.
Cheers for the links to Bad Science - I read it after a friend saw Goldacre talking at UCL (might have been the British Library). There's a thread on the bad science forums - http://www.badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9779 - It appears that Dr Arney did actually say more than was published So there we go - it was a deliberate editorial decision to publish a misleading article.
Rubbish opinions of science and engineering are even worse. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8103557.stm That piece pissed me off in a whole variety of ways.
When I read it on the BBC website, me and my girlfriend laughed. It sounded a bit ridiculous (as we all know, there are many stupid studies like this). After having read the scientist's words on the Bad Science forum linked above, it's nearly infuriating. Basically, the BBC knowingly lied. I don't expect this from a Western European public broadcaster - but, unfortunately, even the public media have long since given way to sensationalism. On a related note: my girlfriend (she's British) showed me a page on the Daily Mail website about a stupid girl getting her face tattooed. According to the Daily Mail, the girl's native tongue is French. I later saw a video on the BBC website, in which the girl clearly speaks in a West-Flemish dialect, without a French accent. I grew up in Belgium. There is no way she speaks a Flemish dialect like that if her native tongue is French. (Unless she's Europe's greatest genius, which from her tattoo decision I'm guessing she's not.) I know it's a (bit of a) tabloid, but still: this is a newspaper, reporting on something (something silly) which happened in a country which would be its neighbour if it weren't for the very little sea inbetween . It's not a remote village in the Amazon forest they're talking about it, it's a country right across the ****ing water! Now I feel like a tit because a tabloid managed to infuriate me, though. Sorry for the off-topic, but I felt it slid (slit?) in nicely with the "shoddy reporting" in general. Of course, in the Daily Mail's case it's not sensationalism, but bad sources or pure stupidity. More on-topic: every time I read something like this (mainly science), it gets to me a little bit. You just know they're reporting whatever they see fit. I remember seeing (on the BBC site) that coffee was some factor in some kind of cancer. A few days later, coffee was the magical preventive thing for gout. I've been faced with a dilemma ever since: gout or cancer? A little research in most "science" topics, especially human health-related (though always tested on rats especially bred for the occassion, as Nexxo mentioned with the "cancer rats") shows that the general reporting is slightly off to say the least. One study on rats especially bred to have an inclination to getting this disease has shown that cutting up your carrots or not would totally not change your life and you're still going to die anyway, alone and forgotten and maggots will eat you unless you get cremated in which case some scumbag will accidently inhale a small piece of you is of course slightly less interesting for the general public. Still, a state/tax-funded broadcaster shouldn't resort to sensationalism. But I've seen it happen in three countries, and I have little doubt it's the same in the countries I haven't witnessed it in... *sigh* Apologies for the rant. Short version: I agree.
