{"id":770,"date":"2008-04-07T00:11:16","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T00:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=770"},"modified":"2008-04-07T00:11:16","modified_gmt":"2008-04-07T00:11:16","slug":"cellphones-and-water-drinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=770","title":{"rendered":"Cellphones and Water Drinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

A great example of how media coverage lets us down in the news last week.
\nOn April 1, NZ media pushed hard a story about research showing that mobile phones increase the cancer risk<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The link between mobile phones and brain tumours should “no longer be regarded as a myth” after research suggests high cellphone use could double the risk of brain cancer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More science on April 4, a Reuters wire that was trumpeted through the NZ media, this time research showing that we don’t actually need to drink all that water<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There is no clear-cut scientific rationale for the average healthy individual to drink a lot of water – and it may be downright harmful – according to two kidney experts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both of these entries extensively quote the researchers involved. The cellphone one goes on to quote some other people for extra perspective. Yet these two science stories are not like each other.
\nThe two articles both mention where these scientific reports were published. The water article was published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology<\/a>. The cellphone article was published on “the website brain-surgery.us”<\/a>. They don’t go any further and acknowledge that their might be a difference between these two venues of publication. Anyone who takes the trouble to click through the links above, however, can instantly see that the water study was published in peer-reviewed scientific journal of long standing<\/a>, and the cellphone study was published on the author’s personal website without review by anyone at all<\/a>.
\nA half-second’s further review of the cellphone study should set off serious alarm bells for anyone with any inkling about communication (like, say, a journalist): it’s written with an abundance of cheap visual rhetoric, the stock-in-trade of the internet hysteric: bolded and colour-coded phrases, massively overlong paragraphs, paranthetical exclamation marks (!) and even SCARE CAPITALS.
\nThese differences seem massive and obvious to me, but this crucial context is completely invisible in the way these stories were reported. This failing becomes shameful when you consider that the subjects of these stories are of significant public interest and likely to inspire behaviour change from some of the audience.
\nIt’s a sad state of affairs, really. I find it hard to blame the journo in the byline of the cellphone scare story, Greer McDonald – a quick google shows she is fresh out of journalism school<\/a>. It’s editorial that bears the burden of shame here.
\nAnd since it’s unrealistic to expect this to change any time soon, if ever: in this age of Google, it’s up to the reader to be their own factchecker. Get into the habit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A great example of how media coverage lets us down in the news last week. On April 1, NZ media pushed hard a story about research showing that mobile phones increase the cancer risk: The link between mobile phones and brain tumours should “no longer be regarded as a myth” after research suggests high cellphone … Continue reading Cellphones and Water Drinking<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mediawatch"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-cq","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}