As with every other week, the last 10 days has brought a slew of tabloid stories, linking various things with causing or curing cancer:GOOD: antacids, Chinese herbal remedy, berries and tea, anthrax, frying foodBAD: being tall, tonsils, artificial football pitches, The RAF, oral sexAs always, these stories are largely nonsense, suitable only for the bin. Unfortunately, they are reported credulously and are widely read, and this saturation of health-related articles has several negative consequences.The constant bombardment of people with often-contradictory health information can drown out real health advice, making people think that eating some nuts can offset the effects of a terrible lifestyle for example. There is an enormous industry based on the peddling of cancer-preventing foods and supplements, often with a thin veneer of scientific respectability, and thanks to tabloid reporting, a much wider reach than should be allowed. It’s infuriating.However, the most insidious problem with poor media portrayal of science is the gradual erosion of trust in science. This may not seem like a significant issue, but it may be the most important. The rejection of vaccines, denial of climate change and resistance to genetic modification of foods, for example, are all rooted in science denial.This is an issue with many causes. Both political and religious beliefs play a major role in our view of the evidence, as does self-interest, meaning that arguments are often politicised or financially motivated. When Andrew Wakefield, for example, “found” a link between vaccines and autism, he personally profited from people not using the MMR.
The driving force behind denialist movements are often organisations that stand to gain from the confusion (climate change denial has largely been funded by groups that will suffer most from restrictions on fossil fuels). There has been a deliberate drive to manufacture controversy in many areas, most famously by the tobacco industry, whose tactic was not to win the debate, but to “foster and perpetuate the illusion of controversy in order to muddy the waters around scientific findings that threaten the industry”. A leaked memo to George W Bush on climate change tactics from 2002 suggested that although the scientific debate was closing, it was important “to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate”. Media organisations are often complicit in this, and there are many examples of the deliberate undermining of the scientific process, most notably by Fox News in the US.That being said however, the large majority of people who subscribe to denialist views are people who have no such motivation. These people appear to have a basic mistrust of science, and are swayed by the anti-science rhetoric. It is easy to understand why parents hesitated to vaccinate after the initial reports of a link to autism, but despite this link being definitively shown to be false, vaccination rates in large parts of the world are still suffering. Be it the left-wing embracing of alternative medicine, the right-wing support of climate change denial or religious creationism, the anti-science movement is a pervasive one, largely based on the mistrust of science.There are several roots of this mistrust. An obvious one is that science can undermine deeply held beliefs. When this happens, people are likely to reject the evidence, rather than give up their belief. In fact, when challenged on such a belief, people are more likely to strengthen their belief rather than the other way around (known as the “backfire effect”). This needn’t be a religious belief, and is something that has been observed in many areas of life, such as the belief in superstition or alternative medicine. If science continuously challenges these beliefs, then people stop believing in the science.It is also the case that a misunderstanding of what science actually is also contributes to this issue. Many people see science as an “institution”, something that is telling us what to do. The reality is that it is a process. This misunderstanding of science makes it much easier for people to rationalise the rejection of valid conclusions, regardless of the strength of the evidence. The power of anecdotal evidence is a classic example of this: “my father smoked 20 a day, and he lived ‘til he was 90”. This view of science as an “institution” also feeds into an anti-establishment mentality that can also result in science denial. This is the same mentality that is behind the belief in grand conspiracies.And this brings me back to the tabloids. If you are told every day that random things are making you sick, or are essential to health, it is likely that you will become desensitised to them. It is easy for people to reject science-based advice, because tabloid reporting makes science appear far more confused than it actually is. The reporting of preliminary findings, or of badly carried out science, leads to a confused picture of our current understanding. Scientists are constantly studying and learning, working towards the truth. Bad science and incorrect results are inevitable in science, but it is a self-correcting process that gradually works to show what is real and what is not.Our entire civilisation is based on scientific innovation and progress. While that progress cannot be halted, it can be slowed by the mistrust of the public in the scientific process. That can only be a bad thing.
The dangers of anecdotal evidence
Occasionally (too often) a newspaper publishes a story that is just downright irresponsible. This story from the Daily Express fits into this category.
'I beat cancer by eating pineapples' Brave woman, 31, shuns chemotherapy to self-medicateDaily Express – 30/03/15
Any reader of this blog will understand that this is rubbish, but it’s worth looking at why anecdotal stories like this are useless as evidence for therapy.Anecdotal evidence is essentially a story told by an individual or individuals. We are a story-telling species, and people generally find anecdotes highly compelling. That isn’t surprising really. In the past it was advantageous for us to err on the side of caution; it is usually harmless to mistakenly see two things as connected (my friend ate those berries and got sick), while not seeing things as connected could do you real damage (my friend ate those berries and got sick, but I’m sure I’ll be fine). As I discussed in a previous blog, we are very good at seeing patterns, whether they are real or imaginary. While that was a very useful strategy in the past, in the world of scientific medicine our trust of anecdotes is a damaging thing.An example of this is the old story of “smoking can’t be dangerous; my granddad smoked 20 a day and lived to 92”. This is known as reporting bias. If the granddad had died earlier (or the woman in the article above had not recovered) the story would not have been repeated. We only hear about it the times when something appears to have worked, and not the times when the same thing didn't work.This is also similar to another form of bias that we are all prone to, confirmation bias. This is the well-known phenomenon that we are more likely to remember something if it confirms an opinions we already have. So people who believe that chemotherapy is doing more damage than good are more likely to remember and repeat a story like this than another with a worse outcome.Another major fault with anecdotal reports is that they are seen in isolation and not in a wider context. If someone is feeling ill they may try multiple things to see if they feel better. Most of the time they will get better all by themselves, but will give the credit to the last thing they tried. This is how most cold and flu "medicines" work, relying on the fact that people make this mistake. Just because one event happens before another (I took this product and then felt better), doesn’t mean that the first caused the second.Modern medicine uses clinical trials as evidence for whether a therapy works or not. In many ways they are the exact opposite of anecdotes: they are blinded, so control for doctor and patient bias and the placebo effect; they expect random results like spontaneous regression and can see them in the wider context; and they typically have large numbers of people included (thousands) as opposed to tiny numbers of people in anecdotes.
So back to this article. The author credits “cancer-zapping bromelain” for the regression of the cancer. In fact, there is very little suggestion that bromelain has anticancer activity. There are some studies on cells growing in a dish, but these are not reliable. It has been suggested to be effective in lessening the side-effects of chemotherapy, but there is no evidence for this (there was a registered clinical trial, but this has been completed and not reported results, suggesting a negative outcome).The reality of this story is that people sometimes get better spontaneously. Even the deadliest cancers have spontaneous, unexplained regressions. A story like this can do no good, and has no place in the public sphere. Congrats Daily Express, you are just as bad as the Daily Mail.
Does the "Mozart Effect" exist in adults?
It used to be thought that listening to Mozart when pregnant or when a child was under three made for smarter babies. This has been thoroughly disproven 
and explained by the fact that children from houses where classical music is played tend to be better educated. However, people keep jumping on the bandwagon every time a study about classical music is published. This article was published in the Daily Mail on the 15th of March:
Classical music can help slow down the onset of dementia say researchers after discovering Mozart excerpts enhanced gene activity in patients-Daily Mail (15/03/15)
According to the article, classical music can help slow the onset of dementia. The study they are talking about was published in PeerJ, an open access journal. However, to be clear, there is nothing at all in the actual study to suggest that listening to classical music delays the onset of dementia (more on that below).Sadly, the blame only partially lies with the tabloids. It was the press release that accompanied this paper that made a lot of the exaggerated claims that were repeated in the Daily mail article, including the dementia one. While the tabloids did exaggerate the claims, the press release opened the door by suggesting a link to neurodegenerative diseases.This problem of a bad press release isn’t an isolated one apparently. A study from the University of Cardiff recently suggested that most poor science reporting is as a result of a bad press release. Journalists do, however, further exaggerate claims from these press releases. While it remains the case that News Outlets have a responsibility to check the claims of their sources, this obviously highlights a major issue in the communication of science to the general public. I may expand on this in a future blog, but for the time being it is safe to say that the “Mozart Effect” is still firmly in the domain of rubbish science.What’s wrong with the study?In this study, the authors try to address what effect listening to music has on the global activity of the genes. It is a very good example of what we call in science “a fishing trip”, which is a broad experimental approach that will give you a big amount of data to see what you can get from it. It is actually not in the scope of the study to research a link between classical music and dementia, and the paper does not conduct any experiments to explore that.The authors look at gene expression in the blood (assuming that this is the same as the gene expression in the brain, which is not the case). They divide their sample in “highly musically educated people” versus “less musically educated people” and compare their blood after listening to 20 minutes of classical music versus 20 minutes of conversation. In the less musically educated group they discard the changes they see because they are not “functionally relevant” (great, discarding data because you can’t make sense of it). In the more musically educated group they do find “functional relevance” based on small changes in a small subset of genes; changes that they do not confirm by any other technique.So where does dementia fit in to this? One of the 97 genes they found to be changed has previously been associated with neurodegenerative diseases. This is essentially nothing.So to conclude, the authors (a) study the wrong samples (b) to come up with conclusions their data didn't back up and (c) didn't confirm their findings in any other way, which is something you learn to do on your first day in the lab. Good science guys.
Best (worst) tabloid story of the week - 12/05/15
MailOnline: Incredible moment baby shocks his parents by saying 'hello' at just SEVEN WEEKS oldAccording to the MailOnline, a baby was filmed saying hello to his parents (video below). While undeniably cute, this isn’t a genius child, mastering language at 7 weeks. It is, however, an example of pareidolia. Pareidolia is the effect of seeing patterns in random things, and is a fascinating quirk of the brain. Well known examples are seeing a face on the moon or hearing words in a song played backwards.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITyxSN1MggsPareidolia is thought to be an evolutionary adaptation to help us spot enemies or predators in low visibility conditions. The advantages to our ancestors of being able to quickly identify potential danger (whether real or not) are obvious. In a world where this is no longer important though, pareidolia has resulted in us thinking we see a face on Mars, or hearing a baby say hello amid its random gurgling.It’s obvious to anyone watching the video that this is just a baby, making baby sounds. With lots of news outlets reporting this (including the Daily Mail, The Mirror, CBS and ABC), apparently that’s enough to make it into the tabloids. Although, considering that the video has so many views, it isn't very surprising! <Edit: Even The Guardian has this story now! It appears that cute babies are enough to make good papers too.>
Best (funniest) tabloid "health" story this week - 05/03/15
Our selected piece of the week is this ground-breaking report from the Daily Mail (we're not going to link to the story from here. There's no point in giving the Daily Mail any additional hits. Google will direct you to the story if you really want to see it):
Daily Mail Online Health Section: How your star sign could dictate your dieting success
This hard-hitting piece reveals that Leos should avoid sauces. Poor Leos. Luckily, light marinades are ok. We are also informed that Geminis should avoid fast-food, which I take to mean that it is ok for everyone else. Except for Cancerians, who have to avoid unhealthy food they ate in childhood. If they didn't eat fast food in their youth however, it seems to be ok.Of course, this is astrology, and hence nonsense. The idea that the apparent positions of stars and planets at the moment of you birth can have a lasting effect on your personality is nothing short of ridiculous. As such, this blog should be some light-hearted hilarity, but unfortunately there is a depressingly relevant news story associated with it.British MP David Tredinnick, suggested this week that astrology be used by the NHS to treat patients. What's worse is that Tredinnick sits on both the Health Select Committee and the Science and Technology Select Committee. He supports homeopathy and radionics (the use of blood or hair to heal people remotely), and in 2009 told Parliament that blood does not clot under a full moon. And, I'll repeat, he sits on both the Health Select Committee and the Science and Technology Select Committee. You have to despair if this is the level of science literacy required for positions like these.Instead of despairing though, I'm going to as much ice-cream as possible. After all, as an Aries that's perfectly ok for me to do!
