Sunday 31 August 2008

News round up

Nowt major, just a couple of things that caught my eye in today's news:
1. The grammar pedants have won, but still might not be happy. Tesco has caved in to pressure from the Lynne Truss brigade to change their express checkout signs from '10 items or less'. But rather than the more grammatically correct, '10 items or fewer' they're going for 'Up to 10 items'.

A spokesman for the Plain English Campaign said:

"Saying up to 10 items is easy to understand and avoids any debate."
Unfortunately, I would beg to differ. '10 items or less', though jarring, is totally comprehensible and unambiguous in everyday speech . 'Up to 10 items' makes me think that perhaps it could mean 9 items or fewer. Did they never learn the difference between the '<' and the '≤' signs in maths? Surely for totally clarity it would have to be 'Up to and including 10 items'. That would make for a very large sign. I think they were better off before.

2. "Farm Pregnancy 'cuts asthma risk.'" I wish that science news editors would be a little more discerning regarding what is 'good, interesting science' and what is 'good, interesting science that is of relevance to the general public'. The discovery that pre-natal exposure to a farm environment may reduce risk of developing asthma in later life is scientifically interesting. It might give clues to immunologists who are trying to develop a better understanding of the basic biology of asthma. I don't, however, think that it is information of great use to anyone else - it's the kind of story that makes you go, 'So what?' What are we supposed to do with that information? Tell pregnant friends to get themselves along to the nearest pigsty? Congratulate rural friends on the likelihood that their future children will have good respiratory health? What exactly?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps science editors should adopt the medical standard of "primum non nocere" (first, do no harm) in their science reporting.

Have a look at this story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/aug/30/mmr.health.media

Read and weep at what bad science reporting can do. (I'm proud to say that my children got their vaccines, even in the middle of some of these media beat-ups.)

Cheers,
Otepoti

Ginger said...

Darn. You've just pre-empted my next (currently less than half-written) post.

Ah well - that'll teach me to be so slow. I'd never make it as a journalist.

Anonymous said...

Cyber-Otepoti goes everywhere!

You might be interested to know that the whooping cough vaccine scare also made its way over here to NZ, although the writer says it largely bypassed the UK.

The whole anti-vaccination movement makes me very cross, the more so because it's led by middle-class types WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER! RRRAAAHHH!

(Picking my tattered shirt off the floor and flexing my green pecs.)

Perhaps you could tackle the reporting of global warming, instead? Only, over here we're about to pass into law an Emissions Trading Act which will knee-cap the economy while doing nothing to reduce global carbon emissions, and even Lovelock the Father of Global Warming says so.

Argh, no! I can feel myself going green again!

Cheers
Otepoti o te Irirangi

Anonymous said...

And here's a conundrum for a thinking twenty-something science geek:

You are the government of a small island nation. Over the past ten or so years, an epidemic of meningococcal disease of a strain specific to your nation has been building up. Transmission of the disease is, at the moment, mercifully infrequent, but when it strikes, its victims are dead within 36 hours or, if they survive, live with epilepsy or amputations. To make matters worse, the disease is most prevalent among an ethnic group already on the wrong side of every social statistic, and whose children are already vulnerable, with low rates of vaccinations. Added to this, there is a vocal group of middle-class anti-immunisation crazies whose views the media are only too ready to air.

With great speed you have a vaccine prepared for universal child immunisation, but you know that the vaccine confers no lasting immunity and may not even protect all the children who receive it, making future false diagnoses a worrying possibility. The most you can hope for is that the vaccine breaks the disease cycle, but even that might be enough.

Do you give all out the information in these circumstances, knowing that some people will be too selfish and others too stupid to participate in a programme that will save some lives? What would you do, Ginger?

And here's what they did: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=204&objectid=10522935

Cheers
Otepoti

Ginger said...

I want to give this a proper answer, rather than just my knee jerk one (Vaccinate EVERYBODY!) but I don't want to read the article yet, so tell me:
1. How old are/were most of the people who were affected?
2. At what age group was the vaccintation targeted?

Anonymous said...

1. How old are/were most of the people who were affected?

Children aged one to four had the highest rates. Maori and Pacific Isalnd rates were double that of pakeha.

2. At what age group was the vaccintation targeted?

All children under eighteen, delivered at schools. Health workers might have been offered it too. As I remember, parents had to deliberately opt out of the programme on their children's behalf.

Cheers
Otepoti

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