Archive for category Media
Surveys On Rape And The Need For Clean Stats
Posted by Marsh in Media, Public Health, Skepticism on February 18th, 2010
Recently we asked you what really pushes your buttons and makes you angry. You may have answered, you may not – I hadn’t, and didn’t intend to… but bugger it, my spleen needs venting. So here goes – I have a couple of thing that particularly piss me off: psychics are definitely one of them. Sexuality discrimination (in either direction) is very much a second. And another biggie? Bad stats, where it matters.
Now, I appreciate it might seem like a bit of a nothingness, after all. So some numbers get inflated to make it look like men are shitty to their girlfriends, or that knife crime is on the rise, or that more than half of teenage girls are pregnant – these kind of issues might seem relatively minor, if slightly sexist, sensationalist or downright stupid. Nobody’s getting hurt here, you might think, and after all more than 33% of statistics are made up, and over half of the remaining two thirds are meaningless cliche anyway. However, consider the following headline, from Tuesday’s Metro:
“One in four women has been raped, a shocking new survey reveals“
I think it’s fair to say the statement that 25% of women have been raped is a shocking statement. Truly. If it were, in fact, true. But is it? Well, it’s right there in the headline, and surely nobody running those figures could do so without being 110% sure of their accuracy, and at the very least they’d make sure they were about 4/3rds positive of the interpretation? Well, a little digging around and I was able to locate a summary of the survey this stat was taken from – it was an online survey of 1061 people in London, broken down into 349 men and 712 women. There’s no indication as to how that sample of 1061 people was put together, so any discussion of the stats has to be with the caveat that any potential bias is undisclosed. Interestingly, when looked at in terms of self-defined sexuality there were only 71 homosexual, 52 bisexual and 16 asexual respondents – yet the summary merrily extrapolates the data of around four dozen bisexual respondents into statements of comparative risk Read the rest of this entry »
Happy Tappers
Posted by Allan in Acupuncture, Emotional Freedom Technique, Journalism, Media, Pseudomedicine on February 17th, 2010
Ahh, to be a thirty-something minor celebrity (Sky 3 doesn’t really count, does it?), a feminist-married-to-an-Olympic-rowing-alpha-male and a hypnobirthing mother; It’s a post-modern fantasy that I think we all share. I know I like to dress up in miniskirts, have my jugs half falling out on national television and claim feminism as my agenda while cuddling up to my hubby’s big muscley muscles… but only on Mondays. Thankfully, we have a post-modern fantasist to show us what it is to have our fantasies brought into the clear light of reality.
Enter our hero of the hour, Ms/iss/rs(?) Beverley Turner, and her little excursion into something one or two of you will recognise…
“Even though I have this feeling, I deeply and completely accept myself.” Read the rest of this entry »
Climate Change In Canada
Posted by Chris in Climate Change, Media, science on February 16th, 2010
In its continued exploitation of the oilsands of Alberta, Canadia may have recently surpassed even the US in its ability to ignore climate change science in the name of making economic gains. It was a pleasant surprise, therefore, to find an opinion piece published in the Globe and Mail, a Canadian national newspaper, supporting the work of scientists as “square-jawed heros” of current crises.
Effectively a firm rebuttal of the idea that just because of a few poorly-worded emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia the entire climate science paradigm (or even the broader scientific establishment) has collapsed, the author highlights the vital work of scientists and the robustness of the system within which they work.
In the Hollywood version of how science influences policy, the brilliant scientist has a eureka moment in the lab and calls the president, who promptly dispatches a square-jawed hero to save the day. In the real world, both science and politics are enormously more complicated.
It is in this real-world context that we must place the imbroglio surrounding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s research. Breathless media claims that the scientific consensus supporting the reality of climate change and its causes has collapsed are simply untrue.
At its heart, the debate centres on the role and process of science in creating a platform for human progress. If anything has been “revealed,” it is the challenge of communicating complex science to a media world that requires scientists to reduce their research to a sound bite.
I highly recommend reading the full article.
Pseudo-Pareidolia: I Spy A PR Pork Pie
Posted by Marsh in Media, Skepticism on February 15th, 2010
Yes, Tommy Cooper, in a Steak Pie. What of it?
Over the years we’re seen God in a toilet door, the virgin Mary on wet windows and jesus burnt into a cheese sandwich. Not to mention Mother Teresa the croissant, and all manner of other religious figures mystically coming through in a variety of unusual places, which is definitely down to the fact that God exists.
However, it’s not just the religious that get to come back from the grave to haunt our furniture, foodstuffs and everyday lives – a few months ago we covered on the show an image of the late Michael Jackson which had appeared in an ultrasound, so it seems of late it’s becoming easier to pass through the mystical doorway and re-enter this world, albeit confined to poor-quality images on mundane objects.
Which is why it should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone to see this amazing, wondrous, blessed meat pie, complete with image of 70s comedy legend Tommy Cooper.
Yeah, Tommy Cooper. And yes, a meat pie.
What’s more, miraculously and in no way suspiciously, the pastry effigy was found in the village of Trethomas – just a couple of miles from Cooper’s hometown of Caerphilly. Which proves it’s definitely genuine. Honest. I mean, it even featured in the Daily Mail…
Chip shop owner Crad Jones discovered the image when eating his pie and chips in his shop in Caerphilly, South Wales, which was Cooper’s home town.
Mr Jones, 45, said he called the manufacturers, Peter’s Pies, when he noticed the silhouette so they could document his find.
Of course, it’s in no way suspicious that the manufacturer of the pie gets a nice big mention right there at the start of the story. This pie coincidentally had a photo of Tommy Cooper in it – of course the first thing you’re gonna want to know is which company the late funnyman chose to bless with his image. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Men Don’t Know Anything About Women’ Says Company Who Don’t Know Anything About Men
Posted by Marsh in Flat Earth News, Media, Sexism, Skepticism on February 10th, 2010
Look out fellow men, our secrets are out! Not only is Valentine’s Day is swift-approaching, and therefore supplies of the colour pink and badly-drawn teddy bears on overly-sentimental cards bearing the motto ‘I Wuuurrrrrrve You’ or something equally-nauseatingly trite rapidly running out , but now – now of all times! – the Daily Mail has chosen to expose a dirty, filthy, shameful and completely 100% true fact: none of us male folk know anything, at all, about our womenfolk. Nothing. Nada. Nowt.
Seriously, nothing. Age, hair colour, eye colour, general shape – all alien to us men. Really. It’s remarkable we’re even able to pick them out of a police line-up. Although try asking them what the hell they’re doing in a police line-up, and you’re in trouble. Bloody Women. Harumph. Oops, that might have been wildly sterotypically ignorantly sexist towards the end there, and I can’t go around like that…
…because clearly wild, ignorant, sexist stereotyping is the Daily Mail’s job, as evidenced by their stunningly-accurate-and-definitely-not-made-up research on the amount we fellas know about our missuses:
“Think he knows you? Think again! How millions of men don’t know their partner’s dress size, date of birth, or even eye colour“
Millions of men! Millions of men don’t know their partner’s date of birth! If the UK population is 60 million, let’s simplify things and say that 50% are male (ratios tend to favour a higher female population, bloody women harumph and all that), that’s 30 million men at most, of which millions don’t know their partners’ eye colour! That’s assuming all have partners. And are straight. Realistically, we’re probably talking about 15 or 20 million men who are straight and attached. So the Mail’s ‘millions’ of ignorant men speaks to a real epidemic! What bastards we are!
ORRRR the Mail made it up. Hmm. Let’s read on beyond the headline, and see if we come out the other side. Read the rest of this entry »
Mad Journalist Syndrome
Posted by Colin H in Conspiracy Theories, Government, Journalism, Media, Public Health, science on February 9th, 2010
On the 14th January, Simon Jenkins published an article online at the Guardian’s Comment is Free section entitled: “Swine Flu is as Elusive as WMD. The Real Threat is Mad Scientist Syndrome.”, in which he criticised both scientists and the government for what he saw as scare tactics and misinformation in the handling of the swine flu outbreak. The article annoyed me a little, but I had food in the oven, and as I’m a man who lives on his stomach (to paraphrase Dr. Bruce Banner, you wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry), I forgot about it and went about my merry way.
A week later, the article began to surface from the sea of my subconscious and I grew increasingly irked. I gradually came to realise that it was a much more frustrating article than I had initially given it credit for. Read the rest of this entry »
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