By Hank Campbell | January 25th 2019 | Print | E-mail
Anti-science activists are having a field day on social media, happy that a poorly designed study can let them claim that human sperm is being damaged by modern pesticides, even though the study found nothing of the kind.
Nothing new there, it's how groups like US Right To Know and their parent, Organic Consumers Association, earn money from their clients. But the paper even made its way into a real article in a real paper in Australia, and since I was giving a private class for scientists who want to do outreach this week I used the article to show how journalists who don't understand science as well as scientists can be duped by an aggressive press release (from the University of Melbourne) and a corresponding author willing to sound truth-y, aided and abetted by a crash course at Google University. The journalist, Liam Mannix, is from Australia (Sydney Morning Herald) and I had never read his work before so it was easy to be more objective, even though it was on a topic that I have been writing on for years and so might be a psychological hot button. (1)
I did what I could to write my talk into an article, and I apologize in advance for my inability to be brief. Pictures tell a thousand words but in a class you use both and I did.........To Read More..
Anti-science activists are having a field day on social media, happy that a poorly designed study can let them claim that human sperm is being damaged by modern pesticides, even though the study found nothing of the kind.
Nothing new there, it's how groups like US Right To Know and their parent, Organic Consumers Association, earn money from their clients. But the paper even made its way into a real article in a real paper in Australia, and since I was giving a private class for scientists who want to do outreach this week I used the article to show how journalists who don't understand science as well as scientists can be duped by an aggressive press release (from the University of Melbourne) and a corresponding author willing to sound truth-y, aided and abetted by a crash course at Google University. The journalist, Liam Mannix, is from Australia (Sydney Morning Herald) and I had never read his work before so it was easy to be more objective, even though it was on a topic that I have been writing on for years and so might be a psychological hot button. (1)
I did what I could to write my talk into an article, and I apologize in advance for my inability to be brief. Pictures tell a thousand words but in a class you use both and I did.........To Read More..
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