Ben Goldacre between soft covers

The man who has spent the past few years dismembering medical quacks in his weekly column in The Guardian, Ben Goldacre, has made it into paperback. While the "Bad Science" title of his new book might provoke some to complain that it should really be "Bad Medicine," there's no doubt that Dr Goldacre, a fellow member of the ABSW, has done a service to medical journalism, even though the fake remedies, and some journalists' willingness to puff them, shows little sign of going away.

Saturday's Guardian has an extract from the book, The media’s MMR hoax. In this, Goldacre excoriates the newspapers that did much to fuel the hysteria around MMR. His line is that it isn't just, or even primarily, Dr Andrew Wakefield who deserves the blame for this descent into scientific lunacy, but the media.

Given the tradition that dog does not eat dog – that journalists do not pick holes in each others stories – we have to rely on Goldacre for this sort of thing. Journalists happily pick holes in stories over a pint, but they won't do it in print.

One area where Goldacre's account may be slightly divorced from reality is his observation that "While stories on GM food, or cloning, stood a good chance of being written by specialist science reporters, with stories on MMR their knowledge was deliberately sidelined, and 80% of the coverage was by generalist reporters." Plenty of the coverage of GM came from hacks with little understanding of the science.

This really just confirms his thesis that science goes out of the window when medical, or even science, stories get into the hands of columnists, pundits and others not versed in how science works.

Another quibble is the reference to "didactic statements from authority figures on either side of the debate". Didactic is the wrong word. Dogmatic maybe.

Still, anyone who takes potshots at The Daily Mail has to be on the right side. It will be interesting to see how many of the publications in Goldacre's sights find room to review his book.

Nanotechnology and the media

The Wilson Center started its Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies in 2005, around the time that the media frenzy on the subject started. The project "is dedicated to helping business, governments, and the public anticipate and manage the possible health and environmental implications of nanotechnology".

The centre runs occasional web events. There is a new webcast scheduled for 18th December with the title Nanotechnology and the media: The inside story.

The event plans to investigate, among other questions:

• Is media coverage of nanotechnology’s potential risks growing?
• If so, who or what is driving articles in national newspapers and newswires—environmental and consumer organizations, scientists, law makers, or industrial and financial groups?
• How do broadcast journalists decide to cover a nanotechnology story, especially one about possible risk-benefit tradeoffs?
• Do radio and television correspondents face special challenges reporting on a technology which most Americans do not know about and which is on a scale invisible to the human eye?

One of the more interesting bits of the event could be the presentation by Professor Sharon Friedman who will present will present her latest results "from tracking seven years of newspaper and wire service reporting of nanotechnology risks in the United States and United Kingdom".

Ever asked a university an embarrassing question?

The UK's Freedom of Information Act has been so successful that the government now wants to curtail it, on the spurious grounds that it costs too much to meet all those awkward requests. Well, the country's universities seem to be happy to proclaim their willingness to spill the beans. Universities UK has even put put a "Media release" boasting Higher education delivering on people's 'right to know'.

It turns out that the load on universities isn't that huge. "Institutions received an average of approximately 3 requests a month, a level similar to that in 2005."

It is nice to read that "Journalists still account for nearly half the number of requests where the identity of the requestor is known". And they seem to be interested mostly in "University management, administration and finance".

Templeton-Fellowship for ABSW member

Ehsan Masood is among the people on the receiving end of the Third annual Templeton-Cambridge Fellowships. "Fellows are provided a $15,000 stipend, a book allowance, and travel expenses."

After a series of seminars by some seriously, er, serious people, including John Barrow, James Lovelock and Lewis Wolpert, "fellows will undertake five weeks of independent study and research into areas of their own specific interest, such as origins of life, neuroscience, the laws of nature, cosmology, genetic engineering, astrobiology, spirituality and health, and Islam and science".