The Horrors of Science Reporting
Quick question:
Imagine you've just bought a brand new, top-of-the-line Ford Focus. I know, a little far fetched in the current economic climate but, for the sake of argument and this tenuous illustration, humour me! You've just left the forecourt and, to your horror, you realise your breaks are faulty. Unfortunately, this realisation comes moments before you collide with the car in-front who, as good citizens will, stopped at a red light.
From this scenario, could you say that brakes cause accidents?
Quick Answer:
No, of course not you fool, brakes don't cause accidents, in fact they PREVENT accidents more often than not unless they are faulty.
Agreed?
It seams that science writers, and I'm talking about mainstream media science correspondents, cannot tell the difference between faulty brakes and fully functioning brakes when it comes to genetics.
I studied genetics for three years at the University of Liverpool and, when I left in 2002, I took a job with a research group at the University of Oxford. We study DNA damage and repair and how they impact both the development and treatment of cancer. As such I am a bit of a genetics nerd really and one of my biggest annoyances with science reporting is the inappropriate use of the word "gene" when it comes to genetic disorders and cancer.
The first thing I'd like to clear up is that genes DO NOT cause cancer. Ever. Under normal conditions a gene cannot cause cancer, if they did everyone would have cancer. The irony is that the products of genes often referred as "cancer genes" have precisely the opposite function and actively prevent you body from becoming one massive tumour. What the correspondents are actually referring to are mutations in the gene that cause the them to produce a faulty product that cannot do it's job properly. For example, if the guy building your Ford Focus had a dodgy instruction manual and built a component for your brakes poorly, it may have resulted on your little dink at the traffic lights. This is basically how genetic disorders work, your instruction manual becomes faulty (either from the start or over time) and you begin churning out sub-standard products. Why is it that news sources can't grasp this concept? I've come to the conclusion that there are three possible reasons:
1) It's ignorance, the reporters and editors know no better. If that's the case then they're hiring the wrong people.
2) They think the public won't get it which is arrogant beyond belief.
3) They're too lazy to think about it.
All of these are unacceptable and the media needs to buck it's idea up or we'll have a generation of people with little or no understanding of genetics.
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