In real life I am Tom Ward
On Twitter I am @i_are_scientist
I am a Leeds Utd fan
I am a scientist
I am mostly in Oxford
Previously, News Corp stated that they were thinking of charging for online as well as print content. Now, Rupert Murdoch has also suggested that they're taking steps to remove News Corp content from Google search indexes and Google News.
Do they really get enough direct traffic that they don't need Google to direct traffic to them?
I had the misfortune to read this article on the Daily Mail website earlier. It Professes to explain "All you need to know about cancer". What is should read is "here are a bunch of links to articles we wrote that have little basis in science and are, frankly, scare-mongering at best". Not as catchy is it? But it's, probably, a more accurate description of the article. I quote directly from the list:
Are the fathers of girls more likely to develop prostate cancer?
White bread increases cancer risk
Chemical cocktail blamed for soaring breast cancer rateThe final one is most interesting. It is true that, if you drank cisplatin, nitrogen mustard, bleomycin, ethidium bromide you MIGHT increase your risk of cancer. You'd more than likely be dead but the chemcals are know to be or, in the case of ethidium bromide, purported to be carcinogenic. So I read the article and, again I quote:
CDs!? What? Are you serious? I read on and basically, they've merged two lots of information. It's reported (by the scientists alluded to in the quote above) that chemicals found in some plastics may cause cancer, but nowhere does it say that, when plasticized, that it poses any additional risk of cancer. They also fail to quote any scientific paper that suggests the plastic is carcinogenic. As a side note, the "gender-bending" drug they refer to is oestrogen which isn't found in plastic but is found in pollution causing gender changes in fish, apparently. What's more, they can't always get their story straight. The excellent website Kill or Cure? documents chemicals, habits, food etc that the Daily Mail say cause or prevent cancer. Or, in some cases, both. It appears they gear their stance around the mood of the paper at the time. If they're happy, alcohol prevents cancer. If they're angry (which, in my experience is often), drinking will kill you. This kind of crap really annoys me because, it's needlessly playing on the fears of the reader. There are people that will, diligently, stick to barmy rules on how they live their life, in an effort to reduce their risk of cancer. Cancer is a very emotive word and is a huge fear to many people. But, I assure you, you'd be far better living your life to the full and not constantly worrying that you're poisoning yourself because, cancer is a bastard and, no matter how healthy you are, it can still get to you. Better to have lived without regret than to have lived a life in fear.
Cocktails of gender-bending chemicals, found in everyday products from CD cases to babies' bottles, may be to blame for soaring rates of breast cancer, scientists have warned.
An apology in The Sun from 2005:
IN an article published on The Sun website on January 27 under the headline 'Gollum joker killed in live rail horror' we incorrectly stated that Julian Brooker, 23, of Brighton, was blown 15ft into the air after accidentally touching a live railway line. His parents have asked us to make clear he was not turned into a fireball, was not obsessed with the number 23 and didn’t go drinking on that date every month.Julian’s mother did not say, during or after the inquest, her son often got on all fours creeping around their house pretending to be Gollum.
Also, quotes from a witness should have been attributed to Gemma Costin not Eva Natasha. We apologise for the distress this has caused Julian’s family and friends.
Was anything in the article true?
Thanks to Ben Goldacre (@bengoldacre), author of Bad Science
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