The Irish Times’s tolerance for pseudoscientific health claims has been discussed here before. This week, as if responding to an impulse, the Times again published a controversial health story under the guise of grassroots health activism. On this occasion, the… Read More ›
I realise that the rolling news agenda can change extremely quickly in today’s media saturated world, but even this is slightly dramatic… Daily Mail, 9 March 2011: Daily Mail, 11 March 2011:
Have a listen to Ann Coulter talking to Bill O’Reilly on Fox News last week (the show aired on St Patrick’s Day, hence O’Reilly’s green tie). Coulter is a social conservative columnist and lawyer, well known in the US for… Read More ›
Reiki is a complementary therapy in which a therapist’s hands are placed on — or simply near — a patient’s body, with the intention of redirecting what are purported to be vital energy flows in order to enhance the patient’s… Read More ›
The horror of human suffering caused by the catastrophe in Japan is vicariously traumatic, and only compounded by the fearful prospect of mass radioactivity contamination. News organizations have a pivotal role when reporting such events in both informing and, if… Read More ›
The Guardian published some of their own research last week, examining the variations that exist in prescription rates for antidepressants across the UK. The headline statistics were shocking in various ways. Firstly, the Guardian found that the rate of antidepressant… Read More ›
The Irish Times is the so-called “newspaper of record” in Ireland. It has a reputation for being Ireland’s leading print source of intellectual commentary and political analysis. It is widely regarded as maintaining impeccable journalistic standards and of being one… Read More ›
Providers of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are always absolutely thrilled whenever real medical doctors claim to support their activities. Such support from authentic physicians constitutes a highly persuasive form of community advertising. Therefore, the fact that an entire organization… Read More ›
Last week, the news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) issued a press release with the title, “Rightwing candidates are better looking, says study”. The item described a study conducted by Swedish and Finnish economists in which 2,500 non-Finns rated 1,357 Finnish… Read More ›
Demonstrating that good people are capable of bad things, here is the BBC attempting to explain genetic engineering to its news audience. Most of what is presented is fine really. Except for the bit about genes.
Consider this slightly cumbersome headline in the last Saturday’s Daily Mail, located in the newspaper’s Health section: “Take time for tea and give your brain a lift as well as reduce tiredness”. The story refers to a new research paper… Read More ›
