In previous blogs I have mentioned that some researchers may show bias in their results, or may just twist what they found in their results to make it appear that it matches their hypothesis. But what about when researchers go to all that trouble of collecting data, and then explaining why they have a significant result, then a lovely newspaper journalist catches on to their report and BOOM it’s misinterpreted. So in a hypothetical situation say a researcher has done this, and made no biases in their research, and what they have found is pretty ground breaking stuff, but when this wonderful reporter comes along and doesn’t like what they have read, they turn THEIR opinion to appear like facts. The cheek!
It could be that journalists are just trying to draw attention to the general public about the importance of research. So for example although it may not seem like breakthrough science, it was reported back in 2003 how to make a perfect cup of tea. So although it may seem a bit pointless, I can imagine that a lot of people (including myself) may appreciate knowing this, as some of us do love a good cuppa, so it’s something that we can relate to. Another area of research that hit the news a good few years back, was that taking cod liver oil supplements helps the brain, needless to say that it was forced down my neck (can’t say that it helped much though). It is things like this though that helps bring research to the attention to the general public, so in terms of this it’s not too bad, although they may stretch the truth. I think that it is important that scientific research is made available to everyone, because after all it is meant to benefit EVERYONE.
But what about when a journalist takes the whole research out of context? Then this can be damaging for the researcher, as it presents research in a different light to what was intended. In 2010 The Sunday Times claimed that research had found that Blonde women born to be warrior princesses; it said that women with blonde hair were more likely to show a warlike streak, they attract attention and are more likely to get their own way. It all seems a bit bizarre; this is because it’s NOT TRUE. The research was actually looking at whether it was possible to tell the strength of a person by their voice when assessing fighting ability. Sell (2010), who was the main researcher, was angered by how the newspaper had taken his research out of context, especially as it didn’t even mention hair colour. Apparently the journalist admitted to Sell on the phone that he did make everything up, which I can imagine would anger many researchers, as they are doing this work to learn more and benefit people. If their work is shown in a false light it will lead the general public to believe that research of any kind is useless.
Useless research was highlighted by The Telegraph recently, and one research article that they rated as one of their top ten useless research studies, was suicide rates can be linked to country music. So, although it may seem like a pointless thing to study to some, it could be quite interesting to others. The newspaper does actually make the reader believe that country music causes people to commit suicide, but what the researcher was actually looking at and found that people who were already feeling suicidal were more likely to attempt suicide, because of the themes that are portrayed in country music. Just a final point on this; I’m not sure who decided they were useless bits of research, but the ones that they featured in their top ten were all winners of the Nobel awards. So were they really useless if they won an award?
So it is clear to see that newspapers can belittle the important research that is carried out, it also takes it out of context and can lead people to believe things that are not true.
There are positive sides to research being in the news as it is meant to be beneficial to everyone, and by printing or broadcasting it, it allows everyone to be aware of important areas of research. I know the examples that I have used may not be deemed important, but I hope that it gets my point across about how research can be misinterpreted, but it is also important for everyone to be aware of it, and not just the people that are involved in sciences.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3016342.stm
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/06/14/rspb.2010.0769.full
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/01/27/s-times-article-on-blonde-warriors-was-fabricated/
thewonderfulworldofstats 
I agree completely with your final statement, that research should be presented to the general public. We search, in psychology, for significant results that we can apply to the population. Its only right that it is distributed. This (http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_282_en.pdf) source highlights on the third page that in a survey 31% of Europeans identified scientific research as something they would like to read more about in newspapers. This was similar to Entertainment News and just less than sports news.
Clearly its an important topic to many people not just for an academic community. However those who are interesting in Ryan Gigg’s affairs or Peter Andre saying “I love my kids yeah” a million times probably aren’t interested in psychological research. It is these general newspapers readers who are the majority audience and so the papers either know or think research needs to be jazzed up into a story to get people to read it.
To prove the point I just made, I looked up some Daily Mail research. I assumed it would be horrific and probably blame house prices falling on immigrants or the death of diana on gypsies. However I was actually surprised to find some decent articles. Such as research bias – where non WEIRD people and minorities are ignored (link 1) or biases in funding (2)
So in conclusion, people want research and they are getting it. Fortunately a lot of what I found seemed accurate to the original research but I agree it would be dangerous for the media to misreport research. Polluting public knowledge and damaging a researchers career
1. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2014842/Non-whites-missing-genome-resolution-research-concentrates-Europeans.html
2. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1092991/Dementia-cure-research-gets-TEN-times-cash-cancer.html
This is a really good blog and something I encounter all the time. Often my friends or family will tell me about an amazing study on the news, and then when I go to read it I see how massively exaggerated it is. I think there should be ways to stop this from happening, like maybe some guidelines the press have to follow when publishing stories about research papers. Another interesting idea I heard was the idea that the writers of the paper should have a sort of “press release”. I know that an abstract should function as that, but maybe something even more simplified that can be released to journalists would help the bad reporting that takes place in the media world. Unfortunately both these ideas are impractical and probably wouldn’t work, but I still think that they’re interesting possibilites.
I found a blog post by a researcher who was writing about some research he had recently published and how it had come to be misconstrued by media attention. The two articles that came to be published about his and his colleagues work were ”Gamers can’t tell real world from fantasy, say researchers” and ”How video games blur real life boundaries and prompt thoughts of ‘violent solutions’ to players’ problems”. Causing outrage at the researcher but is it the researcher’s fault for newspapers sensationalizing their results?
For this reason research published in the media seems like a bad idea, it doesn’t mean that people won’t get to see the research. It just means that you have to look harder to find it. Personally i’d rather spend longer looking for the research, than have the potential of reading a study and being given the complete wrong idea about the data. Scratching that idea the only other way around it would be to search down the original article when you read it in a newspaper and assume till you see the original that what the article is reported may not be accurate.
– Read More: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2039841/How-video-games-blur-real-life-boundaries-prompt-thoughts-violent-solutions-players-problems.html#ixzz1mvmQRBqf
– Read More: http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/876093-gamers-cant-tell-real-world-from-fantasy-say-researchers
– Link to his Blog: http://drmarkgriffiths.wordpress.com/tag/media-misinterpretation/
http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/876093-gamers-cant-tell-real-world-from-fantasy-say-researchers#ixzz1mvm1tQ2C
This is a really interesting topic to look at, because of the amount of various research studies out there, and I’m sure we’ve all heard of some study or other whose findings have been misinterpreted by journalists, either accidentally or deliberately like in your examples. So it got me thinking, what are people doing to try and combat this? and I found an article online where this is being looked at, it’s called ‘Helping Journalists Get It Right, A Physician’s Guide to Improving Health Care Reporting’ (Stamm, Williams, Hitchcock Noël & Rubin, 2003). In it they set out steps and advice so that physicians can try and help journalists accurately report research and medical stories, and by doing this avoid some of the controversy, arguments and court battles of stuff being mis-reported in widely-available media. If you’re interested, here’s the link http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1494815/ I really enjoyed reading your blog, well thought out and engaging 🙂