only in mice…

Just a quickie & a link: Ben Goldacre’s got an interesting post on the total misreporting of several bits of research, in the UK media. (Having read one of the ‘news’ items, on ‘man-flu’, I have to say that in that case the reporter was pointed in the right direction by the researchers themselves. But not even the researchers stated that their research, on immune responses in mice, could be generalised to human flu in any shape or form.) It just goes to confirm my perception that, all too often, a perfectly good science story will be sensationalised in the media – whether because of a feeling that that’s what sells, or because the reporter doesn’t know enough about science to ask some good searching questions, it’s hard to say.Sigh…