Here at Cosmic Variance, we’re all about bringing science to nonscientists, and tend to think that it is a great thing if scientists are willing to speak to anyone who is interested, and to cultivate the patience needed to convey one’s point to a fascinated, but often technically untrained listener.
But sometimes your spidey sense tells you that there’s something a little fishy about some requests for technical advice. As Ben Goldacre points out in The Guardian, if a PR company asks
We are conducting a survey into the celebrity top 10 sexiest walks for my client Veet (hair removal cream) and we would like to back up our survey with an equation from an expert to work out which celebrity has the sexiest walk, with theory behind it. We would like help from a doctor of psychology or someone similar who can come up with equations to back up our findings, as we feel that having an expert comment and an equation will give the story more weight.
you might begin to suspect that your application of the objective scientific method isn’t really what is being requested. Particularly when the survey hasn’t been conducted yet! Goldacre knows their tactics, because this is exactly how they approached him.
As it turns out, they got a Cambridge mathematician to analyze the data, but didn’t clear the press release claiming
Jessica Alba voted sexiest walk: with the figures to prove it.
with him.
Although you only get a snippet of it in the Guardian article, the mathematician in question - Richard Weber - felt that he was severely misrepresented. Fortunately, Goldacre has a blog to accompany his column, and the discussion there is much more comprehensive, and contains the full text of Weber’s comments about his involvement and its misuse.
The whole story reminds me of the emails I frequently receive, that one might paraphrase as
I am conducting an investigation into some of the most difficult and complicated questions and phenomena in the universe and would like to back up my ideas with an equation or some data from an expert to work out which of my ideas is most valid, with theory behind it. I would like help from a doctor of philosophy or someone similar who can come up with equations to back up my vague ideas, as I feel that having an expert comment and an equation will give the idea more weight.
As scientists, we all know how to deal with this kind of approach, and we should probably recognize the same thing when it comes from a PR company, for example. So we can probably take some blame for even talking to someone who approaches us this way. But you’ve got to wonder about a newspaper (in this case The Telegraph) that reports on this “scientific” result without even checking with the scientist involved. We desperately need more science journalism, but we only want it if it’s good.
Cambridge might want to think about not bragging about this in their news cuttings archive.
September 18th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
You know what the worst of this is? WHR is no longer believed to be primary factor in ratings of attractiveness. In fact, in recent studies, WHR has only been shown to be a significant predictor of attractiveness in some countries (with body-mass index outweighing it in every case). Ironically, given the origin of this report, the UK was one of the countries in which WHR was not a significant predictor of attractiveness.
September 19th, 2007 at 6:33 am
That was also irritating Chris, I agree. The Bad Sciece blog entry contains a lot of the relevant statistics for anone who is interested.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:44 am
I want to analyze Jessica Alba. Me! Me!
September 19th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
As as university press officer, one of my jobs is to connect reporters with professors who can help them with their stories so I have a few thoughts about this. I’m surprised Cambridge got mixed up in this.
This approach would have set off loud alarm bells, 1) because they clearly knew the required conclusion 2) because it was pushing a product 3) there was a fee involved.
#1 tells you it’s a waste of the professor’s time.
#2 would be an absolute no for our campus, because they can’t use the university’s name to promote products.
As for #3, professors can act as consultants for outside entities — but there has to be a contract involved and that’s really getting away from a media function.
Now if a reporter had called me and said, “we want an expert on why Jessica Alba has an attractive walk,” I might have checked in with a couple of people in biomechanics that I can think of who actually might be able to say something about human gait.
We do get a lot of media queries that are pretty, um, basic. But I don’t have a problem with helping a local TV station do a segment on eg “What is New Car Smell?” IF a professor is willing and able to do it, because I think it’s an opportunity to reach an audience with very little exposure to science and show them that science has some relevance to them.
A similar type of query is the “we want to test something — can we use your lab.” We’ve accommodated these on occasion, but they’re generally more time and trouble to organize than they are worth, as the university does not generally have lab facilities and staff to do these kinds of things at short notice.
September 19th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
I don’t think one needs to prove this: I’m willing to accept that Jessica Alba has the sexiest walk as an axiom.
September 19th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
No big deal. This is Brainiac type research. And anything more serious isn’t publishable in most newspapers anyway.
September 19th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
I’ve been trying to talk a chemist into re-doing the infamous Brainiac episode where they dropped rubidium into a bathtub of water, but without the plastic explosives. No luck so far.
September 19th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Is this really surprising behavior for a newspaper? It’s been standard journalistic operating procedure for over a century to proceed as follows: 1) Come up with an “angle”, i.e. a conclusion for the story. 2) Bolster the conclusion by whatever means: truths, half-truths, genuine or misleading statistics, genuine or misleading support from authority, 3) Ignore all evidence contrary to your conclusion.
Most importantly, the conclusion always precedes the story and even the investigation that leads to the story.
September 19th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Surprising? No. Wrong, and deserving to be called out as such? Yes.
September 19th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Chris said: “Ironically, given the origin of this report, the UK was one of the countries in which WHR was not a significant predictor of attractiveness.”
Well, you *would* want to exclude those countries, like the UK, where the average WHR is about 3….
September 19th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
“Is this really surprising behavior for a newspaper? It’s been standard journalistic operating procedure for over a century to proceed as follows: 1) Come up with an “angle”, i.e. a conclusion for the story. 2) Bolster the conclusion by whatever means: truths, half-truths, genuine or misleading statistics, genuine or misleading support from authority, 3) Ignore all evidence contrary to your conclusion.
Most importantly, the conclusion always precedes the story and even the investigation that leads to the story.”
There are rumored to be governments who might (Fred forbid!) consider such tactics to fool citizens into backing something as serious as an ill considered military action.
Thank Fred, that in the real world, we can be assured our Public Servants would never stoop so low.
Why it’s important to expose flawed reasoning, bad science–no matter how frivolous the venue. This is funny stuff… but only for as long as we can rend them important.
September 19th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Impotent!
September 20th, 2007 at 3:42 am
I once recieved an e-mail from dept secretary that someone wants expert help from a physicst for his research. I jenuinly thought that it probably is an interdisciplanry research project or the guy has encountered some physics problem while doing something else and wants some help to move ahead.
But to my surprise, the guy looking for help was an alternative medicine guy ( read fraud) and he spoke at length about his theories of everything. He wanted me to help him to back his theories with some math as this was his weak point
:), and help him publish in top journals. I tried to pursuade him about how science works, and specialy how in physics you have to calculate things instead of just vague story telling. But he said here you will come into picture. He tried to entice me with some good compensation on per hour basis but ofcourse I cared for my reputation more :).