Articles Welcome!
The Moai and I are always on the lookout for contributors to The Daily Mail Tendency so feel free to e-mail me any with ideas. Keeping this blog going whilst maintaining another blog, working and struggling to have a social life is tough, so we always are interested in other intelligent deconstructions of the tabloid tat that passes for news in this country. The rules are simple:
1. Slate a shit article (preferably in The Daily Mail but other shit publications are also fair game)
2. Send us the result!
Personally, I love the concept of interested amateur bloggers kicking the arses of supposed professional journalists. Just remember, journalists are paid to write. If they are going to write bollocks, they deserve to be slated.
1. Slate a shit article (preferably in The Daily Mail but other shit publications are also fair game)
2. Send us the result!
Personally, I love the concept of interested amateur bloggers kicking the arses of supposed professional journalists. Just remember, journalists are paid to write. If they are going to write bollocks, they deserve to be slated.
posted by The Nameless Libertarian at 9:56 AM
1 Comments:
The Daily Mail is great at one thing – finding a hate figure, finding someone to blame. This time they incorrectly report a recent article about Eating Cured Meat and developing COPD. But what's worse is the sort of comments they choose to publish to further increase bias in the general public - all the average reader can do, as intended and so nurtured by their editorial style, is blame the experts - Here.
To ensure continued dissemination of single-minded and ill-informed 'Health' news, balanced replies are disgarded in favour of the drivel they know their readers thrive on. Read my response below...
"Madam, as a doctor I have to point out an error in the reporting of this study - you incorrectly state 'the researchers said the lung problems are likely to be caused by nitrites' - in fact they clearly state 'additional studies are required to determine if cured meat consumption is a causal risk factor for COPD'.
So the study does not show that eating cured meet causes chronic lung disease - rather it just shows that if you look at people who do eat this diet, they are more likely to have lung disease than if you look at the population in general.
This highlights the important difference between a simple association as apposed to a causal one.
To illustrate further and in reply to Julia, Dundee - I agree that an alternative explanation for these findings is that a lifestyle which includes this sort of diet also includes other factors - for example smoking, which are known to cause lung disease.
Regarding 'expert advice' - at no point do the experts suggest that people should give up the sort of food we all enjoy from time to time. Rather the article's title 'Could eating a full English cause lung disease' ought to be less sensationalist.
Caution should therefore be excercised when reading about research - it is misinterpreation of articles such as this, rather than 'the experts' - the could interefere with our enjoyment of life's 'pleasures'."
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