Reading this blog post will cure cancer...

...no, it won't. But it got your attention. I can write whatever spurious nonsense I want from here on out, throw in a late caveat, and claim journalistic integrity by the end. It's one of the oldest tricks in the online journalism book, and it's the subject of this piece over at The Guardian today.

You will be familiar with the Daily Mail's ongoing project to divide all the inanimate objects in the world into ones that either cause or prevent cancer. Individual entries are now barely worth documenting, and the phenomenon is best appreciated in bulk through websites such as the Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project and Kill Or Cure, with its alphabetised list...

Occasionally one story pops up to illustrate a wider issue, and "Strict diet two days a week 'cuts risk of breast cancer by 40%' " is a good example... Now, if you have the time to track down the academic paper this news article is describing, from the October edition of the International Journal of Obesity, you will immediately discover that it is not a study of breast cancer, and it does not find that the risk of cancer is reduced by 40% (although it does measure a couple of hormones)...

But if I were to leave it there, then the journalist would correctly complain: because after all the grand and misleading claims, firstly, in the body of the piece, they do mention that the outcome is not cancer, but some hormones related to cancer (with no explanation of how tenuous that relationship is). Then, finally, at the very bottom of the piece, they have the reality. Although it's not spoken in the authoritative third person of the paper itself, it's there, in a quote, at paragraph 19...

The late caveat, torpedoing the central premise of a news piece, is a common strategy in many newspapers. But what use is this information, at the end of a long article, in paragraph 19?

The piece goes on to describe patterns of reading, and the extensive studies that have scientifically proven the worthlessness of the late caveat. Basically, people only read (at best) the first half of most online articles, and they selectively focus on the most outlandish claim that is made, trying to cull the conclusion. Late caveats, however important they may be, rarely get read. It's therefore left to the reader to read the small print, because the media outlet has little interest in making it any larger.

This kind of weak and irresponsible journalism only fuels confusion among the general public, especially when they are faced with multiple studies with conflicting results. Everything causes cancer, but everything prevents cancer, so you should do everything. And nothing. In moderation. And then stop doing it.


[The Guardian]