Dear Sir,

Your science journalist Steve Connor is furious that we are holding a small public meeting in a pub to discuss the problem that science journalists are often lazy and inaccurate. He gets the date wrong, claiming the meeting has already happened (it has not). He says we are three medics (only one of us is). He then invokes some stereotypes about arrogant doctors, which we hope are becoming outdated.

In fact, all three of us believe passionately in empowering patients, with good quality information, so they can make their own decisions about their health. People often rely on the media for this kind of information. Sadly, in the field of science and medicine, on subjects as diverse as MMR, sexual health, and cancer prevention, the public have been repeatedly and systematically misled by journalists.

We now believe this poses a serious threat to public health, and it is sad to see the problem belittled in a serious newspaper. Steve Connor is very welcome to attend our meeting, which is free and open to all,

yours

(Drs) Vaughan Bell, Petra Boynton, Ben Goldacre

hi guy,

i think it would be good to print this letter from all three of us. we
all take the issue of misleading science and health reporting very
seriously, and feel passionately that patients and the public need to
be well informed to make good decisions about their own health.

unfortunately the media do often make serious errors in their coverage
of health and science, we don’t think it is unreasonable for us to
hold a small meeting in a pub to discuss this, and i think it’s part
of the problem that the profession of science journalism and
journalism generally are so unwilling to face up to the problems,
discuss them, and engage with criticisms.

a good example of that, sadly, was steve’s column which was, sadly,
repeatedly factually incorrect. it talked about a meeting that hadn’t
happened yet as if it had, it described us all as medics, which we’re
not, and it failed to address any of our concerns about the serious
negative impact that misleading reporting can have on public health. i
would have hoped that this is exactly the kind of social justice and
patient empowerment issue that the independent might take a serious
interest in.

i should say i like steve’s work, although we’ve never met, and
there’s nothing personal about this, i just think it would be good if
you could correct on ther factual inaccuracies and give us the chance
to have a small say on such a serious issue by printing our letter.

i’m copying in petra boynton and vaughan bell, which i hope is ok,

ben

the funny thing about connor’s angry column (in a national newspaper, about some people meeting in a pub, which seems a tiny bit intolerant) is that while shouting that we’re not allowed to be concerned about inaccuracies in science and health reporting, he managed to get every single fact wrong.

he said we’d met the night before. in fact we hadn’t even met.

he said we were all medics. only one of us is.

and he didn’t make a single substantive point, beyond his rage about doctors.

http://www.badscience.net/2009/07/steve-connor-is-getting-eggy/

to be honest, i think this just demonstrates once again the inability of science and health journalists to engage with the serious concerns people have about their work, which can cause great harm to public health.