CEs column: Tackling the weird and wacky

To continue my theme of the need for improved scientific literacy in some of the media and the general public, I’d like to draw your attention to an interesting website. NZFSA has no association with the site and does not endorse it – it’s merely one that I find thought-provoking.

STATS (www.stats.org) is a non-profit, non-partisan research organisation affiliated with George Mason University in the United States. STATS says it wants people “to think about the number behind the news”. It does exactly what I hope New Zealand’s new chief science advisor will do – it puts a scientific lens to news stories, and provides information and education for journalists and the public analysing the data behind what we read in the media. New Zealand’s own Science Media Centre (www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz) does something similar, although in less depth.

STATS certainly doesn’t retreat from challenging controversial media science myths, such as the portrayal of the chemical bisphenol A as endangering millions of babies through its use in plastic bottles and can linings.

The STATS blog tackles some of the weird and wacky ‘science’ stories that have grabbed headlines, analysing the numbers behind a study showing a 732% increase in the amount of computer-related injuries at home and among preschoolers, or a cluster of breast cancer cases linked to using an elevator at work…

It also illustrates a point raised by British doctor and writer Ben Goldacre in his blog and in his book ‘Bad Science’ – that studies refuting the accepted media mythology surrounding scientific issues – such as ‘plastics are poisoning us’ – get little or no coverage in mainstream media.

In the June issue of our flagship magazine, Food Focus, we showed how toxicologists assess chemical risk. NZFSA toxicologist John Reeve pointed out that consumers’ perceptions of risk from food are often not the same as the risks identified and assessed in the objective science-based processes used by regulators.

He noted that consumers find it difficult to see food safety in terms other than black or white: “This makes it difficult to deliver clear messages. Scientists and regulators consider food okay to eat when the levels of hazards, like chemical residues, are either not present at all or are within acceptable limits.”

Media coverage often criticises the risk assessment approach taken by government agencies charged with regulating chemicals, including those in our food. Because of heightened publicity given to the effects of manmade chemicals, STATS surveyed members of the Society of Toxicologists, the discipline’s professional body. It wanted to measure the collective views of the experts on whether this concern is warranted.

In his discussion of the survey results, STATS president Dr Robert Lichter (who is also Professor of Communications at George Mason) says most toxicologists do not regard food additives as significant sources of health risks.

“They overwhelmingly reject the notion that exposure to even the smallest amounts of harmful chemicals is dangerous or that the detection of any level of a chemical in your body by biomonitoring indicates a significant health risk. And they are nearly unanimous in rejecting the notion that organic or ‘natural’ products are inherently safer than others.”

Toxicologists surveyed generally have faith in the approach of government agencies responsible for regulating chemicals.

“Fewer than one out of four believe that regulation should be guided by the precautionary principle, which mandates that a substance suspected to cause harm should be banned even in the absence of scientific consensus. Similarly, only one out of four believe that the US regulatory system is inferior to that of Europe, where the precautionary principle has the force of law.”

Dr Lichter says most toxicologists in the survey fault both the media and regulators for not doing a balanced job of explaining chemical risk to the general public, but rate most government agencies and all professional associations as providing mainly accurate portrayals of chemical risk.

At the opposite end of the scale, the news media are seen as overstating risk to an even greater extent than environmental groups.

“At least 95 percent describe the media’s performance as “poor” in distinguishing good from bad studies, distinguishing correlation from causation, explaining the trade-off between risks and benefits, distinguishing absolute from relative risk, explaining the odds ratios, and explaining that ‘the dose makes the poison’ – a fundamental tenet of toxicology.”

It’s an interesting study. You can read it in full here.