A study reported in the media this week suggests that ‘being easier on yourself can improve your health’. The study conducted by Nicholas Rohleder and collaborators from Brandeis University examined the relationship between self-compassion and inflammatory responses to stress. The researchers reported a connection between a self-compassionate attitude and lower levels of stress-induced inflammation. Read more…
Here at Research the Headlines we have talked a lot about the importance of avoiding sensationalist headlines. It is especially critical that headlines are accurate when they reflect opinion (expert or not) rather than research evidence. As we have also discussed, particular care should be taken when headlines and articles are referring to sensitive issues such as mental illness.
So it is quite disconcerting to wake up to a headline of “Take a lot of selfies? Then you may be MENTALLY ILL: two thirds of patients with body image disorders obsessively take photos of themselves’ in the Daily Mail. On reading the article it becomes apparent that the ‘two thirds’ does not represent a statistical figure from a research study as you would expect from such a headline. It comes from a remark made by a psychiatrist, Dr. David Veale, that two thirds of the patients he sees with body dysmorphic disorder have a compulsion to repeatedly take and post selfies on social network sites. As we have referred to previously better care is needed when writing headlines that refer to mental illness. Why the need to capitalise MENTALLY ILL in this headline other than to be sensationalist?
We have frequently commented on dubious use of headlines in relation to research findings discussed in the news. The Science Media Centre highlighted the importance of accurate headlines in the 10 best practice guidelines they published in connection with the Leveson Inquiry. The 10th guideline states that ‘Headlines should not mislead the reader about a story’s contents’.
Caution about headlines is particularly critical for vulnerable readers such as patients for whom such sensationalist headlines will cause alarm. Various groups, such as the British Psychological Society, made submissions to the Leveson Inquiry that raised concerns about the press coverage given to vulnerable groups, including those with mental health issues and disabilities.
On a positive note, the article goes on to describe body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and link to the BDD Foundation. This is good practice for encouraging the reader to find out more about the disorder and avenues for gaining support and advice.
Many of us have wondered at some point about the origin of the Universe: Where did it come from? How will it develop in the future? Does it actually have a start or an end? These questions, fundamentally linked to our very own existence, have sparked interest and excitement of generations of scientists and laymen as well as many science fiction authors and filmmakers.
Three weeks ago a group of scientists (called the BICEP2 collaboration) announced the results of their investigations using a telescope at the South pole targeting traces of the birth of the Universe. Many newspapers coined catchy headlines when reporting the BICEP2 results. The Guardian started it all off with “Gravitational wave: have US scientists heard echoes of the big bang?” and later added “Primordial gravitational wave discovery heralds ‘whole new era’ in physics”. The BBC news website went with “Cosmic inflation: ‘Spectacular’ discovery hailed” and New Scientist published two articles, one headed “First glimpse of big bang ripples from Universe’s birth” and the second titled: “Multiverse gets real with glimpse of big bang ripples”.
At Research the Headlines, the news stories we cover span the whole range of quality, from excellent reporting about research on exercise and academic performance to news stories with completely made-up research. A colleague recently alerted me to an article in the Guardian, Menopause: nature’s way of saying older women aren’t sexually attractive?, that exemplifies a more nuanced problem with media reporting of research: misrepresenting the experts. Read more…
On April 1st it’s often difficult to work out what’s a real story and what’s a prank, especially if you’re reading certain newspapers that feature on Research the Headlines regularly. On Tuesday morning we asked on twitter (@ResTheHeadlines) and among the contributors to this blog for suggestions of good research-related April Fool’s Day stories from the media and other sources. This is just a quick round up of those that were sent in, or that we found with a bit of searching. The Guardian’s live blog and the accompanying comment thread were particularly useful in finding amusing stories. No prizes for the editors of most of the UK dead tree media for their rather unimaginative stories related to Scottish independence, and no, the new suggested advice on how many portions of fruit and veg to eat was not an April Fool! Please contribute in the comments for this post if there’s anything we’ve missed.
What increases our likelihood of suffering from a certain disease or condition? That’s obviously a key question for a lot of health-related research. On the other side of some diagnosis, attention is focussed on what might cure or reduce the symptoms of a disease or condition. We see a lot of stories in the media on these two points: things that will give us some disease or other, and things that might cure us of some disease or other. But there’s another equally interesting area: how might we diagnose people earlier, before they develop the symptoms of some disease or condition? There are many conditions where we want to not only find better treatments, but also develop news ways to diagnose people earlier to get them started on the treatments we currently have. In that regard, a recent Daily Mail headline ran “Blood test that can predict Alzheimer’s”, following with “Elderly could be given early warning”. This was similarly reported by the BBC under the banner “Blood test can predict Alzheimer’s, say researchers”. Before considering what that might mean for a disease like Alzheimer’s where there is currently no cure, let’s explore the story. Read more…
Spring is finally coming. As I write, I can see the roses in my garden finally growing, and thumb-sized bumblebees crowd the glass at my window. Now that the cold weather is retreating, I thought it would be fun to revisit my post from December about the dire weather forecasts made for the UK this winter.
Speech synthesis has a long and chequered history, going back at least to the Enlightenment when Wolfgang von Kempelen produced an artificial contraption that could make simple vowel sounds, based on a combination of bellows, a vibrating reed and a leather tube – all mimicking the human sound producing apparatus. The field has come some ways since then, with some visible examples of artificial speech in Stephen Hawking’s popular mechanical voice and more recently the voice of Apple’s Siri and our many satellite navigation units. Closer to home, a group of researchers in Edinburgh have pioneered novel methods for expressive speech synthesis, such as in the products of the University of Edinburgh spin-out company CereProc. This work was covered in an article in The Telegraph, under the provocative title, “How do you teach a computer to speak like Scarlett Johansson?” .
Read more…
Why is ageing research so important?
As a nation we are ageing rapidly and according to the World Health Organisation the proportion of people aged 60 years and over is growing faster than any other age group in almost every country. One clinical implication of growing older is the risk of experiencing age-related diseases including neurological disorders, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, type 2 diabetes, various cancers, osteoporosis and other serious conditions. Considerable research has therefore focused on understanding the underlying mechanisms involved in ageing with the aim of leading longer but also healthier lives.
Low fat, high carbohydrate, low carbohydrate, high unsaturated fat, high protein, low glycaemic index……there seems to be never ending advice on what we should and should not eat for optimum health. Often this advice is very contradictory and it is therefore no surprise that the public are generally confused about what they should be eating. The latest addition to this debate is the research on protein intake and cancer which was published in Cell Metabolism and covered by a large section of the media, including this article in the Guardian , under the controversial headline “Diets high in meat, eggs and dairy could be as harmful to health as smoking”.
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