Public Don't Trust Cancer Advice

[LesMTS]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8059223.stm

It seems that the general public don't trust lifestyle advice with regard to cancer prevention because they believe "science" is always changing its mind about what's "good" or "bad" for you.

In actuality, it's shoddy journalism that gives this impression. What generally happens is that the mainstream media pick a study, remove the context, and try their best to squeeze a health story from it. There's always a bigger and much more complex picture that the people who actually do these studies are well aware of and that always goes unreported for the sexy "peas give you arse cancer" or "skydiving cures brain tumours" article.

Anyway, I'll curtail this rant and get to the point. If the BBC want to know where the fucking problem is they couldn't do much better than to look here and browse around the "related stories" and hopefully stop masturbating over any study that mentions antioxidants, the consumption of which probably does barely anything to your health at all.

[Danger]

My exact thoughts when I read that. I wonder how many people on this survey actually took an in-depth look at the research or spoke to someone in the know. Doesn't help that most articles fail to cite their sources properly(if at all) I suppose.

[endless psych]

The NHS choices blog "behind the headlines" is a useful resource regarding the "science" that the press report in relation to health.

Also quite neat (although sometimes doesn't work all that well) is this thing here which searches for the academic papers that the BBC is (supposedly) reporting on. (Also appears to do Reuters now as well)