Last Tuesday, the Daily Mail informed readers that cocoa could be good for the heart; that a diet pill will make you feel full as soon as you start eating; that diseased gums increase the risk of cancer; and that a third of babies whose parents smoke at home will end up in hospital. That was just the news pages. In the health section, it had underpants that control blood pressure, tree bark that eases arthritis, a herb that relieves ear infections and peanut butter that stops hiccups.
Whether Mail readers rushed out to buy cocoa, peanut butter and underpants, and to strip nearby trees, I do not know. But newspapers believe health coverage attracts readers. We live in a medically anxious society: surveys suggest one in two Britons worry about their health against one in 10 in the 1960s. At some level, newspaper reports must influence eating, drinking and buying habits, and affect the wellbeing of readers and their families. Yet the press, sceptical about anything politicians say or do, becomes credulous when faced with medicine. All research studies are "authoritative", all medical journals "prestigious", all scientists "experts", all findings "breakthroughs".
Research findings rarely justify the categorical press reports, as a new section on the NHS Choices website, Behind the Headlines, shows. Each day, it analyses two stories, looking at what the papers said, comparing their accounts with the studies on which they are based, and assessing the validity of the research itself. The treatment is factual and unhysterical, and it raises important questions about journalism.
Take that heart-protecting cocoa. The research, from an American journal, studied patients with diabetes, as the Mail made clear. The cocoa used is not available to buy, as the Mail didn't make clear. Nor did the research cast direct light on cardiovascular risk; it looked at the effect on the main artery in the upper arm when cocoa is enriched with flavanols, a type of antioxidant. Fruit and vegetables also contain flavanols and, unlike most cocoa products, aren't full of fat and sugar. Most important, neither the Mail nor other papers that covered the study explained it was funded by Mars.
Another recent story concerned celery which, it was reported, could help victims of high-speed car crashes and brain diseases such as Alzheimer's. In fact, according to NHS Choices, the study, carried out on mice, merely established that luteolin, a compound found in celery, reduced the production of one molecule associated with brain inflammation.
A third story was about that familiar bogey, the mobile phone. Mothers who used handsets during pregnancy, it was reported, risked their children suffering hyperactivity and emotional difficulties.
There were two big problems, common in reports of science and medicine. First, the press implied a causal connection. The research proved no such thing; for example, mothers who use mobile phones a lot might be mothers who give their babies insufficient attention. Second, all papers reported a 56% increase in risk for the children. This sounds big, until you realise hyperactivity isn't that common and, therefore, 95% of the children whose mothers used mobiles were entirely unaffected.
Journalists would argue that their stories include caveats, plus the words "can" and "may". Besides, nobody will come to much harm from celery or cocoa and, if parents stop using mobiles, who cares? I don't think this will do. Readers look at headlines and intros and often don't get to the caveats, and such stories can create hope or anxiety where neither is justified. The best-known example concerns research, published in the Lancet, which linked the MMR vaccine with autism. This study of 12 children got coverage far beyond what it merited, and led to campaigns in several papers. As Cardiff University's Tammy Boyce reports in her book Health, Risk and News, the UK child vaccination rate fell as low as 80% after the coverage peaked. In the US, where only a handful of stories appeared, the rate never fell below 90%.
So reporting of medical research can sometimes lead to damaging consequences. It is not easy, though, to see a solution. The stories analysed by NHS Choices were not exactly wrong or even distorted. Rather, they misrepresent the provisional, tentative nature of research. Science proceeds by gradual accumulation of evidence, not by the sudden "eureka!" moments implied in the press.
Sir Muir Gray, the NHS chief knowledge officer, told me the medical journals should share the blame. They too are under commercial pressures and tend to favour "positive" findings, issuing excitable press releases about them.
Medical research doesn't fit the conventional news frame, which demands crisp intros, novelty and immediacy. Many stories analysed by NHS Choices wouldn't have made the paper if they had been written up correctly. So should the press leave the public in ignorance? Perhaps it should. A tale about the supposed effects of celery is neither informative nor particularly entertaining. As one health journalist used to say, there are, in any event, only four medical stories: new treatment gives hope; old treatment causes cancer; patients will suffer unless doctors get more; and jogger's nipple, the novelty story.
Health reporters, instead of churning out several inconsequential variants on these four each day, would be better employed writing "state of knowledge" features, on what scientists now think about the treatment of particular complaints. And if they must write spurious "news", perhaps they should regularly steer their readers to the sober analysis on NHS Choices.
Hastings' sweet pea
Have you had a plant named after you lately? No, nor me. But there is now a Max Hastings sweet pea, or so the ex-Telegraph editor informed Mail readers last week.
From this "peg", as we journalists call it, Hastings filled a page with the newspaper equivalent of Radio 2 music: stuff about flowers, quotations from Keats, stories about people who've had roads, mountains and ships named after them, jokes about how Hastings, who is 6ft 5in, would more appropriately lend his name to a runner bean or prickly pear.
A masterly performance, no doubt, and well worth a four-figure fee. But nowhere did Hastings explain why a plant breeder decided to name a sweet pea after him. Does this happen to other former newspaper editors? I think we - or, more particularly, I, a former editor - should be told.
Remembering Alan Brien
Last week's obituaries of Alan Brien, I thought, didn't quite pinpoint his place in the history of journalism. Brien, as one obituarist said, was a critic and essayist in the tradition of Belloc and Chesterton. He reviewed film, theatre and books when reviewers were among the biggest newspaper stars. Now, the stars are general columnists, writing about life, the universe and everything, but mainly about themselves and their families.
Brien, who died at 83, straddled those two eras, being not only among the last of the old, but also among the first of the new. Harold Evans, when Sunday Times editor, said Brien could get more interesting copy from the fluff in his navel than some hacks could get from a month on the road. Once, when he was driving up the motorway with his wife, the Guardian's Jill Tweedie, a tiny pebble shattered the car windscreen. Between them, I swear, they got six columns out of it. The record probably stands to this day.
