Don’t Trust the Headlines

Source: @DoUBelieveInDog

Too often it is difficult to know what is reliable information and what’s junk.

If you read this blog with any regularity then you know I strongly emphasize the importance of going to the primary source because there is a lot of bad, bad, bad stuff out there. While it’s easy to dismiss a one-off crank selling dog mysticism to the gullible, it becomes much harder when the misinformation comes from a seemingly reputable newspaper reporting on a research paper.

Can you trust a newspaper? The official press release? Probably not. A study appearing in the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal)  found official press releases were unreliable, often making exaggerated claims and this in turn led to misleading newspaper articles and reports.

You may have been lucky enough to come across Julie Hecht‘s excellent summary of Norman’s paper titled “Down but not out: Supine…