It Ain't Necessarily So: How Media Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality

by David Murray, Joel Schwartz, S. Robert Lichter

Book Overview

Airplane crashes. The AIDS epidemic. Presidential election polls and voting results. Global warming. The latest cancer scare. All these news stories require scientific savvy first, to report, and then--for news consumers--to understand. It Ain't Necessarily So cuts through the miasma surrounding media reporting of scientific studies, surveys, and statistics. Whether the problem is bad science, media politics, or a simple lack of information...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0742510956
• ISBN13: 9780742510951
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

The results of any study can be preordained

That's right. The results of ANY scientific study can easily be preordained by the selection of stimuli, how the hypothetical constructs involved are operationally defined, the experimental protocol employed, the statistical analysis chosen, the level at which the data are aggregated, etc. Statistics without context are MEANINGLESS. What this means is that it all boils down to the integrity of the researcher. (As Bertrand Russell said, what is wanted is not a will to believe but a wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.) It gets even worse when reporters and journalists get their hands on the results of scientific studies, because they are largely composed of people wholly untrained to interpret and report the data they are going on about! Examples: If blacks are rejected for mortgage loans more than whites is that evidence of racism? What if whites are rejected more than Asians? Have you heard that 1 out of 4 women are victims or rape? Almost everyone has, because the media went ape $hit with that story. What most people don't know is how "rape" was operationally defined. If a woman had a little to much to drink and then willingly slept with someone and later regretted drinking too much and having sex, that, in this study, counted as "rape." Further, most of the female subjects in the study that were classified as "rape" victims disagreed that they had ever been raped. That didn't dissuade the researcher, who had an obvious agenda. Research on spanking kids is often misleading too, because "spanking" is typically operationally defined so that it includes downright child abuse, such as belting and beating. This book is must reading for anyone who wants to become a more critical consumer of information in this information-driven world, and that should be everyone.

Superb analysis of superficiality of media science reporting

Apparently some readers above do not like to have their own delusions pointed out. Anything that contradicts their cocoon world of warped "science" is the result of a vast conspiracy of corporations. Actually much of the so-called "science" baloney that is used to justify ever greater statist depredations works to diminsh the our freedoms. The book is an excellent resource for the open minded to learn how to analyse pseudo-science. However, if you are already committed ideologically, like a number of the reviewers, to junk science justifications for having the State muck things up even more than they already are, I doubt that this book will change your mind. That is because that is how science works. Any scientist of real integrity holds all beliefs tentatively. Any conclusions are held because the preponderance of evidence to that point suggests that it is the best current explanation. But real scientists are willing and able to change that belief if further evidence develops that contradicts their original conclusions. That is the scientific method. That you will learn about. That is what should be understood. Not some dopey sophomoric myopic "true belief" in a politicized scare story on the environment.Read it with an open mind. You may be surprised and actually learn something of lasting value about how to analyze stories about which you may not already have a firm prejudice in place.

Your Check Is In the Mail

This is one of the most-used lies in the English language, and these authors demonstrate that another often-used whopper is "Studies Show That..." This book is a well-balanced and sensible expose of junk science and the misuse of "facts," especially by researchers and the mass media. But the authors do not claim anti-corporate bias as the only possible explanation. They show how the demands of journalists' jobs give them incentives to be lazy, careless, and all too quick to hype dramatic bad news in place of good news that isn't so interesting. Many actual facts are cited to prove the authors' points. One of the points they make by logical argument rather than factual proof, however, may be the most important of all: the intolerable smear that a researcher's "corporate funding" (which is often very tenuous, exercising little or no actual control over the researcher's activities) automatically invalidates his research! This tactic is often used today (as can be seen in one of the reviews below), but the only honest approach is to question a researcher's FINDINGS, not his MOTIVES. After all, as the authors point out, journalists (and certainly political activists) have their own agendas that give them strong incentives to fudge the truth; and the fact that their motivation is not pecuniary matters little to the only important question: how much truth is in what they say. Also, many researchers DO have a sort of vested interest of their own: they know that if their studies "prove" that a pressing problem exists, they'll get more funding to do further studies, so they won't actually have to go out and WORK for a living! Not surprisingly, their "studies" tend to find terrible problems everywhere. One gets the impression that there are so many new, horrendous health hazards now that a person would have to be lucky to reach old age. So why are people living longer and longer, if there are so many health dangers lurking everywhere? Read this excellent book and you won't be so quick to believe that all the junk science hype that's being quoted everywhere actually proves what it claims to prove.

Exceptionally well researched.

The media has an awesome power to mold public opinion and shape policy. This book not only sets the record straight on various issues through its examples (worth the reading just for that), but shows how to become better news consumers. The research is impressive, the writing made the reading easy and the perspectives gave me a whole new view of what I am reading, seeing and hearing in the media. This is a real eye opener.

Facinating information

Murray and co. do an excellent job of explaining how the results of scientic inquiry are reported in the mass media. The authors avoid the easy out of blaming things on politically motivated journalists, and take a more interesting path. Sometimes what we read in the press is the result of poor reporting; sometimes it's poor science; and, on occasion it may be the reflection of a writer's personal agenda. The book tells the kinds of errors that occur (confusing correlation with causation, poor sampling, etc.)What makes the book compelling is the anecdotes used to make the points. The stories of contradictory reporting of scientific make for peculiarly amusing reading.By understanding the types of reporting problems and their causes, people can be more intelligently skeptical about what they read or hear.