With due respect sir, this does not make any sense

An article in the Hindu titled, 'The way to get man back on his feet' has the following paragraphs in it:

"It is the invisible forces of electromagnetic energy that keep us alive and all those frequencies like cellphones, microwave ovens, radio frequencies and even the scalar energy affect our DNA, RNA and protein synthesis."

"An added advantage is that energy signals travel at a phenomenal speed of 1, 86,000 miles per second, while chemical transmission is just one centimetre per second!! While drugs take months to get one back on one's feet after a major illness, energy healing takes only hours to days!" 

The Hindu, is an English daily in India with the third largest readership amongst Indian English dailies (~2.16m). It is also amongst the very few India dailies that have their own science reporters and I've always held their coverage in high regard. This article features in their open pages in the opinions section. I can assume safely that either they wanted the author to be ridiculed or that their standards have indeed fallen.

Some one needed to deconstruct the seemingly incoherent article and Amar Ghaisas took up that charge. He tries hard to uncover what the author, who is a former professor of cardiology, Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London and former Vice-Chancellor, Manipal University, might mean in his bizarre usage of the terms such as 'holistic medicine', 'alternative therapies', 'eastern philosophy' and 'quantum physics'. But try as he might, he fails to find any coherent scientific explanation for those thoughts.

See Amar's detailed effort here.

The Over-simplification Conundrum

I believe that those of us involved in science communication have at some point wrestled with this issue: In being able to effectively communicate the science as we know it, we are often blamed for over-simplification or using going into too much detail and thus ending up not reaching the masses.

Not losing your audience's interest is the goal of any communicator. But when it comes to writing about scientific issues, we scientists have a tendency to try to get the facts straight and be as clear about what we know and what we don't know. And rightly so, we've been trained to pay attention to detail that as part of our jobs. But a friend recently said to me, 'We scientists pay so much attention to details sometimes, that we fail to recognize the peril in it!'

The conversation began because someone shared the image above. It's part of advertisements made for Mercedes-Benz. I had read about the left-right brain myth and kindly pointed it out to my friend, when he came back with that retort. Although I appreciate the artistic beauty of the image and that the over-simplification done in this case causes no 'real' harm to the society, I am against over-simplifying just to be able to make something popular.


But my friend interjects, 'If you tell a common person that "Oh, this is all a myth. Everything is integrated to every other part of the brain" the common man soon looses interest and in the end does not get anything out of it. But if you can take one step at a time after talking about the left-right dichotomy, he may feel interested.'


As a matter of fact, the only thing a common man may get out knowing about the left-right brain is to pleasure of learning something new (because none of the 'methods' I know that have been 'developed' to help someone improve their left brain by doing left brain activities are bollocks). But if the something new you have taught him isn't even right and he discovers that later then you've (or worse, science has) lost a loyal listener. And this is not the case just in this scenario.

Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Einstein's Razor

Looking at the bigger picture, it is important to help people have the most accurate beliefs from the beginning. Thus, when communicating scientific matters, one must not sacrifice details for artistic/populist reasons. The solution, of course, is to give as accurate a picture as possible to anyone but do it in a manner that is attractive (may be by tailoring it to your audience or using audio-visual aids or consulting with experts who usually have a neat explanation). This is definitely one of the main reasons why science communication is hard but also why it is worth doing it.

The Truth about Antioxidants and its coverage in Indian newspapers

Guavas on sale in Bangalore
(Source: Wikipedia)

Times of India (TOI) published an article today which claimed that guava is the healthiest fruit and pineapple is the least! 

The claim is based on a study that evaluated 'the amount of natural antioxidants level of [sic] 14 fresh fruits commonly consumed in India'. The article cited the study that was published in Food Research International, an Elsevier journal. But surprisingly when I looked up the paper it appeared that the results of the study were published in May 2010!

Antioxidants have been featured as a healthy choice for a long time. An article in Slate mentions that the story began in the 1940s when Denham Harman proposed that 'the same free radicals that were cutting into petroleum industry profits could also simply and completely explain the phenomenon of aging. Better yet, he said, their effects could be ameliorated by something called antioxidants'.

As tempting as the theory seems, unfortunately as the same article points out, there is no evidence of antioxidants inducing any health benefits. Instead, a meta-analysis of studies that assess the effect of antioxidant supplements on mortality showed that 'treatment with beta carotene, vitamin A and vitamin E may increase mortality. The potential roles of vitamin C and selenium on mortality needs further study.'

Having previously read the article in Slate, when I came across the article in TOI it struck me as odd that a 18-month old research paper suddenly seemed to surfaces in not only Indian newspapers but also in a British and a Malaysian newspaper within 24 hours. I got in touch with the lead researcher on the paper, Dr. Sreeramulu, congratulating him and expressing my surprise. He responded quickly and said, "Yesterday they contacted me about the work (and) today (the) article appeared in Times of India. (In the) morning my friend informed me about this." I also, asked him who funded his research, to which he said, "I am a regular staff member of NIN (National Institute of Nutrition), Hyderabad. Our Institute funded the work as (an) intramural project."

I asked him about the funding of the project given that the antioxidant market worldwide is pretty big. According to a report it has been growing at ~4% annually with reported sales of $3.7 billion in 2007 (the slate article calls it a $23 billion industry but I couldn't find the source for that). Having not got any satisfactory answer to the reason why TOI showed sudden interest, I thought it might be worth looking at what the coverage of antioxidants in top Indian newspapers.

Here are the search results for 'antioxidants' on TOI, Hindustan Times & The Hindu websites.

Sure enough I got plenty of articles mentioning the many studies that show antioxidants do wonderful things and many that reported the extraordinary antioxidant content in some foods. But amongst all that noise I found only three articles that mentioned studies showing adverse effects or no effects (here, here & here).

The lack of coverage of the studies showing adverse effects or no effects can be attributed to the fact that may be fewer such studies are reported but that would be a mistake. That alone cannot account for the dismal numbers. The answer then may be lies in the fact that the media has a bias towards publishing 'feel-good' stories, especially in the health section. But it might also be equally due to some media houses doing favours for big supplements manufacturers.

I wouldn't lament about all this much if only next time when an article about antioxidants is written they give the reader a balanced view. A simple sentence such as, 'conventional wisdom claims the positive effects of antioxidants but many studies have shown no-effect and in some cases, harmful effects in the use of antioxidants' can be included to that effect.

Alas! I cannot expect such things from Indian newspapers, can I?

And, of course, the mystery of why world media suddenly showed in the story also remains unsolved.