Thursday 17 September 2009

Email to BBC News Education Re: Tech Addiction "Harms Learning"

Dear BBC

I was disappointed when I read
this article as I
could immediately see that the research was likely not to be of good quality.
But I was more concerned that you had managed to construct a sensationalist
title to go along with it. A cross-sectional study could never establish the
kind of causative relationship that your title infers.

I paid $24.99 to download the full report and my suspicions of poor
standards in research were supported. Did the author of this article actually
read the report or simply base their story on a press release from Cranfield
University?

Since this report is not freely available to the public, I think that the
BBC, a publicly funded body, has an even greater onus to ensue high
quality reporting of such 'research'.

Here is my
blog
response
.

Yours faithfully,

Anne Marie Cunningham

.......................................................

So how do we go about starting a campaign for decent science journalism on the BBC?


3 comments:

  1. Honestly? Try to get @bengoldacre on it.

    You might also try to cheekily claim the $25 back from the BBC, since their erroneous reporting caused you to incur this cost.

    You may not get the money.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's a shame that a pedantic blogger has to part with $25 to make clear that the BBC's story was flaky to say the least. I suspect that the lazy journo in question did exactly as you said and relied on the PR that promoted the article. Not good enough BBC. Must try harder!

    ReplyDelete

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