"Facebook causes cancer"

badscience.net

13 points·baha_man··6 comments

Badscience is almost always worth the time to read. Although it can be a bit depressing.

Taking a look at the article by Aric Sigman it does appear weak. Having said that it's worth reading if only for the accompanying images.

This study wouldn't have gotten any attention if it didn't have a bunch of baity headlines attached to it, such as "How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer" or "Facebook causes cancer."

So prevalent is this in the media now that even scientists are getting in on the action by making scandalous or outrageous claims that are weakly supported by their results just in order to get some attention.

To be fair, The "Causes Cancer" rather than other alarmist results from using Facebook et al came from a Daily Mail report - and the Daily Mail is a rag that seems to add a gratuitous "Causes Cancer" or "Cures Cancer" tag to any (even pseudo) scientific report.

As Goldacre himself puts it:

"The Daily Mail, as you know, is engaged in a philosophical project of mythic proportions: for many years now it has diligently been sifting through all the inanimate objects in the world, soberly dividing them into the ones which either cause - or cure - cancer."

http://www.badscience.net/2007/12/a-rather-long-build-up-to-...

And which are or aren't going to steal all of our jobs and escalate violence in the UK :)

Sigh, the best way to deal with this sort of thing is to ignore it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com