Why Do We Even Pay Attention?

So many scientific studies make the news that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Many of them contradict earlier studies and some don’t make much sense at all. I have given examples of both in the past, but here is one more in the nonsense category.

This headline appears in the UPI Health News section and reads, “Study: Morning people less likely to develop breast cancer.” Researchers from the University of Bristol in England analyzed data from over 400,000 women. That’s a very large sample size, in fact, it includes "the largest collection of genetic data on women with breast cancer obtained so far.” Unfortunately the first paragraph of the story is completely misleading. “If a woman regularly wakes up early in the morning, she has up to a 48 percent lower risk of developing breast cancer.”

That would seem to be something to pay attention to, but not without looking into the details.

A little later in the article, the utility of the information quickly breaks down. The study found “approximately one less person per 100 will develop breast cancer if they have a morning preference compared with people who have an evening preference.”

Suddenly they are no longer talking about actually waking up early. The subject has changed to having a preference for mornings versus a preference for evenings. It's a kind of energy-level situation rather than an alarm clock situation. And the 48 percent lower risk is now expressed as one less person in 100. Calculating that out comes to about 25 in 1000 who are not morning people versus 15 in 1000 who are. This is a minor risk either way, with a 975 in 1000 chance of it not applying at all.

Further on it mentions two additional pieces of information worth noting: the findings have not been peer reviewed and much of the data was based on self-reporting. 

Peer review occurs before publication in reputable journals. Fellow scientists review and approve data collection methods, the mathematics used in the analysis and the experimental design. And one of the least reliable data collection methods is self-reporting where, for any number of reasons, subjects have been known to embellish, exaggerate and misrepresent their actual habits.

Finally, what can an individual woman do about this? Remember, the study was actually about preferences. If you are not a morning person, is it possible to change? It seems as likely as hearing that left-handed people are more creative and suddenly deciding to become left handed. So the information may be useful to scientists who can further study genetic differences, but it’s pretty worthless to the general public.

Why, then, would news media bother to report on this? After all, I got every piece of the above information from one of several articles, all blaring the same eye-catching headline. Other than causing some people to needlessly worry, it serves no purpose.

They do it because it’s easy. They receive a press release from scientists motivated by the need for publicity to ensure a continuation of funding. Then they simply add a snappy, but not necessarily accurate headline, and their work is done. Throw in the scary word "cancer" and everybody wins - except for the unsuspecting public!

Any question about why critical thinking is more important than ever?