Wrong on Graeme's

Alcohol deaths public health and fuzzy thinking

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:38:37 +0000

This article arguing (yet again) for the government to introduce minimum prices and other strict controls on alcohol consumption. As usual, it contains fallacies, fails to provide important information, and is generally rather vague.

SETI@Home sacking and the death of local newspapers

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:11:32 +0000

Two newspapers and a local radio station cover the same story, and it looks like two different stories. At the very least, one account is so incomplete as to be misleading.

Efficient markets, bamboozled journalists and stupid regulators

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:03:38 +0000

The media seems to have reached a consensus that the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) has been discredited by the financial crises. I have been somewhat bemused by this, as I could not see the connection.

Media spin killling babies

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:34:27 +0000

I can be nice about a journalist for once, because Sarah Boseley at The Guardian has shot down the misinterpretation (once again, spin to back up government advice) of a study on the safety of allowing babies to sleep in their parents bed.

Journalists eat spin on organic food

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 08:04:14 +0000

I assume that everyone who is interested knows by now that the headlines claiming that a Food Standards Agency study showed that “organic food was not healthier” were grossly inaccurate. I want to know why journalists did not even read the first paragraph of the report itself, let alone any real analysis of the report itself, before reproducing the Food Standard Agency’s spin.

Wi-fi allergy hoax: do journalists ever check facts?

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:34:40 +0000

The recent stories about the man claiming to suffer from an “allergy” to wi-fi were not just, as I initially thought, someone with a psychosomatic problem; it was a publicity stunt that cleverly exploited journalists’ inability to check facts.

LA Times false accusation of Facebook

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 06:49:36 +0000

Yet more examples of the wonderful fact checking that we can rely on journalists to do, the LA Times has a story that relies entirely on the authority of “someone’s blog said so”, accusing Facebook of using user’s photos in ads without permission. It was soon convincingly re-butted by Facebook.

Google hatred

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:37:53 +0000

The usually intelligent Willem Buiter has written a great example of the irrational hatred that Google seems to sporadically evoke. He attacks them with a list of charges, all of which are easily refuted.

Scary Pew Research

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:39:33 +0000

Many people have called the recent Pew Research Centre poll that “showed” that only 26% of Americans believed in evolution. What is really scary is that no-one seems to have looked closely enough at it to see that it showed nothing of the sort.

Old news, but....

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:03:17 +0000

…just in case you missed it (I did till today).

The Guardian was fooled by an elaborate hoax into claiming that NASA conducted experiments on sex in space.

They believed the story because they got the claim from a “respected French scientific writer”, Pierre Kohler. Neither he nor Jon Henley (the Guardian journalist responsible) actually thought of doing some of the proper fact checking.

The Wall Street Journal gets spun

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:29:34 +0000

The Wall Street Journal seems to have been completely fooled by telecoms spin-doctors into claiming that Google, and other prominent advocates of net neutrality, have changed their views.

Wired's open source myth

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:14:51 +0000

Wired has an interesting twist on the tired old myth that “open source is developed by volunteers”, that has been. The new twist is that it reverses the usual myth that it is not possible to make money from open source: instead the wrong people will make the money and it will all fall apart. Unsurprisingly this flies in the face of the facts.

Incompetence from The Economist

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:28:28 +0000

The Economist’s coverage of Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo has apparently been written by someone who thinks that Yahoo is primarily a search engine. It has been written in complete ignorance of both the competition concerns and the major difficulties of integrating the businesses.

The myth of environmental myths

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 05:24:12 +0000

Time for another sample of incompetent journalism, this time from The Times. The headline claims that walking to the shops damages the planet more than going by car. Of course this is not even remotely true, and a few seconds thought is enough to tear the argument apart.

My favourite terrorists

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 07:08:45 +0000

The terrorists responsible for the London and Glasgow airport “car bombs” are my favourite kind: bumbling idiots who could not explode a jar of nitroglycerine. I feel a lot safer,knowing how incompetent they are. My main worry is that some of the suspects are doctors: if they planned this, how did they get through medical school?

Innumerate Polly

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 08:39:26 +0000

Anyone even vague numerate reading this article by Polly Toynbee would would have probably spotted where it went wrong. It is very hard to read it without thinking “surely that £5bn must be a reccuring annual amount whereas as she is comparing it to one off amounts”. David Smith confirms that this is the case.

The amazing Slashdot dupes

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 13:41:41 +0000

IT website Slashdot, is well known for repeatedly posting the same stories. Most readers no longer even comment on this — or even notice. I am therefore keep an online record of the worst examples .

Wrong again, BBC

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 14:37:52 +0000

I have blogged about this before, but the BBC were good enough to give me a superb example to technology journalists getting things wrong.

Vodafone's loss that wasn't

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 09:22:15 +0000

According to most of the press Vodafone made a £15bn loss in the 2005/6 financial year. The largest loss ever made by a British company. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that the company made a real profit but an accounting loss.

Volunteers? No.

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 09:33:24 +0000

I have noticed that the media make serious factual mistakes when covering any topic about which I have any real knowledge. This applies even to supposedly quality media. I can only assume that what I read about topics/countries/issues that I have no particular knowledge is equally wrong.