Yesterday, I criticized Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com for a poor job of writing about the health risks faced by the children of older fathers.
I noted that it omitted an important 2012 genetic study from deCODE Genetics in Iceland that found that men pass on increasing numbers of mutations to their children as they age.
Now Virginia Hughes, who blogs at National Geographic's Phenomena, reminds me that she did a piece at the time criticizing the Iceland study. Her "Top 3 Reasons to Stop Fretting About Being an Old Dad" make a lot of sense. While accepting the findings of the study, she notes that
- Many mutations are harmless.
- We don't really know whether the mutations and the growing number of older fathers are related to the apparent rise in autism, as the researchers speculated.
- And there are risks associated with being a very young dad, too.
These are all good points, and they amount to a very smart assessment of research on older fathers. I happen to think that the risks are worth some fretting–that they are more serious than Hughes thinks. But her criticism is far more intelligent and informed than what I read at FiveThirtyEight. I welcome further debate.
But maybe we won't have that debate. The same Virginia Hughes, writing this week at Phenomena, seems to have proclaimed the end of medical writing. "The science of health is so, so confusing, I almost wonder if it wouldn’t be better for journalists to stop writing about health altogether."
She's distressed over the many stories that have been written about resveratrol, a compound in red wine that might or might not extend lifespan and prevent diseases, depending upon what you read. One study builds it up, and the next tears it down. How, she wonders, do we explain to readers that this is "the bumpy road to scientific progress"?
She might have the same reaction to stories about coffee, or calorie restriction, or breast-cancer screening. We're constantly buffeted by claims and counter-claims that are difficult to sort out–often because there simply isn't enough information to come to a conclusion.
As she points out, however, we have little choice but to report these studies if we believe, as Hughes does, that the public has a right to know.
She wonders if there is a way to do this better:
How should I have covered the latest resveratrol study? Should we switch to a more explanatory, wiki-like model, so that a single study’s results are more fully contextualized? Should we be writing stories about batches of studies — maybe the last 10 studies of resveratrol, as opposed to the single newest one? Are headlines the real problem?
Certainly more reference to earlier, conflicting studies would improve much of our copy. That wasn't easy to do when you had to request clips from a newspaper morgue; but it's trivial now.
Hughes asked for ideas, and her commenters have given her some. Take a look, and add your thoughts there, or here. We're all in this together.
-Paul Raeburn
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