Optimism saves you from the cold. Optimists stay healthier. Optimists get less colds. And on, and on. Basically every newspapers or online outlet in Germany, Switzerland or Austria picked up this surprising news – which is of course perfectly timed to fit into the mucus season. The news originated from a study of Roehampton University in London (well, a German scientist switched there from Hamburg), the Hamburg University clinic Eppendorf and: the German insurance company Techniker Krankenkasse TK (disclosure: I’m covered by them, happily). It seems their press center did a good job, because the optimism-mucus-connection-news didn’t change much on its way from their website to the German news agency dpa and to the rest of the German speaking world.
To my knowledge, the news is exclusively based on an apparently unpublished study. Was it peer reviewed? No idea, because the hint to the study originates from a press release of the insurance company TK, which did not mention any articles or journals and I couldn’t find anything on Pubmed by looking for the names of the scientists. Anyway, none of the newspapers cared, and no one asked some independant experts about the “study”, which is basically a questionnaire filled out by 80 students. Questions like “What can go wrong, will go wrong?” were used to classify the students into (no, not fans of sarcastic jokes, but) pessimists or optimists. Then, the scientists assessed the “infectious status” of the students, once during and once after their exam period. But don’t get me wrong, they did not do a blood test or went to a doctoral examination, they just filled out another questionnaire, which asked for sore throat, running nose or cough. A second study in a nursing home also “proved” the hypothesis, that optimists deal much better with stressful situations and therefore don’t get sick as easy as pessimists in comparable circumstances – according to the insurance companies press release. You ask for numbers? How many of the student “pessimists” catched a cold, compared to the “optimists”? Well, you’ll have to call the insurance company – nothing in the press release, nothing in the newspapers.
Reading all the copy-paste-articles one could really get pessimistic about journalism. What about adding some thoughts, some skeptical remarks, that this is just a correlation – if anything? What about a hint for the reader, that the original press release did not mention, that the study hasn’t gone through a peer review process? Why did no one made the effort to explain, that there might be a difference between experts employed by an insurance company and scientists at universities (The press release as well as the dpa piece mentioned, that the science was done by “TK experts”, which nevertheless was no hurdle to redistribute the release). And what about some simple brain work, that it could also be the other way around: that people, who tend to be sick tend to be more pessimistic – for a reason!
Yes, I may sound like a “Spaßbremse” (party pooper, fun wrecker, buzzkill). Who cares, anyway? Come on, this is just this sort of minor news people like to share during a coffee break, isn’t it?
Really?
I don’t think so. I think, people (recipients) know quite well, what’s an in depth scientific study and what’s just a – to be polite – preliminary pilot study (I don’t say, the scientists did bad work, I just think they know quite well, that they have a hell lot of work to do to prove the hypothesis, that we already cast into headlines). The more we distribute shallow science, the more we spread mistrust in (science) reporting. And by the way, doesn’t it sound odd, that a press release from an insurance company says that just a little bit optimism is enough to prevent the next cold?
If you want to go through it by yourself, here are the links. But don’t sue me if you catch a cold!
Focus, Welt, Rheinische Post, Zeit, Wiener Zeitung, Standard, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berner Zeitung, Leipziger Zeitung, Hamburger Abendblatt, and nearly all the others too. (Well, it seems, the NZZ, FAZ, FTD, Tagesspiegel, Spiegel–Online did not pick it up, so far. I’ll take it as a reason to be optimistic…)
Change in Climate Change council demanded
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber is arguably one of the most influential and publicly known German climate researcher. The German chancellor Angela Merkel counts on his advice. And now, in face of the recent turmoil of the United Nation’s IPCC, Schellnhuber suggested in an interview for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, that the leadership of the IPCC shouldn’t depend on political but solely on scientific criteria. Also, the IPCC report should be based exclusively on peer reviewed science.
Rajendra Pachauri should recede, said Schellnhuber, not because of the flaws in the IPCC report, but because of the mismanagement of the communication of these flaws, even if they do not touch the core results of the report. Schellnhuber is one of a couple of scientists worldwide, who call for changes within the IPCC. Gunnar Öquist, head of the Swedish science academy and one of the jurors for the Nobel prizes, said in an interview for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, that the United Nations should initiate an examination of the IPCC and draw conclusions (see the report of Financial Times Deutschland)
– Sascha Karberg
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