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My scientific specialty is chronobiology (circadian rhythms and photoperiodism), with additional interests in comparative physiology, animal behavior and evolution. I am not an MD so I cannot diagnose and treat your sleep problems. As well as writing this blog, I am also the Online Discussion Expert for PLoS. This is a personal blog and opinions within it in no way reflect the policies of PLoS. You can contact me at: Coturnix@gmail.com
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Category: Media
Posted on: December 7, 2007 10:09 PM, by Coturnix
Praise where praise is deserved - Dan Abrams handled this segment perfectly, foregoing the he-said-she-said false equivalence, and even remembering to ask for the origin of the supposedly scientific study trotted out by the utterly dishonest proponent of the abstinence-only education:
Let's hope that his colleagues were paying attention and will try to emulate him in the future, whenever they have a liar on the show (both scientific and non-scientific topics, of course).
Thanks, Amanda.
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Comments
Perfectly? He never once called her a liar to her face.
She's pushing the point that the 10-year study proves her right, while we see that on its face it proves her dead wrong. He tried to get her to say whether the study is false, but she outwitted him. He should have said either the study is lying or you are lying, so which is which?
Posted by: Watt de Fawke | December 8, 2007 6:49 AM
Dan Abrams does a better job than most MSM reporters, but nevertheless, he resorts to snark, rather than information and reason, as a weapon. The "abstinence-only" proponent lies about several different aspects of the education program and its failures, and her face shows it, with the rapid blinking, the transient smirks (like Dubya's), and the shifting eyes. The abstinence-only education program is based on Bad Science with a capital BS, and a reporter who had read just one or two recent review articles from an ob-gyn or adolescent medicine program would have been able to shoot the liar down in flames.
By definition, abstinence-only education withholds information about contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, human reproductive physiology, and sexual behavior. According to two recent review articles (one by Ott and Santelli in Curr. Opin. Obstret. Gynecol., and another by Kelly and Schwartz in Int. J. Health Serv.), abstinence-only education violates the human rights of teenagers, by denying them information about HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Not to mention the fact that it utterly fails to address the needs and concerns of homosexual teens; rather, it denies their existence.
[rant] I'm disgusted at how the MSM dumbs everything down for the "masses" in the US, especially when the topics are science and technology. No wonder we're so far behind the rest of the developed world in science and math education...everything in our mainstream culture caters to the dumbest common denominator. [/rant]
Posted by: Barn Owl | December 8, 2007 7:55 AM
"Dan Abrams does a better job than most MSM reporters, but nevertheless, he resorts to snark, rather than information and reason, as a weapon."
I agree that this is problematic. While it is admirable that Abrams got the right answer, he is behaving like a strident partisan, rather than a dispassionate journalist.
Posted by: PhysioProf | December 8, 2007 5:17 PM
I don't think this topic requires a dispassionate journalist, nor that this should be a partisan issue (and if one party picks a lie as its platform, it's their problem, not ours or journalistic). As I said on Greg Laden's blog:
"I wouldn't call it "reporting" - it is a well-deserved public ridicule and exposure of dishonesty. After all, there is not much here to report: the jury's been in on this for quite a while and one of the "sides" is clearly wrong, hypocritical and dishonest. Sorta like creationists who also only deserve ridicule."
Posted by: Coturnix | December 8, 2007 10:42 PM