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Cure For Cancer Causing Cancer!

Newspapers like to talk about science. It helps them pretend that they are interested in facts, which is what newspapers like to do. (secret newsflash: they are mostly not at all, being instead interested in money. Shh, don’t tell them we know!) Pretending to be interested in facts is the favourite game of many news sources;

The game’s called “Say Things That Sound Like Facts Without Doing Any Research, We Need People Clicking Through Our Site To We Can Show Numbers To Our Clients And Get Ad Revenue, We Don’t Have Time To Check, Hey Maybe I Can Pay You In Exposure Instead Of Money”. It’s a catchy name, but the winner of the game is nobody and Rupert Murdoch, while the loser is everybody, always.

One of the worst examples of bad facts is in Science Journalism, particularly in the subgroup of Exciting Cancer Headlines. Much science journalism looks a lot like neither science nor journalism. Its characteristics are a slick mash of clickbait, bald assertions driven by a desire for clarity in a world full of messy complexities, and people’s incredibly high confidence in their own incredibly low ability to understand science. The Guardian called this “infotainment”, though they would, woudn’t they. We exist in a world where we are much more likely to engage in an argument on twitter based on an understanding of a subject gained through twitter than we are to ferret out facts from any source other than Wikipedia, let alone test those facts in any meaningful way.

This is extra true for Cancer headlines. Every week we read a headline, skim the first sentence, and pass on as fact some ghastly combination of bad science and bad journalism. Did you know that bacon causes cancer, but it's not actually bacon, it's nitrites in things like bacon and also you should probably eat only bacon? Green tea cures cancer, but also Antioxidants in green tea can cause cancer. Stress about cancer causes cancer. Angelina Jolie cures cancer.

You might want to know whether the science article you're reading is meaningful or complete garbage. Or you might not, I don't know you. Anyway, if you do want to know, here are five boxes to check when you see an exciting cancer headline:

1) Is it an exciting cancer headline?

If so, it is probably a priori bullshit. (This is Latin for straight up bullshit) Science is a slow and painfully incremental process. There are very few eureka moments, and more than half of them are the kind of eureka moments YOU get in the middle of the night, write down, look at in the morning and realise they are complete nonsense.

Also, if it says ‘Cancer’, and doesn’t mention which kind of cancer, that’s like someone told you they bought “a clothes”, without mentioning whether the clothes is a hat, an underpants, or a pair of Manolo Blahniks (I think this is a kind of shoe?)

2) Sex or Death? 

If the headline of the article involves your boners, your wallet or your life, it’s sure-fire foursquare clickbait bullshit. Newspapers are businesses. That means, if something sounds sexy (in newsman speak, death is sexy, and money is also sexy. Newsmen have some messed up parties) Sexiness lowers the bar for what’s publishable. 

Enough sexiness will smooth over the logical cracks of the wildest assertion. (Sexiness causes cancer! Enough orgasms cure cancer! Watching pornography is cancer!) An exciting headline with a pinch of factiness will beat a true ‘minor correlation observed in long term diabetes patients with insulin use’ headline hands down.

3) Is it actually a study?

Is the study they’re citing actually a study by scientists in science conditions or is it a survey where some people asked some people some stuff? If it is a study, who was in the study? How many people were in the study? How long did the study go for? What did they do in the study and is there any distinction made between causation and correlation? (Eg. I like to watch Vin Diesel movies. The majority of people who like Vin Diesel movies are teenage boys. Therefore, I have an elevated chance of becoming a teenage boy. Oh man, I can’t wait. I’ve always felt like my socks were too monofunctional)

Remember, even if they did do a study and it was published in a peer review journal, about 60% of statistically significant study outcomes can’t be replicated. (ask me where I got that figure, go on.)

4) Who did the research? 

There’s a big difference between Prof Stephen Hawking (may he rest in space) and the guy down the pub, though they both have strong opinions about the nature of the universe. I know who I’m going to be taking my universe advice from, and it’s not Stan-with-the-wet-patch-on- his-tracksuit-pants. The same goes for my science. I want A-grade pure science right in my eyeballs, and if I have to ask my med-student friends to borrow their online science journal login details so I can check myself, I would… definitely not ask them to engage in such an unethical misuse of university resources! (though if you have a science journal subscription, DM me)

5) Is it a study on rats? 

Although rats are intelligent and share much of their DNA with people, they are also rats, and not people. So any rat study, though it may prove something about rats is, by definition, quite a long way from proving anything about people. Unless you are a ratperson, in which case, your life is probably quite difficult, but cancer treatment should be relatively straightforward.

Cancer is scary, and we want there to be a simple answer, a single factor, or some way we can feel like we’re in control of the world. The fact is, even with cancer and despite our reckless consumption of things like fruit juice, the average lifespan has been extended out of sight by modern medical technology, and in developed countries, our quality of life, nutrition, hygiene and not-being-stabbed is vastly better than most of the kings and emperors in human history. 

So stop whingeing and enjoy your coffee or bread or blanket made of plastic. I’m all for a thrilling headline, but maybe we should deploy this kind of excitement with a little more care, lest we actually make a significant advance in medical science, and are faced with the boy-who-cried-wolf scenario. 

Nobody will be able to weed the actual facts out from the masses of exciting cancer fake facts, and we’ll all ignore it and get cancer and die. Yeah, you heard me. Cancer Headlines May Cause Cancer.