12.11.06
Mother knows best
I couldn’t sleep last night so I ended up watching night-time TV. I gave up on the car-crash telly that is the phone-in quiz show and ended up on Beeb 2 watching the Open Univ programmes.
One wound me up no end and contributed to my insomnia. It was called “Mother Knows Best” and described (or attempted to) how much conflicting information there is for mothers. The problem was that it assumed all information was equally valuable and worthy.
There were 2 examples shown. The first was a woman deciding whether to allow her kid to have the MMR jab. On the pro side she had hard research and the medical professionals pushing her to do “what’s best”. On the negative side she had free and fair, unbiased information from the likes of Jabs (angry non-scientists), her own prejudices and finally (marvellously) a homeopath. Well instantly we can tell she’s a freak as she regularly “consults” her homeopath for health information. Ah so you trust your health to an unqualified, unscientific quack? Anyway this idiot (the quack not the idiot patient) used the best scientific argument I’ve ever seen. “Well we all had measles and it didn’t hurt us did it” she said. Oh dear. The best argument we know that. The sun goes round the Earth you know. You can see it go can’t you. So a disease that can cause brain damage and death is dismissed above the science which says “it’s all fine” on the basis that “I didn’t die when I had measles”. How the hell did the makers of this show get away with that? And incidentally how the hell did the quack get away with that? Assuming they need to be registered to work (cough - that would assume there’s any scientific rigour in their area of work of course) this woman should be struck off not bloody listened to. The programme makers were supposed to be scientists and they made the basic fundamental mistake of assuming all sources of information are equally valid.
What it did put me in mind of was when I witter on about warming up being no use for preventing injury. People say “well I always have and so have my trainers” and therefore assume it’s useful. People ignore me because I’m at variance with what they think they see. “Hang the science, it’s what you’re supposed to do.”
Ah well.
Have fun.