{"id":2842,"date":"2008-08-19T10:24:50","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T10:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/08\/19\/journalists-doing-science-righ\/"},"modified":"2008-08-19T10:24:50","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T10:24:50","slug":"journalists-doing-science-righ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/08\/19\/journalists-doing-science-righ\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalists Doing Science Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via a <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/08\/popular_media_should_do_scienc.php#c1057825\">comment to an earlier post<\/a>, here&#8217;s an example of a journalist doing science right: NPR&#8217;s Sarah Varney <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=93710963\">looks at &#8220;cleansing&#8221; foot pads<\/a>, and finds them wanting.<\/p>\n<p>She took a set of the pads, tried them out, and then brought used and new pads to a laboratory at Berkeley, where chemists studied the composition to see if the greyish black goo on the pad contained heavy metal toxins, as the ads claim. They didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Then she tested an alternative hypothesis, that moisture and warmth cause the color change, by holding a clean pad over a pot of hot water. The pad turned black.<\/p>\n<p>What she did wouldn&#8217;t pass peer review, but it&#8217;s exactly the right scientific approach to the problem. This is exactly what we should be getting from our journalists when dealing with dubious scientific claims. Kudos to Sarah Varney.<\/p>\n<p>(See also <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/insolence\/2008\/08\/kinoki_detox_footpads_better_late_than_n.php\">Orac&#8217;s  comments<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via a comment to an earlier post, here&#8217;s an example of a journalist doing science right: NPR&#8217;s Sarah Varney looks at &#8220;cleansing&#8221; foot pads, and finds them wanting. She took a set of the pads, tried them out, and then brought used and new pads to a laboratory at Berkeley, where chemists studied the composition&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/08\/19\/journalists-doing-science-righ\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Journalists Doing Science Right<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,45,11,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-medicine","category-science","category-society","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}