Questionable Oral Sex Issue

My university professor once told us that among all motifs in media, people are particularly sensitive to death and sex. Especially sex is often mentioned as a popular element “selling” products. It is also very favorite subject of lifestyle articles, mostly in magazines created specifically for either women or men. It is so usual that it hardly can be considered controversial, but in particular situations it can cause wave of strong reactions – for example when the article informs about something strongly relevant to lives of the audience members and it emphasizes the importance of considering it. This situation occurred when Daily Mail published in February 2011 the article with really striking title – “Revealed: Oral sex is ‘bigger cause of throat cancer than tobacco’ ”; as Daily Mail is a popular source of this kind of information, it spread quickly (for example Slovak article on tvnoviny.sk).

Although the Daily Mail article used a lot of citations of scientists and statistical numbers, it offered also some confusing information. The title itself is very sensational and hardly true. I have not spent much time studying natural sciences in my life; yet I know how difficult and rare is to honestly use definitive phrases in science. Words such as “proven” and “revealed” are quite popular mainly in media intended to be sold to wide range of readers interested in both news and entertainment. This can be especially applied to tabloid journalism Daily Mail, which seeks sensations and controversies. Besides “revealed”, also part “bigger cause of throat cancer than tobacco” can be considered to be somehow deceptive. There is more than one reason for this. Firstly, as the article itself informs, scientists believe that oral sex is “a bigger cause of some oral cancers than tobacco”; therefore saying that it is globally a bigger cause seems to be premature. Secondly, this result applies only to males under 50. Thirdly, the title uses “oral sex” as a synonym of human papilloma virus (HPV), which is believed to be causing oral cancer.

The article does not mention pattern of how HPV causes cancer (not even if this is known). Even more importantly, it seems not to distinguish between correlation (mere statistical relationship between two values) and causation (causal relationship), using mostly word “cause” (eight times) and “risk” (four times). Although names of the scientists and the university for which they work are stated, no link to the study abstract or similar is provided, so the source cannot be effortlessly checked. The article lacks clear and functional structure and offers relatively huge amount of statistical information considering its target audience; this leave an impression that the title is most important. After all, that is the sensation here...

Mice Turned Gay or How Media Simplify Science Too Much

Homosexuality has been a controversial topic for a long time. Today, it is definitely more tolerated than fifty years ago, but various opinions and attitudes toward it exist. This and the memory of past punishment of homosexual people makes this issue very sensitive and scientific work focusing on it may be considered controversial. Media did not miss a chance to provide their audience with some “interesting and shocking” news when Nature, a prominent scientific journal, published a study about sexual preference in mice.

The study was published online on March 23, 2011, in Nature, with not very sensational and widely-comprehensible title “Molecular regulation of sexual preference revealed by genetic studies of 5-HT in the brains of male mice”. According to the scientists who conducted the study, sexual behavior of male mice deprived of serotonin neurons increases and they mate with both male and female mice. The results did not touch directly homosexuality and connections to human sexual behavior would be quite premature, because this study was first of its kind and explained only one aspect (serotonin). Nevertheless, some media did not hesitate to make this connection and attracted readers by really shocking titles. The best example of this is probably the article called Scientists Turn Mice Gay by Depriving Them of Serotonin. This was published on Gawker web, which is popular page allowing anyone who requests and is approved for sending them news. It was only one day after the original study was resealed in Nature. Mostly the title is problematic, because scientist turned the mice rather bisexual than homosexual (gay). The body of the article informs that male mice without serotonin neurons lost their interest in females, while this is not true – they mated with both sexes. In the introduction, the author also connects the results to the mood, because low levels of serotonin are connected to depression and antidepressants raise serotonin levels. He does so by suggesting that if one feels depressed, than he might be a gay. Although this can be easily perceived as irony, the connection is puzzling and makes the results of the study appear as not serious.

Much better article was published for example by CBS, emphasizing that whether the results can be applied to humans as well as whether the mice turned bisexual or only their sexual behavior was increased, is questionable. Sadly, this approach is not prevalent in popular articles, indicating that the purpose is more to entertain than to educate and inform.