Well, thanks to the scienceblogs.com blogs I have come across another batch of crackpot interpretations of science. Yay.

Today it is the turn of the Respectful Insolence blog to provide entertaining links. Recently there was a news item about how doing 16 – 17 hours of housework a week reduced the chances of breast cancer. In itself this is fairly innocuous and was picked up by pretty much all the UK news media. As with most “popular science” type news items the detail of the study was heavily glossed over and the conclusions were given a few PR-spins but nothing drastic.

Thankfully, Respectful Insolence gives an excellent roundup of the mis-understanding this has caused, nearly every one being the result of people not reading as far as the published abstract but picking and choosing the bits they wanted to champion their cause, no matter how crackpot (it is reassuring to see this lunatic describes himself as a “Christian Libertarian”). Read the Respectful Insolence article, it really is funny – and to balance it with a more thoughtful outlook read the blog post on palliative care.
Also, shame on the BBC. Near the bottom of their article it states:

The international authors said their results suggested that moderate forms of physical activity, such as housework, may be more important than less frequent but more intense recreational physical activity in reducing breast cancer risk.

And it is from that the BBC extracted it’s headline “Housework cuts breast cancer risk” rather than the more accurate “Moderate physical activity cuts breast cancer risk” – but where would be the news in that?

Technorati Tags: Bad Science, Nutcase, Breast Cancer, Science, Health Care