The latest Ben Goldacre Bad Science column provides a particularly useful exercise for anyone interested in avoiding an easy mistake in data journalism: mistaking random variation for a story (in this case about some health services being worse than others for treating a particular condition): “The Public Health Observatories provide several neat tools for analysing data, and one will draw a funnel plot
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Here’s a nice idea from Bad Science blogger Ben Goldacre: a repository of news ingredients: A website that gives each news story a unique ID. Any involved party can add / upload a full press release or quote to that story’s page Anyone can add a link to a primary source Anyone can vote these up or down like on
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As promised in a comment on the first post on this topic (part 2 here), the BBC’s Steve Herrmann today responded to the debate surrounding the BBC’s linking policy (or policies). In it Steve not only invites comments on how their linking policy should develop, but also gives a valuable insight into the guidance distributed within the corporation, which includes
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A highlight of my recent visit with MA Online Journalism students to the BBC’s user generated content hub was the opportunity to ask this question posed by Andy Mabbett via Twitter: ‘Why don’t you link back to people if they send a picture in?’ (audio embedded above and here). The UGC Hub’s head, Matthew Eltringham, gave this response: “We credit
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UPDATE: The BBC have started a debate on the issue on their Editors’ Blog Ben Goldacre is experiencing understandable frustration with the BBC’s policy on linking to science papers: Jane Ashley of the website’s health team, says that when they write an article based on scientific research: “It is our policy to link to the journal rather than the article
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Ben Goldacre writes about the suing of Simon Singh by The British Chiropractic Association (you’ll see a badge on this blog on the issue), and how bloggers have helped investigate their claims. “Fifteen months after the case began, the BCA finally released the academic evidence it was using to support specific claims. Within 24 hours this was taken apart meticulously by bloggers,
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