Comments on: Twisty’s Grody Media Korner

By: jokerine

jokerine — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 11:21:05 +0000

Well, the German goverment does try! you get the money if you stay home for three years until you can send your child to preschool. But the father of the child has to stay home at least for 3 month of that time, for you to be eligible. And yeah that money will really make me have children because you know I have spent those 6 years studying chemistry to be a stay at home mom. PhD who needs it, when you can have lots of cute babies at 25 000 each. And those idiots that suggest this money is better invested in public healthcare are just lazy sluts who don’t deserve children anyway with their liberal, self-finding crap. I mean they actually think they have a right to live their own life appart from the family, puh-lease!

(um… got carried away.)

Cheers Jokerine.

By: Pony

Pony — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 13:20:11 +0000

No nor should you expect the article to account for those things. The articles are 10 inchers. They are re-arranged press releases. Read a sampling of the media blitz on this, you’ll see the same phrases over and over. It’s also very common that this kind of advertorial happens in holiday time, when staffing is short and the marketing dept wonks know they can get them in easily, because media outlets will be looking for fodder that can be plonked in. I haven’t read the study to follow the money, but it will almost surely have been industry backed.

By: Reedy

Reedy — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 05:30:57 +0000

Thanks for the links, Pony. I’ll check them out.

I don’t understand how big pharmaceuticals factor into this - we may be talking about totally different things.

I’m certainly not naive regarding the industry’s involvement in drug research, marketing, and press, but the article I mentioned does not even mention a drug, and while I haven’t followed all of Twisty’s links, her summaries of them don’t seem to have a pharmaceutical theme. We may be drunk-driving, adulterous sex kittens who are trying to milk money from the Germans with our baby-retaining cervices, but not necessarily pill poppers (yet).

What I specifically object to in the BBC article is the dishonesty of it. At best, the study shows correlation, but it is impossible to prove causality in that kind of observational study (as opposed to experimental ones, which are of course impossible). And yet, the title of the article declares that “Housework cuts breast cancer risk.” Beyond that, there are environmental, socioeconomic, and genetic factors that need to be accounted for in order for the study to have any meaning. Maybe the original paper accounted for it, but the article doesn’t.

By: Ron Sullivan

Ron Sullivan — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 21:06:56 +0000

I agree, Mar. And if you get on top and fuck it strenuously enough, hey, win-win!

By: Mar Iguana

Mar Iguana — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 18:45:54 +0000

Fuck housework.

By: Pony

Pony — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 18:00:46 +0000

I haven’t read this yet Reedy, but it’s over on Feminist Law Professors, gratis Ann Bartow:

http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=1328
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=896239

And this factors in too. Most of those patient groups begging for drug X to be released sooner than the FDA wants to, are bought and paid shills for pharma. Pharma is also buying the articles telling us about their dire drug needs:
http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=1342

By: Pony

Pony — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 17:48:14 +0000

Reedy these stories are press release journalism. The article comes in already written by the pharmaceutical company that’s backing the research. It’s paid for. It appears to be editorial content, but it’s not.

By: Reedy

Reedy — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 16:30:45 +0000

I suppose I should add that in this article, it seems the reporter is inflating the misogyny rather than creating it. Dr. Lesley Walker sounds like a gem: “This study suggests that being physically active may also help reduce the risk and that something as simple and cheap as doing the housework can help.”

Save the gym membership fees, keep your man’s floors clean, and hold on to your tits - it’s win-win-win.

By: Reedy

Reedy — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 16:19:20 +0000

Speaking of media manipulation of scientific studies, the BBC came out with a gem this morning - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6214655.stm , headline “Housework cuts breast cancer risk.”

There’s a big problem with science writing in the media, and I think this article illustrates it perfectly - reduce an incredibly complex system to the most alarmist (and, as the above list of articles shows, the most misogynist) talking point possible and run with it.

By: Twisty

Twisty — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 15:55:33 +0000

frumiousb, I do not dispute the facts in this story, only the way they are manipulated by phallogocentric language to put women in a bad light.