Question: why did you want to test newspaper articles?

David Nunan answered on 9 Nov 2015:

Hi Poppy,

Thanks for your question but it looks like I may not have been clear enough in my profile, sorry. I don’t test the newspaper articles as such. When a new health headline emerges I look into the research behind it to see whether or not we should believe or trust it. I think this is important because a lot of people believe what they read in the news and this can have a big impact on how we act about our health and lifestyle.

An example of this was the Mumps Measles and Rubella (MMR) vaccination scare story. A group of scientists published some research and said the MMR vaccination caused children to have autism and other behavioural problems. Because of the headlines in the news related to this, a lot of parents stopped giving their children the MMR jab. So this meant that more children were at risk of developing measles, mumps and rubella, all of which are nasty diseases and can sometime be deadly, because they had not been vaccinated based on the media reporting of this study.

It later turned out that the scientists had lied to us all and there actually wasn’t a link between the MMR jab and autism. So in this case it wasn’t the fault of the news and media but sometimes they struggle to understand the science and report it incorrectly. Further studies have confirmed that there is no link between MMR jab and autism and now parents have started getting their children vaccinated again.

Hopefully you can see why checking what people are being told about health and medicine in the media is really important!

Have a look at this link which nicely shows you what I do and what I teach others to do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUpd2HJHUt8