Perspectives 1384 www.thelancet.comVol 376 October 23, 2010 A couple of weeks ago the press reported, with impressive unanimity, that “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is genetic”. To the rolling of publicists’ drums (and geneticists’ eyes) came the news that some children behave outrageously because they inherit damaged DNA. The Daily Mail —the UK equivalent of Fox News—came out with a lengthy and hand-wringing piece entitled “Are some children just born bad?”, which told dreadful tales of uncontrollable teenagers and claimed that “previous thinking was flawed and that some children, through no fault of the parents, are simply bad seeds”. The behaviour of the media when faced with modern biology is hyperactive with a deficit of attention to fact—but geneticists (or their employers) are often to blame for aggravating the disorder. Journalists are as addicted to press releases as children are to fizzy drinks (themselves sometimes claimed to cause its symptoms). The Wellcome Tr ust, usually a judicious source of scientific information, helped fund the research. Its publicity circular hailed “the first direct evidence that attention- deficit hyperactivity disorder is a genetic condition”. With a slurp and a belch the papers swallowed it and the headlines were born. Biology is rarely pure and never simple. The Human Genome Project has turned genetics from a simple repast based on peas to something more like pea soup. The public relations people seem not to have noticed. As a result, and to nobody’s surprise, the scientific paper itself, published in these august pages, was less confident about its findings than was the press release (and even less so than The Daily Mail ). The Cardiff University group found a two-fold greater incidence of “indels”—DNA insertions and deletions—among a group of 400 or so such children than in more than 1000 matched controls: a result that was statistically significant. The discovery was less simple than it appeared; as the Surrey University biologist Johnjoe McFadden pointed out, the finding could be restated to emphasise that most children with the condition had no detectable inborn abnormality, and that of every 100 children who inherit such a mutation, only a few will show signs of the disease. Most science stories nowadays come from press releases, a tool once alien to the academic trade but now rife. Scientists should take warning and should at least make the effort to read each puff before it enters the blurbosphere. The lessons from the Bad Seed school ofscience reporting are stark, manifold, much reiterated, and widely ignored. I have never heard the word “breakthrough” uttered in a laboratory except ironically (of course that could just be because of the laboratories I have worked in). To quote Lord Salisbury on the fulminations of 19th-century publicity seekers, “You should never trust experts. Ifyou believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.” False fears are bad enough, but false hopes are even worse and biologists often generate them. That B word is sometimes justified. The recent spectacular success in targeting a somatic mutation borne by around half of all patients with malignant melanoma certainly deserves the accolade. But, even there, was it wise for a certain distinguished biologist publicly to agree that this was a “a penicillin moment for cancer”? A dose of insipid common sense—or even a dash of cynicism— would make for better medicine. The spread of Negative Chicken Little Syndrome (NCLS), the endless reiteration of the message that DNA tests, targeted drugs, stem cells, or gene therapy have stopped the sky from falling is a The art of medicine Bad seeds, bad science, and fairly black cats? G i a n l u c a F a b r i z i o / G e t t y I m a g e s See Editorial page 1364 See Articlespage 1401
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8/8/2019 Bad seeds, bad science, and fairly black cats