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Richard Dawkins reads his email

Observer retracts Danie Krugel story

Stephen Pritchard, the redoubtable reader's editor at the Observer, has published what amounts to a retraction of last week's story on Danie Krugel's "evidence" in the Maddie McCann case. Kudos to Stephen and to the Observer for this - it's nice to see a paper admitting it got it wrong.
It is, however, still disturbing that a newspaper would assign reporters to a case which is likely to hinge on DNA evidence who clearly have little understanding of the science of DNA. Perhaps that's down to the horrendous state of science teaching in the UK - but I would expect, even under deadline pressure, a journalist to seek a second expert source on any claim like this rather than rush for the story and get it so badly wrong.
However, Stephen's claim that the internet had "appeared to led credibility to his claims" doesn't hold all that much water. Top search result on Google for "Danie Krugel", both last week and this, is a blog post from Moonflake entitled "Midweek Cuckoo: Danie Krugel" - hardly a post to inspire confidence in Mr Krugel's credibility.
In fact, there's almost nothing on Google's first couple of pages which lends any credibility to Krugel, except for straightforward reports of the programme "Fingerprint of Fate" which was made about him (and comprehensively debunked afterwards).
The big exception is a web site, Danie Krugel Facts, which provides only positive spin on Danie's involvement in the McCann case and his other involvement in missing persons cases. The domain, incidentally, is registered to a PO Box in South Africa and judging by the page source design appears to have been done by CenterWeb, a company based in Bloemfontein - the city where Danie Krugel works, as head of security at Central University. I'd certainly love to know who's paid for that site.

Technorati Tags: Danie Krugel

Is the Observer now staffed by lunatics?

Yet another great post from Bad Science today about stories appearing in the Observer based on cranky anti-science. In this case, it's about a story on Madeleine McCann which claims that "forensic tests 'reveal traces of Madeleine's body on resort beach'".

In fact, the "forensic evidence" comes from Danie Krugel, a South African ex-policeman who claims to be able to pinpoint the location of anyone in the world using "'quantum physics', a secret energy source which nobody is allowed to know, and a strand of the missing person’s hair".

In other words, Krugel is a charlatan. That a reputable British newspaper should be taken in by this nonsense is bad enough. That it should splash a story like this in a sensitive case where, it should be remembered, a small child's life is the central theme is nothing short of a disgrace.

I haven't bought the Observer since its awful MMR story, the effect of which will be to encourage parents to adopt practices which will cause children to die. I haven't bought the Independent - in either its Sunday or weekly guises - since joined the tinfoil hat brigade with its stories on the "dangers" of WiFi. Is there a single paper left in Britain which actually has anyone with even the vaguest clue about science left on its staff, or are we doomed to have to read this kind of drivel for the rest of time?

The Durham fish oil "trial"

This time last year, if you read any of the newspapers, you'd have undoubtedly read something about the Durham Fish Oil Trial, a purported experiment which meant that thousands of children in Durham were being given fish oil supplements every day, in an effort to show that they improved brain performance. As people pointed out, though, this was anything but a scientific trial: there was no control group, and the data was very tightly held.

So what were the results of the completely unscientific "fish oil trial" in Durham last year? The answer is simple: nothing:

"This was an area of failing schools, remember, receiving a huge amount of extra effort and input of all forms. The preceding year, with no fish oil, the results – the number of kids getting 5 GCSE grades A* to C – had improved by 5.5%. And now? After the fish oil intervention? Well. This rate of improvement seems to have deteriorated spectacularly. I chased the results myself through Durham press office: this year there was only a 3.5% improvement. And this is against a backdrop of a 2% increase in GCSE scores nationally anyway. 1.5% over, in an area which was rapidly improving before, and which was receiving huge amounts of extra resourcesand input. You live by anecdata, you die by anecdata: you could argue this ‘trial’ had a negative result."

Of course, if read the current reports about the trial, you wouldn't actually know any of this. You'd think it was a massive success. But then, bad non-science backed by an effective PR company trumps real, slow but valuable research every time.

Once again, science reporting lets the public down

It's one thing to get a story wrong. Everyone does that - I've certainly done a couple of howlers in my time. It's quite another to, on being informed of your howler, try and cover it up. And, it appears, this is exactly what The Observer is doing after it's truly appaling MMR/autism front story from last weekend.

Bad Science » The Observer still misses the point, and makes a hash of apologising…:

"No. The central tenet of the Observer piece was wrong. There was no rise in prevalence found. They were fed a paper - god knows how, or by whom, god knows whether these schoolboy misunderstandings of basic methodology were made first by the Observer or by the person who fed the story to them - but they were fed a paper that used a different way to measure autism and autistic spectrum disorders, aspergers, atypical autism, and this wider net got a bigger number, as you would expect, and even that bit is not even certain, because the analysis is not complete.

How can they still not understand this? After ruminating on the subject for two weeks? It was very decent of them to finally call Dr Fiona Scott, after misrepresenting her opinions for two weeks, but could they not have phoned someone who understands basic research methodology? Are they so puerile that they think that every single person who is capable of reading and explaining that paper is part of a conspiracy to cover up MMR?

I have seen this paper, and I know how to read medical academic research papers. They would be welcome to give me a call. God knows I’ve been calling them and leaving messages, so they have my number. I’d be happy to help out. Lots of people ring me for informal advice on stuff like this. I’m always happy to chat."

The simple fact is that, thanks to this story, more parents are likely to not have their children vaccinated. This means that children will die, unnecessarily, and for what? Because a newspaper wanted a good headline. The paper had a chance to put things right, and not only has it botched it, it's botched it badly and made itself look stupid.

Given that I no longer read the Indie because of its appalling science reporting, The Observer's behaviour leaves me with even fewer options for Sunday reading. Perhaps the internet is the answer...

Cargo-Only Shuttle Possible in NASA's Future

After the last Shuttle debacle, NASA is once again looking at the Shuttle C concept, a variant of the Space Shuttle design that carries only cargo, accoring toSpace.com.