The Politics of Fear Part II

Today's health and safety meeting went as follows:

Bowel cancer awareness presentation. All very laudable, but did we really need a video on how to prepare for a colonoscopy? Don't you think it might better to advise people how best to prevent this condition and be more aware of their health, rather than scaring them half to death with the details of having a camera shoved up your fundament, which is even more likely to make anyone with symptoms stick their head in the sand and ignore it than they were previously?

Swine flu. Our customers have to tell the gubbinsment how they're going to keep the oil pumping if the country is hit by a pandemic. So we have to tell them how we can support them do this. Fair enough. What we don't however need, is an H&S person with no scientific or medical qualifications telling us we should all be taking echinacea because 'it really works'. Proven against unknown strains of zoonoses eh?. There are lots and lots of news pages to be found on Google reporting 'Echinacea cures the cold blah de blah' but if you look closely you'll find that they are all reporting the same clinical trial, hardly conclusive evidence of its efficacy. For more insight into how biased the media are about reporting clinical trials and science stories in general, Ben Goldacre's Bad Science is a good place to start.

And finally, a discussion on how to enable the automatic locking on company cars to stop burglars from opening the doors and stealing bags off the seats. Because 'there have been a lot of instances of this happening at the Haudagain roundabout' (this comment from the same well informed person who can prove that herbal remedies work). Look, just because you get these scare story emails recycled once a week (with whatever the original details were removed and replaced with local locations - have you never heard of chinese whispers??), it's not the same as a police report confirming these things actually take place.

This creeping insidious fear is bad enough pervading the media, without being propagated by people who really ought to know better.

Lolcat of the day