By Diana Holbourn
Child Genius Becky Learns, Teaches and Entertains a Lot During her First Months of University
Book one of the online Becky Bexley series. Chapter 4 continued.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
(To recap: The previous page ended with Becky talking about bias in parts of the media.)
Then Becky said, "Mind you, I've heard that there can sometimes be problems because news outlets are doing their best not to be biased! It's because they can give airtime to points of view that really don't deserve it!
"I heard there was a big scandal not long ago because of the way the media had reported something, not just the tabloids or anything, but broadcasters that have got a reputation for being respectable like the BBC, that have got policies where they try to cover news stories and differences of opinion fairly, by giving the same amount of airtime to each point of view, so they don't come across as being biased. But the problem is that the policy has sometimes meant they've given an equal amount of airtime to people who seem respectable who are making claims about things that aren't true and that could even be harmful, as they have to scientists criticising the claims, and it's ended up sounding as if scientific opinion's divided between scientists who believe them and ones who don't, since the people making false claims can give the impression that they found out what they're claiming scientifically.
"So say a doctor makes a claim on a news programme about how he's discovered that a certain vaccine causes autism, the BBC might get a scientist in to give their opinion on it, and there might be an argument on air between the doctor and the scientist, that might end with the audience not really being clear about who's right and who's wrong; and then the programme might feature contributions from members of the public, like mums whose children developed autism right after they were vaccinated; and they've got no way of knowing it was just a coincidence; and a lot of the listeners hearing it will start worrying that their own children could develop the same problems if they take them to get vaccinated.
"So this dedication to fairness has caused a problem. So the BBC were criticised, and they realised there ought to be more to reporting science stories than just trying to be fair; they realised it would be better to check them out first with scientists who really knew what they were talking about, who could look at any study they were thinking of reporting on and say whether it had been well or badly done, which would give some idea of how much the results could be trusted; and then they thought they would only report on stories that scientists thought might be worth reporting on, and not worry about giving fair amounts of airtime to stories that didn't deserve it.
"Mind you, I think that sometimes it can still happen that people with bad or fraudulent ideas can be given more airtime than they deserve.
"But anyway, I think that when stories reported anywhere are to do with things that affect people's lives in big ways, people ought to be especially careful to find out more before believing them, like the time this scandal happened, when a doctor really did claim that a vaccine immunising kids against measles and a couple of other diseases, called the MMR vaccine, could cause autism, and lots of parents got scared and didn't take their kids to the doctors to get the vaccine, and then a lot of their children caught the diseases they hadn't been vaccinated against, and a small minority of them had complications from it and got really seriously ill.
"It turned out that the study the man had done was very badly done, and it didn't show what he'd claimed it did after all. In fact, I read it was even called an 'elaborate fraud' by a leading medical journal. There were only about twelve people in the study, so in reality it would be impossible to know whether it applied to the general population as a whole, since the kids in the study might all have had something else in common that was really what caused their disease or something, such as if they all lived close to a chemical plant, and toxins from it were being breathed in by people in the area, and pregnant women in the area were at risk of getting enough of it in their systems to damage their unborn babies or something. And that was only one problem!
"It's thought the doctor who did the study deliberately faked medical records, because he was bringing out his own measles vaccine and wanted to discredit the one that was mostly used, hoping that his own would be bought instead and he'd make lots of money. That would be on top of the nearly half a million pounds it's claimed he was paid by lawyers who wanted him to be an expert witness in a case where some parents wanted to sue vaccine manufacturers, because they were convinced the MMR vaccine had caused children of theirs to get autism. In reality the symptoms had probably just appeared at around the time they were vaccinated so the parents thought there was a connection."
Some of the students were shocked that a doctor would do that. But one said, "You know, it's funny: I read something the other day on an Internet forum, where someone who seems to pride himself on having a good science education was trying to quash the arguments of someone who said they believed vaccines might sometimes be risky and can cause autism. ... Well, that wasn't the funny thing, obviously. I mean, it's understandable that people get angry when people are spreading points of view that might put people at risk, say if they try to discourage people from having their kids vaccinated, and it means that if some people really are discouraged from doing that, some of their kids might get ill because they get diseases they wouldn't have got if they'd been vaccinated. But it seems from a few things I've read on Internet forums that sometimes, the people debating with them get so worked up, they aren't really thinking carefully, so they say things that don't sound any more sensible than the things the people they're arguing with are saying!
"I mean, you might think it sounds bitchy of me to say that. Maybe it is, I suppose. But some people really seem to pride themselves on knowing better than the people they're arguing with, and say things to insult them, as if they think the people are idiots, and then they say things that don't sound any more intelligent!
"I mean, this thing that sounded funny to me happened after someone said parents should be careful about getting their children vaccinated because so many children dying or getting ill straight after being vaccinated couldn't be a coincidence, and if people looked at the ingredients list on vaccinations, it would put them right off.
"Someone asked the person a good question, which was what actual evidence there is that lots of children are dying or getting ill after being vaccinated, beyond the claims of a few conspiracy theorists. I mean, just because some person claims that a thing's true, it doesn't mean it is. The person warning about vaccines didn't come up with any evidence that was convincing in reply to the question. And I'm sure the media would be on to it if there was something seriously wrong with vaccines.
"I actually did hear someone say once that autism symptoms can appear in children right after they're vaccinated, but they said it's because it's routine for toddlers to be scheduled to be vaccinated at the time in their lives that just happens to be the time when autism symptoms tend to start showing up.
"Anyway, this person I mentioned who thinks he knows a lot more about science than the average person - well, he probably does actually, since I think he's an engineer or something - but he said something like, 'As the father of a high-functioning autistic boy who I love, I'm quite offended by these people who think lots of people should risk getting ill to supposedly prevent people like him from existing!'
"That made me smile. I thought, 'Don't be daft! People aren't saying they'd rather he didn't exist, as if someone could come up with a cure for autism and he could get cured, and all of a sudden he'd disappear in a puff of smoke! These anti-vaccination people just think it would be nicer if people didn't get autism in the first place! But those people would still exist!'"
The students sniggered. But one of the group said, "Actually, it might have made a bit more sense than it sounds as if it did. Someone on a forum I post on said he's got mild autism, and he didn't like it that someone else was getting excited about scientific research into cures for autism, because he said autism could bring personality benefits that he was worried would be eliminated if he was cured. Someone asked him what he meant, but he didn't say.
"But I got curious about what he might mean, and I found an article about a study that was done, that said some people with autism were interviewed about whether any characteristics of autism benefited them, and some said they did, although some were things that could be good in some circumstances and cause a problem in others. One of those was paying more than usual attention to detail, and being really keenly aware of some things, and being easily able to absorb their attention in them for a long time, which would mean they could maybe appreciate things like the beauty of nature scenes more than most people, or concentrate a lot more intensely than most people could on tasks like intricate computer coding at work; but they could be easily over-stimulated by the amount of detail they noticed and get stressed by it in other circumstances, such as when they were walking through crowds of people milling around in the street.
"Mind you, there's a lot of variation in the abilities of people with autism - some are affected so severely they can't even talk, while others have their lives disrupted in much more minor ways, and a lot of people's problems are somewhere between the two.
"But some of the autistic people who were interviewed said they had really good memories, that seemed much better than a lot of people's.
"So maybe some people with autism worry that if they were cured, it would mean they wouldn't have such good memories, or wouldn't be so good at concentrating on writing computer programs for hours on end, and things like that. I'm not sure.
"But maybe that means that when that engineer said he was angry that some people didn't want his son to exist, he really meant he wouldn't exist in his current form if he was cured. ... Well, hopefully he won't exist in his current form in years to come anyway, because that would mean he didn't grow any more, and still had the personality of a ten year-old when he was twenty-one or something; but you know what I mean. Maybe the engineer was thinking that he had abilities that wouldn't exist if he was cured. Who knows!
"Not that autism's a good thing to have! I read that people with autism can have quite a few different kinds of problems, not all the same ones, since some people's autism's much more severe than other people's; but some of the symptoms can include things like not being able to play make-believe games, but instead regularly obsessing over certain details of things for hours, like not wanting to play with a toy bus the way most kids would, but just being obsessed about the way a wheel turns round and round, or being obsessed with the way a light switch turns on and off, and wanting to spend ages turning it on and off, and things like that; and another symptom in some people can be that they get really upset or aggressive if their routine changes in any way, since they like things to be the same all the time. So parents can have trouble if they want to do anything different from the norm.
"And some kids with autism can be slow at learning how to talk, or in the worst cases, not learn how to talk at all. And low-functioning ones can find it hard to grasp what people are saying about what they want to do, unless they explain things with a lot of basic details, telling them exactly what to expect and why things are going to be the way they are.
"And some can repeat the same phrases over and over again, not to try to communicate, but just because they like the sound of them or something. And they can spend a lot of time making unusual body movements, like flapping their hands and rocking.
"And there are other symptoms as well. Low-functioning people with autism have to be looked after all their lives."
One student said with a hint of a wry smile, "The thing is that these anti-vaccination people might want to stop kids getting autism, but they don't seem to mind people going down with all kinds of other diseases - the ones vaccinations have wiped out in this country!"
The one who'd been talking before said, "Actually, someone else on the forum said something like that. ... Actually I don't know if any of the anti-vaccination people are so extreme they'd like every single one of the vaccinations to be banned, even ones for diseases that kill most of the people who get them. ... Mind you, even some of the diseases people think of as more minor can kill some of the people who get them, or damage unborn babies in the womb if their mums get them. But what this engineer bloke said just made me think to myself, 'We ought to be careful when we're trying to argue with people who are saying things that sound silly to us, in case we accidentally say something that sounds as daft as what they're saying does!'
"But anyway, another thing this engineer said was that he thought it was stupid that there were people who ignored all the scientific evidence and just believed scare stories. He said, 'These people have such small minds!'
"I thought, 'Yeah right, you're really going to persuade them by insulting them like that!' ... Note the sarcasm! I suppose people who don't like the idea of some vaccines think that diseases like measles normally only last a few weeks, whereas autism's lifelong. Maybe most people don't realise that in a small minority of people, measles can have serious complications, like meningitis. I read that it can make pregnant women who get it miscarry, or their babies can end up stillborn. And Rubella's thought of as only a mild disease, because it doesn't cause many problems for children who get it; but actually, if pregnant women get it, it can cause serious problems for their unborn babies; I actually know someone who's about fifty years old, and she's been blind since she was born, because her mum got rubella when she was pregnant with her. She said it happened to quite a lot of people in those days.
"So it must be a bad idea to stop giving children vaccines. It won't be just the children who haven't been vaccinated who are at risk of getting the diseases they haven't been vaccinated against; if they do get them, anyone they come into contact with will be at risk of getting them too, if they haven't been vaccinated themselves, or maybe if they were vaccinated a long time ago so it's worn off. Or if they're sitting in hospital waiting rooms with other patients, waiting for a doctor to treat the disease they've got because they weren't vaccinated against it, and there are patients there with weakened immune systems, for reasons like that they're having chemotherapy, they could catch those diseases, and they could do them a lot of harm, since their immune systems won't be so good at fighing them off as people's normally are. And then those diseases might spread to more and more people. Enough people need to be vaccinated to make sure a disease doesn't start coming back."
One of the others said, "Yes, I wish people would take those diseases more seriously. I don't think we realise how lucky we are, at least in the Western world, to be able to live our lives without the constant risk that some of us might suddenly be struck down by a horrible painful disease, like smallpox of diphtheria, and might even be dead within days! I'd hate to have lived in the days before vaccines were invented!
"I read about a protest group that was set up to oppose laws making it compulsory to get children vaccinated, whose leader said something like, 'I know vaccines are designed to protect children, but you can't trust that they're safe, because they're made by the same company that tries to sell addictive painkilling drugs to children that they can overdose on and die!'
"I immediately thought, 'Hang on, there are a few things wrong with that argument!' I mean, I don't know if there was more to what she said that made it sound more sensible than what the article reported, but if that really was what she thought was a good reason for opposing vaccines, it's daft! I mean, for one thing, it's like saying, 'I don't trust humans. I don't want anything to do with them. After all, Hitler was a human!'"
One of the students grinned and quipped, "Well, that last bit's arguable. ... Well OK, maybe not, more's the pity. I mean, if Hitler had been a dolphin or something instead of a human, he wouldn't have been able to do what he did. Maybe he would have sparked off some serious dolphin wars in the middle of the ocean or something; but I suppose it's only because he was a human that he was able to cause human wars."
They tittered.
Then the one who'd been talking before said, "Yeah. Well anyway, about the leader of this anti-vaccine group, another reason I thought her argument sounded silly was that any drug's dangerous if you misuse it! You could probably kill yourself by overdosing on aspirin if you took enough of it! ... Well, a cartload maybe, I don't know. Maybe a lot less.
"But it is true that some drug companies have actively tried to persuade doctors to prescribe their brand of painkiller to people even though they knew the dangers of people getting addicted to it - although that's still different to actually 'selling it to children'! But just because one thing they sell can be dangerous if it's misused, it doesn't mean everything they sell must be! That's like saying, 'My dad told me not to cross the road when a car's coming; but I won't take that advice, because he can't be trusted, because he drinks too much sometimes and hits me with a belt for talking back to him; how's that for being a sensible person! If he isn't sensible, why should I trust that anything he says is sensible!'
"I mean, you know; the things people do or say have to be judged on their own merits, at least when most of what they do is actually beneficial, and they're not trying to scam people or anything! You can't reject everything a drug company makes just because some of the things they've made have harmed people, at least when they make things that have a proven track record of actually saving the Western world from hideous diseases that would cause people to get nasty symptoms and die in a lot of pain, or be disabled for life! I mean, take polio, for example. I heard there are people refusing to be vaccinated against that, as if they think it would be much better to risk getting the disease, even though in its most severe form, it can cause permanent paralysis and breathing problems, and even death!
"Mind you, I don't know if it would be possible to change someone's mind by arguing with them like that. They might just get annoyed with you. I heard a couple of things on the radio about effective ways of persuading people of things. One said that when people deny or oppose things like climate change and vaccinations, - things where their beliefs go against what most scientists believe, it'll likely be because they have some more emotional reason for believing what they do, something to do with the values they hold, as if they really want to believe it, so they believe it first and then look for reasons to believe it afterwards, or they're naturally drawn to one side far more than the other. So anyone who tries to convince them that the reasons they give for believing what they do are wrong won't change their minds, no matter how much evidence they show them, because they'll still have their own personal reasons for believing it, so they won't want to take in what the other person's saying.
"So it said that a better way of convincing them will be to try to persuade them that the opposite point of view is actually even more in line with their values than what they believe is. Here's the kind of thing I mean:
"It said that two common reasons why people oppose vaccines are that they don't like the idea of things that aren't natural being put into their systems, because they believe that medical treatments should be natural as much as possible, and they feel icky about having things they think of as impure injected into them, especially things made by drug companies out to make money, and also they believe in having the freedom to choose whether or not to do things the government wants them to do, so they object to being told to go for vaccines by the government, because they think people ought to have the right to make up their own minds about how they live their lives and what they do for their children, and that the government has no business telling them what to do.
"I heard that a way of trying to persuade people who believe the first thing to change their minds is saying that vaccines aren't a toxic drug, but a way of stimulating their natural immune defences to fight off diseases the natural way, and that they actually make it less likely that they'll have to have a lot of unnatural drugs put into their systems, because once their immune systems know how to fight those diseases off, they won't be at risk of getting them and ending up in hospital, where they might have to be given powerful chemical drugs for days or weeks to kill the diseases.
"And someone who really values their freedom of choice might be persuaded that vaccines are a good thing after all if they're told that vaccines can actually protect them against seriously losing their freedom of choice, because they can protect them against diseases that might otherwise put them in hospital for days or weeks, where they'll be given drugs that they're expected to take whether they like it or not if they want to stay alive, and they'll be too ill to get out of bed and do whatever they choose, stuck there against their will because the disease has taken their freedom of choice away by making them so ill."
"And another thing I heard about ways of changing the minds of some people who believe harmful things like that vaccinations are bad said it helps if you can start by complimenting them on anything you can think of that might at least be something good about them, or if you seem understanding about the reasons they believe what they do, for instance saying to someone who refuses to get their child vaccinated when a doctor tells them to, or who's spreading misleading information about the risks of vaccines - if they're doing it in all innocence, not realising it's false information, - that they must want to protect people if they care about people being damaged by vaccines, and it's nice that they care. If you try to show some understanding of their possible motives and seem sympathetic like that, they might drop their defences a bit, because they'll know you're not hostile to them, so they might be more open to persuasion than they would be if they were on the defensive, because they thought they were up against someone who just wanted to have a go at them.
"After all, you don't know why they might have got to think the way they do."
The student who'd been talking about the engineer arguing about vaccines on a forum said, "Yeah, that's true. There was a bit of a whoops moment when that person on the forum said vaccines might be risky to have, and this engineer said people who thought like that have small minds, because the one criticising vaccines said he'd got to think like that after he'd had cancer, and he'd been given the flu vaccine after he'd gone into remission, and then he'd immediately felt ill, and the doctor said he thought the vaccine had caused it, and that's what started him looking into other people's bad experiences after having vaccines.
"The thing is that you never know whether someone who's warning against vaccines is just an ignorant twerp, or whether they've had some bad experience that's scared them into believing that things like that might sometimes be dangerous, no matter how misguided their point of view is; I mean, if the flu vaccine affected this man on the forum a lot more badly than it would most people, it might have been because chemotherapy can suppress the immune system for a while, so maybe his immunity had been temporarily damaged quite a bit, so even weakened germs in the vaccine had a chance to cause trouble; I don't know. I'm not sure how the vaccine works, so I don't know if that can really happen. Mind you, you'd have thought that if it can, a doctor wouldn't have recommended that someone had the vaccine just after they'd been on it, unless they thought it would be very much the lesser of two evils, since getting the flu with a weakened immune system might mean it did much more serious damage than it normally would.
"But anyway, I'm just saying it's probably best to at least not get too insulting to people with ideas you think are harmful straightaway."
One student said, "It wouldn't necessarily have to be either that someone spreading ideas like that was ignorant to have an opinion like that or they'd had a bad experience. One thing is that they might be someone who's been scared into believing things that aren't true. I mean, say if there's a news story about some doctor who's making a claim that a certain vaccine causes autism in some kids or something, and this person's got a baby that'll need to be vaccinated one day. They're bound to want to find out more about the story. So they might go online to find information about it. But if they're worried, it'll be far more natural for them to think, 'Gosh, I must find out more about these claims about the vaccine', than, 'I wonder what evidence there is for and against those claims', so they're far more likely to look for the evidence that something bad's happening than the evidence that nothing bad is, and that might mean they're more likely to find articles by anti-vaccination people who are trying to convince people they're bad.
"And then when they're looking, imagine if they come across two articles, one called, 'Vaccine horror! Nineteen parents tell their tragic tales', and the other one called, 'A Painstaking Scientific Analysis of the Results of Research Into the Claims of Adverse Side Effects of the MMR Vaccine', which one do you think they'll choose to read? ... Well, apart from the fact that not all the title of that scientific one would be displayed by a search engine because it would be too long, so it would be more likely to mystify them by saying, 'A Painstaking Scientific Analysis of the Results of Research Into the ...'. But a title about parents telling tragic stories would be far more likely to stir up feelings of concern than the other one, so they'd likely want to read that, and they might think the science one sounded too boring to bother with.
"But if the article about the stories comes from the people making the false claims, then as well as the stories, it might have warnings in it about a supposedly scientific study that had found that vaccines can do harm. So unless they were wary about possibly being misinformed unless they found out how reliable the science behind any claims was, they might get misled. I mean, all the stories in the article might be absolutely true - like if all the parents say their kids started showing symptoms of autism just after they were vaccinated, so they've always suspected the vaccine had something to do with it; but the misinformation might come from the organisation or person trying to convince everyone there's a definite link; they might say they've proved there is one, and they might be using the parents by getting their stories so they'll get more publicity. So it might convince anyone reading their article that there really is a link.
"And then the person looking for information might start wondering what else there is about vaccines they don't know. And if they put search terms like, 'dangers of vaccines' into Google, maybe the first things that come up will be claims that they really can be dangerous, because an organisation trying to convince people of that will be more likely to write an article called 'Dangers of Vaccines' than a scientist trying to convince people there aren't normally any dangers. ... Mind you, a reputable organisation like the NHS might have articles with titles like, 'Are There Any Dangers of Vaccines' or something, so that's not necessarily true.
"Mind you, having said all that, it doesn't mean that all vaccines are definitely safe for everyone; I mean, there have been problems with a few, like when there was a swine flu vaccine that caused narcolepsy in a small minority of people. I'd hate to have a sleep disorder like that! Imagine not being able to stay awake! I mean, in the most boring lectures, it might be an advantage, but not the rest of the time! ... Actually, I suppose if I did have that, an argument with someone might come in handy, as a way to help keep me awake! Maybe I'd want to pretend to believe something offensive and daft, like that all vaccines are bad, to get me into arguments!"
A student called Melissa said, "I had an argument with someone on an Internet forum not long ago. Nothing to do with vaccines. But it shows how daft arguments can get once they really get going. Mind you, it gave me a bit of a laugh in the end, actually. It happened because this man made what seemed to me like a horrible crass joke when someone else said she was feeling suicidal. I criticised him for it, and he really didn't like that, and started accusing me of all kinds of silly things. So an argument started. But then I decided to make a joke of it, and I pretended I was explaining to the other people on the forum what it was really all about. Do you want to hear about it?"
The other students smiled and said things like, "Yeah, why not!"
So Melissa said, "OK, here's what I told them. I said:
"'In case you don't know what started the argument, it kicked off when someone asked the board what would be a good way of committing suicide, and he thought it was funny, for some reason, and suggested something gruesome. When I criticised him for it, he said another great way to commit suicide would be to stab someone who was arguing with him in the heart with a knife covered in hemlock, and then to greedily and heroically suck the hemlock out of the stab wound. What kind of person says stuff like that!
"'I'll call this man Nightshirt. It's close enough to his real username to do.
"'Anyway, I told Nightshirt I thought his suicide jokes were sick. But it seems he took the criticism to be a gross and unforgivable affront to his manly pride, coming as they did from a girlie. He just couldn't tolerate it! So he began to splatter the poor little thread with all kinds of accusations, including one he seems to use time and time again, for no logical reason - his pet favourite accusation of 'projection'. The reason he keeps using it is because he's afflicted with an unfortunate condition known to psychologists of the obscure as projection accusation addiction, a condition in which the accusation has to be wheeled out at least once during every argument he ever has with anyone, or he'll get a craving to use it that'll drive him crazy. In fact, maybe he's sometimes resisted the urge to use it, and that's why he's a bit crazy already ... maybe.
"'Anyway, he did use it on me, for no reason I could think of. He certainly didn't explain the chain of reasoning that went on in his brain, - if any even did, - to bring him to the conclusion that it was an appropriate thing to accuse me of. So I thought he must be using the word when he didn't really know what it meant, and said his definition of projection was rather eccentric. He was splutteringly angry that I should do such a thing, but actually he ought to have been grateful, because the word I used was actually a polite playful euphemism for what I was too polite to say - that his use of the word must be stark raving bonkers!
"'Anyway, he accused me of lots of other things besides that. They all seemed to be accusations he'd just plucked out of the air, as if he'd tossed coins or stuck a pin in a dictionary with his eyes closed to decide what to accuse me of, because none of them really seemed to make sense. But when I argued back, he considered it to be such an offence to his masculine pride that he became enraged, and then he became outraged too! He hurled some more accusations around with gusto! If the thread had been a lounge and the accusations had been banana skins, he would have flung them all around the place and made a terrible mess! He wouldn't have even offered to clear them up afterwards, especially since he probably thinks of clearing up such things as plates, cups, banana skins, and the consequences of flinging accusations around, as women's work.'
"(Actually, to be fair, he doesn't really seem to be the kind of man who prides himself on being a macho man or anything. I just thought it would be fun to accuse him of that kind of thing, because of the jokes he'd made. Later on, a while after or argument had died down, he told me he didn't mind too much about the way I'd made him out to be in my story, since he'd said some horrible things about me himself that weren't really fair.)
"But anyway, when I was telling the story, I carried on, 'I replied to his banana skin-like accusations, and he must have felt himself to have been unbearably insulted again, and typed more accusations furiously in response! But as he did, he felt sure he was giving me the hugely satisfying backside-wupping he thought I thoroughly deserved for daring to criticise his accusations; so as he typed, feeling an odd combination of fury and satisfaction, he swelled up with manly pride at the thought!
"'Unfortunately for him, he thought the thought so much that he swelled and swelled and swelled, until he was about five times the size he normally is. He painfully hit his head on the ceiling as he shot up. His stomach suddenly shot outwards till it bulged enormously, crashing into his desk on its way to full bulgingdom, half knocking it over, and toppling a lot of his things off it. He was annoyed at having to pick them all up off the floor, but since his arms had suddenly grown much longer than usual, he could just stay where he was and reach down and pick them all up without effort.
"'He was very pleased, and carried on typing, now with a weird combination of pleasure and fury. Since his fingers were five times the length they normally are, he felt as if that just had to mean he'd be able to type five times as fast, and five times as much, so he decided to type five times as many weird accusations against me as he would have done normally.
"'As he furiously typed faster and faster in a blissful haze of pleasure-rage, smoke began to belch from his keyboard. Or at least, to a casual observer, that might have been what it looked like. What was actually happening was that the smoke was billowing from his mouth and nostrils as he exhaled, and then wafting over his keyboard. More great belches of smoke flooded his room as he typed, obscuring his vision, till he made more and more errors, and had to do more and more editing. Whenever he edits one of his posts, which he often does, it's because more smoke has started billowing from his nostrils and mouth, stopping him seeing what he's doing properly, so he makes mistakes that he has to correct.
"'He began to worry that if he got more furious, the smoke would heat up and set his keyboard ablaze. So he decided to hold his breath, hoping that when the smoke cleared, he'd be able to type again without making so many errors. Also he'd heard that holding the breath is a good fury-cooling device. At least, he'd heard people advising others to take a deep breath when they were angry, and he didn't see what the point could possibly be of taking a deep breath if you weren't going to hold it, but were just going to waste it all by letting it go again. So he held it, and held it, and waited.
"'Unfortunately for him though, the immense pressure put on the smoke by it not being allowed to belch out of his nose and mouth caused it to suddenly back up forcefully right into his brain, obscuring his thinking. He didn't let that bother him though, and started furiously typing again, relieved that the smoke was no longer all over his keyboard. But because his thinking was so unclear, his accusations became even more wacky than they'd been before!
"'He didn't realise just how strange they were getting though, and instead, he was so pleased with his typing and the thought that he was giving me an even more thorough backside-wupping than he had before that his manly pride made him swell up even more! But he was dismayed when this time, his fingers became five times as thick as they had been before instead of longer. That meant he couldn't type any more, so he had to stop.
"'So the argument came to a stop once again, as I laughed at his accusations. That caused his manly pride to subside in dramatic fashion, as he was embarrassed by realising I thought they were just silly and wrong, and he suddenly shrunk to normal size again. He even stopped breathing smoke.
"'He decided the whole effort had exhausted him, so he went to have a lie down to recover. Outrageously though, he didn't think to thank me for being brought back down to normal size, which I think is very rude. I mean, just think what a fate I saved him from! His head had become so big that it might not have fitted through his front door! And just imagine how people would have stared at him if he had actually managed to get out!
"'Oh well, I can at least pride myself on my achievements in helping him to look a bit more like a normal person again anyway.
"'... That's my version of the events that took place anyway. Admittedly there might be some inaccuracies in it.'"
The students enjoyed listening to Melissa's joke message. They said they thought it was good.
Then Melissa said, "Actually, we were talking about vaccines before, weren't we. I can understand why it can be best to try and be understanding of parents who are worried about vaccinating their children, instead of just criticising them. I mean, if people read misleading information, whether it's false or just one-sided, so it might - say - quote a doctor who says he thinks vaccines can be risky, but not say that most doctors don't think that at all, it's not surprising if they start worrying about it.
"It reminds me of something I heard the other day, about how people used to believe all kinds of things that people would be called ignorant for believing today, like that a good treatment for a lot of diseases was to drain some blood out of people.
"I thought it was sad that there must have been a time, you know, like a couple of hundred years ago, when some of the people who were trying to educate themselves and help other people might have paid a lot of money to buy the latest medical books of the day that had information about different diseases and things that were believed to help cure them sometimes, or their parents might have paid a lot of money to send them on courses where they were educated about the latest theories, and they might have been pleased because they thought they'd got to know some really useful stuff, when in reality, a lot of what they'd learned might have been wrong and even dangerous, such as this blood-letting stuff, - maybe some of it even written by quacks who knew they were frauds, who just thought pretending to know what they were talking about was a good way of making money.
"People can only make judgments based on the information they've got available to them at the time. So it won't necessarily be their fault if they believe a lot of things that are wrong.
"I'm really glad we've got the Internet nowadays, so it's much easier to find out about what up-to-date science says about things, even if some of the studies that are done aren't very good."
Another one of the group said, "Yes. And there are health programmes on the radio I think are good. The other day I heard the presenter on one of them say a study had found that when adrenaline had been used in ambulances to help kick-start the hearts of people who'd had heart attacks, twice as many of the people who the paramedics managed to resuscitate had brain damage than when adrenaline wasn't used. I thought, 'My gosh, what is it about adrenaline that makes people get brain damage?' But then the presenter asked whether it was thought to be the adrenaline doing it, or whether it was thought that what was happening was that using adrenaline meant people were being revived who wouldn't be without it, and some of those were people who'd got so near death their brains had partly shut down permanently, so when those people were revived, their brains stayed damaged, so what was really happening was that more people with brain damage were being revived than would be without the adrenaline. I thought, 'That's a good question!'
"The person the presenter was talking to said the people who'd done the study didn't as yet know whether it was the adrenaline causing the damage, or whether the problem was that the brains of some of the people who'd been revived were already damaged before it was even used, because they'd stopped breathing for long enough that no oxygen had got into their systems and travelled to their brains for some time, long enough that their brains had got seriously oxygen-deprived, since when that happens to brains, they start dying."
One student said, "That reminds me of something a bit similar: My grandad broke his hip not long ago. He was in hospital for a few weeks, and then he was allowed to go home. Then I heard there was going to be something on the radio about improving people's quality of life after they've fractured their hips. I was thinking of telling him it was on and encouraging him to listen to it; but I'm glad I didn't now. It said that of all the people who get hip fractures, about three in ten die within the year, and most of the people die within three years.
"I was a bit worried about that, but then it occurred to me that it didn't necessarily mean they were dying because of their hip fractures, and I had a look on the Internet to find out more information about what they were dying from, and it turned out that a lot of them were dying from completely different things, because they were elderly and had quite a few other things wrong with them from the start, or they developed other problems they would have developed anyway. A lot of them had things wrong with them like dementia and cancers, it seems; and conditions it's common to get when you're old that they had before they broke their hips like osteoporosis had made it more likely they would break them.
"But I read that that didn't mean the death rate had nothing to do with the hip fractures. I read that there are hospitals where it's been found that some people have had to wait a few days before they've even had their hip operated on; and some people have died of infections they got in their wounds after operations. And I read that people are more likely to get some diseases if they can't get up and about, like pneumonia, so people really need rehabilitation like physiotherapy to help them get up and about again after their operations, to reduce the risks."
Becky said, "Wow, it just shows you that it's worth reserving judgment about information you hear even from respectable news outlets like the BBC, till you've found out more about it, like I was saying!"
The others agreed.
Then Becky said, "Actually, as much as some news broadcasters and tabloid newspapers can be criticised, at least they don't spread outright fake news, like some websites do, so I've heard. You know, I mean supposed news that hasn't got any truth in it at all. I've heard that some people spread it just to make money.
"It wouldn't be so bad, but the fake news some people spread could possibly affect some people's health. Some people spread links to a web page saying it's about a cure for cancer, or that kind of thing, and either they'll be selling something that doesn't actually work, or there will be an article on the page about some dud cure or other, but the website owners aren't trying to sell the supposed cure, but they're just promoting the story because they know headlines like that get attention so it'll get them traffic, because loads of people are interested in cures for cancer because it badly affects lots of people. Or the stories might not be about cures for anything at all, but about things that'll be bound to interest people or make them angry so they'll visit the websites to find out more for that reason.
"And when they're on the websites, they'll find lots of adverts, and the website owners are just hoping to make money, because their websites will be attractive to advertisers if they're getting a lot of traffic, so advertisers will think there's more chance that a decent number of people who go there will get interested in their adverts and buy their products, so they'll think it'll be worth spending money to have their adverts put up on the people's web pages.
"But when they're selling a supposed cure for cancer on a web page itself, it might give people false hope, and maybe some people might even decide they'll try it in place of proper medical treatment; and that'll be bad, because their problems might be getting worse while they delay having proper medical care. The thing is that some of these supposed cures that are advertised do kill cancer cells in the lab, when they're poured directly on them, but they don't work in humans; or they work in mice, but human bodies work differently enough that they don't work in humans.
"And also, I think there are some web pages that masquerade as consumer reviews when they're really adverts. You know, they might say that a study has found that one particular product's no good for causing some particular health benefit, and then say something like, 'Here's what has been found to work though', and then advertise a load of things.
"Readers of the web page probably won't even know if the study that was done was a good one unless they go and find information about it elsewhere, or whether it was even done on people there was any hope of the product working on; you know, like if a young person was wondering if they could use it to slightly improve their memory, and the web page says a study was done on old people whose memories were deteriorating and it didn't work. I mean, if the product can't combat the physical causes of deterioration in the brain, it doesn't necessarily mean it won't be able to cause a slight improvement in functioning in healthy brains in some way or other, say like by helping to increase blood flow slightly, which might help brain cells communicate with each other slightly faster. I mean, it might not. But it'll probably be better for someone who's interested in it to find out information about it from websites of organisations that are known to have a good reputation for giving good information about healthcare than to trust just anyone.
"And then some of those websites that are really probably just trying to sell things might say things like, 'We can prove our expensive product works, because look what this man achieved while he was using it!' Well, how do we know he wouldn't have achieved it even if he wasn't? And what if he was taking something else as well, and it was really that that helped him achieve it? You know, you can't tell how good a product is by what just one person says about it, or even by what quite a few people say about it, if it might turn out that they were all taking other things that might have helped at the same time, so they think one thing helped when really it was something else, or nothing at all.
"And the website likely won't mention any study where the things it's selling were tested on a group of people with similar problems to the ones that the product it's saying doesn't work was tested on, so for all anyone knows, they won't work on them either, so the article about them will be making a false comparison anyway, which will probably be designed to make their products look better than they really are.
"I mean, I'm not saying their products won't be any good; they might be fantastic sometimes! I'm just saying that people should look for more proof of it than just the word of a few people who said it worked for them.
"So it's worth finding out more information about supposed new cures and other things before trusting what anyone selling them says about them. I'm not saying don't believe anything you read, or anything like that; I just think that if something sounds as if it might be too good to be true, or as if it's really something to worry about, it's worth looking at the websites of organisations that are thought of as respectable, to see what they say."
When Becky had said that, she stopped talking, sat back, and relaxed ... for several seconds.
One student, who was quiet by nature, said, "This is interesting, Becky; but I don't know where on earth you get the energy to talk so much! I reckon talking for as long as you can would tire me out! It would be good if you could share some of your energy with me, like if a pipe could be attached to your brain or something and some of your energy could be siphoned off to me!"
Another student said, "Wow, wouldn't it be good if it was possible to do that kind of thing!"
The students giggled. Then one said with a mischievous grin, "I heard you saying once that your mum talks a lot as well as you, Becky. How do you cope when both of you want to talk a lot? Do you sometimes get into arguments about who's going to do the talking? Or do you have talking competitions, a bit like dares, where, say, you dare each other to just go up to someone and start talking, and you time yourselves to see which one of you can keep it up for the longest?"
The students giggled again. Then Becky said, "Don't be daft! Anyway, lots of people here talk just as much as me!"
They had to admit that was true. In fact, the one who had just teased Becky could talk just as much as her, and apologised, saying she was only joking, and that she'd been interested in what Becky had said really, and would actually like to know more.
Becky said, "Allright then. Another thing is that we learned a bit about how news broadcasters decide what to put in the news on our media studies course. they don't just look at lots of stories, put them in what they think is their order of importance and then broadcast them; they decide what to put in it based on a whole load of rules about things like what they think the public will be interested in hearing, and what's normally thought of by people like them as more newsworthy, which often means more gory! One thing it seems they certainly Don't weigh up most of the time is how Useful to the public a story will be!
"One thing is that if something happens all of a sudden, it's much more likely to make the news than something that's much more tragic but it's part of something that's been going on for ages, such as if a town gets bombed as part of a civil war that's been going on for a couple of years, and on the same day a new terrorist group that might be a worldwide threat kills three people in the neighbouring country; Even if the bombing kills a lot more people, the action of the terrorist group might get much more coverage if it's seen as an important new development. People might get the impression that the civil war's virtually stopped because it isn't being reported on much any more, when in reality it's gradually getting worse. Mind you, that might also be to do with journalists not being able to get to certain places to report from them because the risks to them are too high.
"Or if twenty people go down with a scary new disease and it's possible it could spread to the country the news is being broadcast in, it might get a whole lot more coverage than if there have been 500 new cases of an old disease in the last week, but that disease always strikes that part of the world at that time of year, and it's spread by certain types of insects that live in a particular part of the world far away from the country the news is being broadcast in so it's not likely to spread there.
"Stories get more coverage if they happen at convenient times of day too. And bad news is normally thought of as much more newsworthy than good news. And the media likes a good balance of stories that come from their own country and ones that come from abroad, so if there are a lot from abroad one day, one or more stories from there that would have made the news on a day when there weren't so many will have to make way for a story about something going on in the home country.
"And things that aren't all that important can be put on the news in preference to things that are much more important but would need to be researched quite a bit before enough facts were known to be able to do a good job of reporting them.
"Also, they allegedly decide what to put in the news partly based on what they somehow imagine the kind of audience most likely to be watching or listening at a particular time of day will be most interested in; so in the middle of the day it's most likely to be unemployed and retired people, and so on. But why in heaven's name they think a load of hard-working people who've just come home in the evening and probably want to relax and might turn the news on want to be swamped in a mire of dull news about politics, I don't know! I can't work out the thinking behind that one, but they put loads of political news on there!"
The students were interested and thought about that for a few seconds. Then one, noticing Becky had dropped a little bit of dinner but must have been too engrossed in the conversation to realise, said, "Hey Becky, it might be news to you, but you've got a couple of beans on your jumper."
"Beans?" asked another student in an exaggeratedly puzzled tone. "What could beans be doing on Becky's jumper? Could they have grown there? Maybe Becky's a beanstalk. Becky the beanstalk. Not Becky And the beanstalk; just Becky the beanstalk." He was teasing her. She laughed and said, "Don't be daft!"
Another student joined in the joke, saying, "Or maybe a bean seed landed on her jumper and some beans immediately sprouted! Maybe planting beans on jumpers is an amazingly fantastic way to grow them and they grow much faster there than they would anywhere else. Maybe scientists should experiment with growing beans on jumpers to see if they sprout up really fast on them. Does anyone want to volunteer to have their jumper sent off to scientists to be put on the ground somewhere to see if giant beans sprout up all over it minutes after bean seeds have been sprinkled over it or something?"
The students chuckled. All except Mark, who wanted to get back to what he'd been talking about earlier. He soon did though, and the conversation immediately plunged into gloom as he said:
"Anyway, being serious again, what I actually wanted to say, you know, ages and ages ago before we started talking about biased news and things like that, was that if politicians and the media can tell stories and report and talk about things in ways that get most public opinion on their side even when they're starting wars that'll lead to a lot of lives being ruined, a lot of people being killed, horribly injured and disabled for life, I'm sure they could get public opinion on side when it comes to things that scientists want to do that don't sound very nice but could lead to people being cured of horrible diseases or having access to things that can stop a lot of suffering."
Just as Becky had done earlier, a couple of students pushed what was left of their dinners away for a while. Actually, Becky had started eating her dinner again some time earlier, having regained a good appetite for it after doing some talking, and then she'd decided she'd worked up so much appetite that she'd wanted more, and gone and got a second helping. But now she felt as if she was being put off that. So she pushed that dinner away too. Mark could have chosen a better time to tell them what he was saying! One student said with a note of flippancy, "Must you talk about war and things over dinner? If you carry on, I won't feel like eating any more of it and I'll have to take it out and give it to the pigs!"
"What pigs?" asked another student. "You're not referring to the police as pigs are you?" He grinned and said, "I can just imagine you taking your dinner outside, walking up to a policeman and saying, 'I know this dinner's all cold now and it's been around a while, but I'm wondering if you'd like to buy it second-hand. It's going cheap.'"
The students laughed, and another one said, "Watch it. I read a funny story once about a man in New Zealand who got arrested for yelling abuse at the police where he called them pigs. He was ordered to spend a day at a pig farm learning the difference between police officers and pigs, and told that after that, he had to write an essay explaining the difference, so they could tell he'd learned what it was.
"He wrote in his essay that he was sorry he'd shouted abuse at the police and called them pigs, but he was very drunk at the time. He said he'd given up drink because of what happened, and he'd now learned that there was nothing at all in common between a pig and a police officer."
The students laughed. One said, "Hey imagine if you were walking past a lecture theatre and you heard a lecturer say, 'This year, three pigs are attending my lectures, as well as four cows, a mouse and a deer!'
"You'd think, 'That's a rude thing to say about your students!' And just imagine if you told everyone how rude he was, only to find out later he was actually rehearsing for a play the lecturers were doing or something!"
The students sniggered, and another one said, "Or just imagine if he really did bring all those animals into his lectures, and students had to make room for them to sit on the seats next to them!"
"How would we stop them eating our notes? Or eating his?" said one student, grinning.
Another student said, "Hey imagine if it was a history lecturer, and he took everyone he was teaching to see some really valuable old books, hundreds and hundreds of years old, and he took the animals along with him, and they started eating them!"
Another student said, "Or just imagine if he didn't bring them into lectures with him but he went out to farms every day after work, and stood in front of cows and sheep in a field and other animals and gave them all the lectures he'd given students during the day, expecting them to understand him! And then imagine if he said to them, 'I'm going to expect you to teach other animals these things soon!'"
"Yikes, imagine having a lecturer like that!" said one student.
Another one grinned and said, "How do we know our tutors Aren't all like that?"
They giggled.
Then Mark said good-naturedly, "Come on, I was about to say something interesting. Don't you want to hear it? Allright, I'll try not to put you off your dinners again."
"OK, tell us," said one student.
Mark said, "I was going to say that I bet a lot of the public would start wanting more genetically modified foods if scientists managed to team up with a famous film producer and make a film that ended up being popular or at least seen by lots of people, about people having problems that badly affected their lives, but whose lives improved a lot after they started using genetically modified crops and things.
"The film could start with a few families in a developing country going about their day, kids playing or helping their parents, and parents chatting to others about life. They could develop the characters till they were appealing enough for the people watching the film to like them and start caring about what happened to them. Then the family could start having the kind of problems that could be solved if genetically modified foods and things were common. It would show how they were suffering. One of the kids can die, or get ill, and the others can worry They'll die too. Then the film could show scientists working in a lab and talking about how they're hoping to genetically modify crops to make them resistant to certain diseases or more resistant to drought, or to do various other things.
"One example of a project I've heard about is one where scientists genetically modified some rice to contain quite a bit of vitamin A, to be eaten in countries where rice is one of the main things people eat. They've called it golden rice."
One student interrupted and said, "There might be something a lot more harmful in rice than anything scientists might genetically engineer into it; I've heard it contains arsenic that it picks up from pollution in the soil where it's grown."
Some students were shocked, but one said, "Oh come on! It can't contain arsenic, otherwise we'd all have dropped dead like flies by now. Imagine if a school dinner had rice in it one day, and everyone in the school dropped dead as soon as they ate it. Those dinner ladies would have a lot of explaining to do in court, wouldn't they!"
The students laughed. But the one who'd said rice contains arsenic said, "I don't mean it contains enough to kill anyone. I've just heard that there's enough in it so if you eat loads, like every day or something, then over time, maybe years and years, you can get health problems."
"I'm going to look that up on the Internet and see if I can find out if it's true!" said one student.
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