Cervical cancer vaccine, online news, Google and SEO October 2, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : Journalism, SEO, linking, science , add a commentSEO expert Malcolm Coles kicked off an interesting experiment yesterday, to shift the emphasis in Google’s search results away from “negative and inaccurate information” (eg some news stories) linking a girl’s death to the cervical cancer vaccine and towards NHS pages about the vaccine.
More by Malcolm here about the tendency of some news stories to suggest (or make) a connection between the death and the vaccine.
He has been encouraging bloggers and others to publish web links, with relevant linked text, to influence Google’s search results, such as cervical cancer jab, cervical cancer vaccine, and cervical cancer vaccine Q&A.
So far, the NHS seems to have bought ’sponsored links’ against some search key words, but I don’t see any of the NHS sites in the first page of Google’s search results for “cervical cancer jab”, which continues to be dominated by news stories.
Bad Science » The Daily Telegraph misrepresent a scientist’s work, then refuse to correct it when he writes to them. January 9, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentBen Goldacre on the trail. University press release might be partly to blame.?
“To my mind this is poor quality journalism followed, more importantly, by cowardly editorial decision-making. This article could very easily be retracted or corrected, clearly and unambiguously, in the newspaper.”
NeuroLogica Blog: Dowsing for Journalists October 10, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentDo journalists have a responsibility to educate people about science? Clearly they do, says Steven Novella, writing about a New York Times feature about dowsing:
“[E]very now and then I run across a piece of journalism at a major outlet that is so horrific I have to comment.
Yesterday in the New York Times, Jesse McKinley published a terrible piece about dowsing that was virtually devoid of any useful information. […]
McKinley missed the real story here. He could have taught his readers about the need for controlled observations, the potential for self-deception, and the nature of the ideomotor effect. […]
…any such story, even if the topic itself is not consequential, is an opportunity to either educate the public about science and critical thinking or to confuse them. It doesn’t really matter what the topic is if the reader walks away less critical and more confused about science in general.”