A couple of news stories caught my eye last week.
One was the story about the carbon footprint of a single Google search, which I blogged about at the time. The second was a story widely reported in the UK press about how drinking more than seven cups of coffee a day can cause you to hallucinate.
Both stories fit nicely into a pattern of how a seemingly normal, harmless activity can actually damage your health or the planet - which clearly is a part of how they became newsworthy.
And both stories are based on original research which didn't actually make the claims that were so widely reported.
In the case of the Google story, this was originally picked up by the Sunday Times. Their story went:
"Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.
"While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g."
Google has disputed these figures on its official blog, claiming instead that the carbon footprint of a single Google search is more like 0.2g.
The original research didn't use the boiling kettle analogy - this seems to have been inserted by the journalist to bring the story to life.
The coffee gives you hallucinations story has been given a good kicking by the Guardian's Bad Science column.
Again, it seems that the story that got in the press - that drinking seven cups of coffee a day can increase your chances of hallucination - was not in the research. However it looks like the researchers added it into their press release to give the story a bit of a zing.
I was quite surprised to see the sample size that this research is based on - an online questionnaire completed by 219 students. So the 'seven cups' hypothesis is based on results from the top 10% of coffee drinkers, or about 22 students.
With this size of sample, I would have thought that a couple of nut cases could easily skew the results. And the research can be read in a number of different ways:
1) lots of coffee causes hallucinations
2) people who suffer from hallucinations like to drink lots of coffee
3) people who drink lots of coffee and suffer from hallucinations are more likely to fritter their time away filling in online questionnaires
Anyway, I guess in these cynical times the message we should be taking from all this is never let the truth get in the way of a good story!
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