I blame the celebrities

Research by the Royal College of Midwives has found that new mothers are putting their health at risk by crash-dieting in order to emulate the "perfect" figures of celebrities who seemingly shed their "baby weight" within days of giving birth. The Mail is duly concerned:

Celebrity mothers who lose weight quickly after giving birth put pressure on women
Super-slim celebrity mothers are putting women under pressure to lose their baby weight too fast, a report warns. Many feel compelled to crash diet almost as soon as they have given birth, potentially putting their health and well-being at risk. Almost two-thirds of new mothers said they felt a degree of coercion to slim to their original size as soon as possible, a survey by the Royal College of Midwives found. Many said seeing celebrities such as Strictly Come Dancing’s Tess Daly and singer Myleene Klass lose baby weight so quickly made them feel disgusted with their own bodies.

It's not pleasant reading - as the RCM points out, after having a baby women should be concentrating on building up their own strength rather than crash dieting. But from where do new mothers get the idea that they should be losing masses of weight? Could it be the paper that published the following stories in the past six weeks alone?

Model mother Danielle Lloyd smoulders in saucy calendar shoot... just three months after giving birth
Just three months after giving birth and Danielle Lloyd is seen here posing confidently in a series of racy shots for a new calendar. The 26-year-old model, who has a four-month-old son Archie with footballer Jamie O'Hara, has shed more than two stone in the past couple of months.

'Everything goes south when you're pregnant!' Chanelle Hayes shows off post-baby figure after dropping two dress sizes in just THREE months
She only gave birth to son Blakely 13 weeks ago, but Big Brother 8 star Chanelle Hayes has nearly regained her pre-pregnancy shape. The 22-year-old reality star has dropped from a size 12/14 to 8/10 in just a few weeks after enrolling at boot camp and overhauling her diet.

How does she do it? Gisele Bundchen looks slimmer than ever just ten months after giving birth
Most women are happy if they lose even half their baby weight ten months after giving birth.But Gisele Bundchen looked as if she didn't even gain a pound during her pregnancy, let alone lose it quickly.

Danielle Lloyd reveals her post-pregnancy body in monokini and heels just 11 weeks after giving birth
Just 11 weeks after giving birth to her first child, Danielle Lloyd has already regained her model figure. The Liverpudlian model has shrunk back to 9st 7lb and she’s determined to lose even more until she reaches just 9st.Despite gaining over two stone while pregnant with son Archie, it appears the baby weight has quickly fallen off.

A stunning Amy Adams debuts her slender post-baby figure, four months after giving birth
It's been just four months since she gave birth, but Amy Adams has already managed to shed all her excess baby weight.

Back to yummy! Rebecca Gayheart shows off her fat-free figure five months after birth
Rebecca Gayheart may have gained a little bundle of joy, but she has lost the weight that came with it as she showed off her fat-free figure in West Hollywood. The actress stepped out with little daughter Billie Beatrice looking every inch the back to yummy mummy as the 38-year-old has clearly lost all her baby weight after giving birth last March.

And could that paper be the Daily Mail by any chance? Why yes it could.

Mail pervs over a four-year-old

By now we're all pretty used to the Daily Mail perving over underage girls. We're also used to the paper being freakishly over-interested in the comings and goings of pint-sized fashion icon Suri Cruise. But now they seem to be combining the two in a way that is downright creepy:

"Long-limbed Suri"? SHE'S FOUR YEARS OLD, YOU PERVERTS! But there's more - click through to the story and you get this:

"With the same long brunette hair and wide eyes, little Suri Cruise is beginning to look more like mother Katie Holmes every day. The lookalike pair certainly mirrored each other's expressions as they stopped by a local ice cream store in Los Angeles yesterday."

"The lookalike pair"? Just so I'm absolutely clear here, Suri Cruise is FOUR YEARS OLD. Her mother is 31. She has breasts, and hips and other adulty things that her "lookalike" daughter lacks. Despite the Editor's Code being very clear about the fact that you can't run stories about a child simply because her or his parents are famous, there's also a full-length pic of the "long-limbed" Suri on her own. The caption takes things to a whole new level:

"Ballerina beauty: The four-year-old is growing into a gorgeous little girl"

I really don't want to labour the point but SURI CRUISE IS FOUR YEARS OLD. FOUR! I'd tell Uncle Creepyhands over at Associated Newspapers to get a grip on himself, but I get the horrible feeling he already has, and not in the way I'd hope.

Note that at the foot of the story is a little appeal:

Do you have a story about a celebrity? Call the Daily Mail showbusiness desk on 0207 938 6364 or 0207 938 6683

Yes, you too could scale the journalistic heights of the 21st century Daily Mail website (motto: "News is far more important to us than showbiz. News is what drives our site") if you can come up with a scoop as devastating as "Mother takes young daughter for ice cream after ballet class".

PS: Suri Cruise is FOUR YEARS OLD.

Daily Mail Reporter can't read

Daily Mail Reporter is by far and away the paper's most productive journalist, either that or his is just the default name added to stories lifted wholesale from wire services and other publications. Unfortunately he's not very good at something that's generally considered to be a crucial skill for reporters - the ability to read.

The headline on DMR's latest piece is quite clear:

Grieving mother had disability allowance stopped on Remembrance Day… because she got compensation for the death of soldier son
The mother of the youngest British soldier killed in Afghanistan condemned government officials yesterday for using a death-in-service payment to stop her full disability allowance.

For some time now the Mail has been branding anyone living on benefits a workshy scrounger. But despite the fact that the soldier's mother:

"... is unable to work because she suffers from a degenerative and incurable tissue disease called Hypermobility syndrome..."

...the Mail is very much on her side on this one. Unfortunately DMR's literacy problem means the headline and story have both missed the point entirely. Slap-bang in the middle of the page is a copy of the letter sent to the soldier's mother by her local Job Centre. Anyone who is able to read can see that it says:

"I am writing to tell you that from 6.11.10 we have decided to suspend your income support."

Don't get me wrong, it's certainly harsh that Mrs Aldridge could lose benefits because she received a compensation payout following the death of her son. As she says herself, given the choice she'd much rather have her son than any amount of money.

But the letter is quite clear - she's losing her income support, not her "disability allowance". Which makes perfect sense, as disability living allowance is not means-tested. It is paid to "disabled children and adults who need someone to help look after them, or have walking difficulties", regardless of how much money they have. If she's unable to work because of her disability, Mrs Aldridge is probably also eligible for either the employment and support allowance or incapacity benefit, depending on when she started claiming. Income support, on the other hand, is paid to people who have a low income and, crucially in this case, less than £16,000 of savings.

So the headline is wrong, the intro is wrong, and the reference to the woman's disability is irrelevant. Which wouldn't be so much of an issue if it didn't all occur in a story in which the Mail accuses the authorities of being bungling idiots who can't get anything right.

UPDATE!
The Mail have now amended their headline and intro to reflect reality. It'll be interesting to see if they also delete the numerous comments underneath the article pointing out the reporter's lazy error.

PWC part II, in which the Daily Mail goes from bad to worse

Yesterday's Mail website write-up of the "female PWC interns" story was bad enough, featuring as it did the full photos of all the women involved with no regard to their thoughts or feelings.

Today the hard copy of the paper goes one step further, by putting a name next to each of the women. Note that none of the men involved are named, even though a cursory glance at the email chain would reveal all their identities.

So now the Mail has published private photos of 13 women (the paper cheerily states the photos were ripped from the PWC intranet), confirmed their names and told everyone which city they live in and where they work.

Now they're moving on to travel plans - having got hold of the names, Mail reporter Eleanor Harding has dug out one of the women's Twitter feeds, so the paper can exclusively reveal that she's due to travel to Chicago later this week.

The Mail also gleefully states that one recent Tweet from the woman in question read:

"God I hate my life right now."

Why do you think that might be, Daily Mail?

"It's so awful we just HAVE to show you how awful it is"

Some numpty at PricewaterhouseCoopers' Irish office is in a spot of bother after he got hold of photos of all the firm's female new recruits, picked out the 13 he found most attractive, and emailed the pictures to his numpty mates with the message "This would be my shortlist for the top 10".

All the numpties involved are now being investigated by their bosses after the email whizzed around the world. As you can imagine, a major multinational like PWC is very aware of the damage such a stunt could do both to their reputation and to the poor women involved, who are likely to be less than happy at the prospect of being ogled and "rated" by cyber-pervs from Dublin to Dunedin*.

As a PWC spokesman told the Daily Mail:

"Our main concern is the impact of this matter on the women who were the subject of these e-mails. We are meeting with them regularly to offer them every reassurance that they have the full support of the firm in dealing with this very difficult issue for them."

It's nice to see an employer taking its duty of care to employees seriously. It's less nice to see the Mail add insult to injury by publishing all 13 photos, both on its homepage and on the story itself. And to really rub salt into the wound, they've even included a clip from the email chain in which derogatory comments are made about one of the women in particular.

The photos look they were copied from staff profiles, which also means the Mail will be breaking all manner of copyright and data protection laws by publishing them. But what the hell, it means they get to publish a bunch of pictures of blonde women!

* Google it.

UPDATE!
The Telegraph are at it as well - lots of "isn't this terrible" about the pictures, then all 13 reproduced for your viewing pleasure. And it certainly seems to be doing the trick - at the time of writing it is the most-read story on the paper's website, edging out even Japanese man streams suicide live on the internet and Dick Van Dyke 'saved by porpoises'. It's a very serious paper, you know.

Correlation does not imply causation

It's statistics 101, the most basic thing anyone who looks at numbers for a living needs to remember - just because two variables have a correlation, it doesn't mean that variable A is causing variable B to happen. The number of men wearing hats in Britain has declined since the 1920s, has as overall air pollution in cities. But this does not mean that wearing hats causes pollution. There are other factors in play that need to be taken account of, such as clean air legislation.

It's a very simple concept but one that journalists are forever struggling with, as Ben Goldacre and Atomic Spin never tire of pointing out. The Mail (who else?) have just come up with yet another example:

Teenagers who text up 120 times a day 'are more likely to have had sex, use drugs and drink alcohol'

Teenagers who text 120 times a day or more are more likely to have had sex or used alcohol and drugs than kids who don't send as many messages, according to provocative new research.

The study's authors say they have seen an apparent link between excessive messaging and this kind of risky behaviour.

First things first, the headline is supremely sloppy - it talks about kids who text "up to" 120 times a day (which would include everyone from those who send one SMS a day to those who send 120), when in fact, as the story makes clear, the study talks about kids who text MORE THAN 120 times a day. It's only a minor point, but it just shows that the writers are being rather lazy and doesn't fill you with confidence.

The opening two paragraphs exhibit a clear suggestion that researchers have found a causal link between sending a bonkers number of texts and "risky behaviour". It fits nicely with the Mail's general narrative about no-good young people (see also happy slapping and Facebook). Unfortunately the researchers have found nothing of the sort, as the Mail itself points out in the very next paragraph:

While researchers say they aren't suggesting that 'hyper-texting' leads to sex, drinking or drugs, the study concludes that a significant number of teens are very susceptible to peer pressure and also have permissive or absent parents, said Dr Scott Frank, the study's lead author.

Right. So everything you said in the previous paragraph about researchers finding "an apparent link" between the two factors was actually a great big fib? Do go on, anonymous Daily Mail Reporter:

'If parents are monitoring their kids' texting and social networking, they're probably monitoring other activities as well,' said Dr Frank, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

And that's the final nail in the story's coffin. The causal factor is "permissive or absent parents". Two symptoms of permissive or absent parents are their offspring indulging in risky behaviour AND sending lots of texts becaus their parents aren't sat next to them saying "stop sending text messages every eight minutes, and while you're at it stop having sex". Despite what the headline implies and what the second paragraph states as fact, there is NO link between sending texts and having sex.

Perhaps I should be celebrating because the Mail has actually included all the facts for a change. But instead I'm feeling unreasonably annoyed because, yet again, the paper has twisted the facts to fit its own agenda and stuck in a headline and intro that is totally inaccurate.

Oh well. At least they didn't say that texting gives you cancer.

Does reading the Mail while pregnant harm your baby?

In the latest stage of the Mail's oncological ontology project (in which every item on earth is described as either curing cancer or giving you cancer), pregnant women are warned that taking aspirin while pregnant can give your baby son cancer in later life and also make him infertile.

Can taking aspirin in pregnancy make your son infertile?
Pregnant women who take painkillers such as paracetamol, aspirin and ibuprofen could put their unborn sons at risk of fertility problems, researchers warn ... using the drugs on their own or together may increase the risk of boys having undescended testicles, which can lead to poor sperm quality and testicular cancer in later life.

Quick! Pregnant ladies everywhere, you must throw out all of the painkillers you own or you could be putting your unborn child at risk! Or rather not, as you discover in the final paragraph:

Professor Richard Sharpe, of the Medical Research Council, said: "It is important to say it was prolonged use of painkillers that had the biggest effect. Taking one or two painkillers occasionally for a headache is not going to affect the baby."

In other words, and as explained quite clearly by the study itself, occassional use of a small number of painkillers is not going to cause a problem. So the alarmist headline is totally unjustified - only by dosing up on several different products at once are you going to risk causing any problems at all and I suspect that not many pregnant women knock back over-the-counter medication in serious quantities, for fairly obvious reasons. Mind you, couldn't blame them if they did. Because back in August the Daily Mail informed us that:

Aspirin during pregnancy could prevent pre-eclampsia in thousands of women, says NHS
Taking aspirin in pregnancy could save thousands of women from developing a condition that can threaten the lives of both mother and baby, say new NHS guidelines.

And that followed on from the Mail's somewhat similar 2007 declaration that:

Daily aspirin can cut risk of pre-eclampsia
A daily dose of aspirin during pregnancy could cut the risk of a condition developing that threatens the lives of mother and baby

Although I wouldn't relax too much, because the previous year the same Mail hackette sounded the alarms:

Pregnancy alert over aspirin
Taking painkillers such as aspirin and ibuprofen in the first three months of pregnancy may increase the risk of birth defects, researchers say.

And the year before that, Jenny Hope (for it is she) wanted us to know that the situation was even more serious:

Painkiller risk for mums-to-be
Taking painkillers such as aspirin in pregnancy almost doubles a woman's chances of losing her baby, claim researchers.

But it's worth remembering that:

Aspirin can boost fertility
Research shows women on IVF treatment may be able to double their chances of getting pregnant simply by taking aspirin.

So to conclude, according to Daily Mail reports over the past decade, taking aspirin will:

1. Help you get pregnant
2. Put you at risk of miscarriage
3. Reduce your risk of miscarriage
4. Make your baby infertile and give him cancer

Clear?