Churnalism: Summarized on Video
Vinay and I started talking about and writing about churnalism about 5 years ago. He gets full credit for the term, which I initially resisted but later embraced. We thought we’d be able to write a book about churnalism – sort of a follow-up to Ending Medical Reversal – but that book was not meant to be. When Sensible Medicine got off the ground, it seemed like a perfect home for the chapters we had already written and a place to put ongoing coverage of the topic. This page provides links to the original series of churnalism articles and to articles that highlighted some truly egregious examples as they appeared.
Last April, I was fortunate enough to be invited speak at the 4Words Conference in Rome.1 This was an amazing experience and has already led to articles on Sensible Medicine written by two of my co-presenters. One pertained to AI and one to breast cancer screening.
While I was in Rome, the good people at Il Pensiero Scientifico Editore, specifically Luca and Rebecca De Fiore, asked if I would record something about churnalism. They then went to the effort to trek me around to some fabulous places to record the videos.
Over the last few weeks they have been releasing the videos on social media, one introductory comment and then one for each of the “seven deadly sins” of churnalism that Vinay and I defined. Now that they have all been posted, I thought I would share the full video here. I cringe a bit posting videos of myself but I guess I should just embrace the times in which we live.
I hope this was helpful, and at least mildly entertaining. If you find any shocking examples of churnalism, please either write them up for us, or send them our way.
I expect that this experience will be the apex of my academic career.
Just watched the summary, it’s accurate and interesting, unfortunately most journalists these days write all their stories directly from their screens, rather than the sources.
I would like to suggest another sin, or a subsin of associative links.
I call it Arsesociation, when someone with a specific agenda cherry-picks a range of studies that support their agenda and ignores all the data that contradicts their case.
Our North American readers may not be familiar with the Australian reference to arse, or the common phrase that someone is “pulling something out of their arse”, but it accurately describes this activity.
What a great trip! Adam, don’t be so hard on yourself. The camera loves you!!