Chinese whispers

A slightly irritating report on the BBC website this weekend headlined: Contraception myths ‘widespread’

According to a survey conducted by Opinion Health (and paid for by Bayer Schering Phara) one in five women “said they had heard of kitchen items being used” as alternative barrier methods. Others (we aren’t told how many) had “heard of” food items being used as oral contraceptives.

But aren’t we overlooking a rather important distinction here, between people hearing rumours and believing them, or spreading them, or acting on them? I, for example, have “heard” that babies are brought in baskets by storks. I’ve “heard” that there’s a sea monster living in Loch Ness. But I’m not going to be contacting the BBC to warn them of the dangerous prevalence of either of these myths.

A similar thing occured a few years back with a widely reported survey on identity fraud, which said that a quarter of people had been a victim of ID fraud… or knew somebody else who had. How did the “or knew somebody” part get reduced to an afterthought? It’s like saying: “Thousands of people in America have been to the moon… or know somebody who has.”

These reports are like the end of a long game of Chinese whispers: a survey saying what somebody said somebody else said, filtered through a client that wants publicity, a PR that sees a way to get it, and a journo who goes along with it.