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Bad Reporting, Not Email, Worse Than Marijuana

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the it-happens-but-needs-correcting dept.

MoNickels writes "Turns out, those endless news reports and blog entries in April about "texting makes you stupid" were inaccurate. As linguist Mark Liberman at LanguageLog now reports by way of apologizing to Wilson, it wasn't Wilson's fault, but that of "rotten science journalism." Psychologist Glenn Wilson was reported to have done a study said that chat and email, as the Guardian put it, "are a greater threat to IQ and concentration than taking cannabis." But Wilson says, "This...is a temporary distraction effect—not a permanent loss of IQ. The equivalences with smoking pot and losing sleep were made by others, against my counsel, and 8 [subjects] somehow became '80 clinical trials.'" The original Slashdot story was covered back in April."

12 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Worse than this? The horror.... by Ritz_Just_Ritz · · Score: 4, Funny

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5179038412 705987877

  2. I smoke pot 24/7... by Sr.+Pato · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... And aye dont feal any more stupider.

    --
    Nobody's gay for Mole-Man. :-(
    1. Re:I smoke pot 24/7... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      You don't smoke pot. But you are stupid.

  3. That's interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was having this discussion with a co-worker just the I'm sorry, what were we talking about?

  4. At least.. by Gavin86 · · Score: 5, Funny

    At least being stoned all the time makes dupes more tolerable when I don't remember reading them the first time.

    --
    "Progress comes from the intelligent use of experience."
  5. Well... by Mister+Transistor · · Score: 5, Funny

    Article title is definitely true! With pot I'm only disoriented for an hour or two, but sucky reporting leaves me in a confused daze forever...

    --
    -- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
  6. Meanwhile.. by Mr2cents · · Score: 4, Funny

    You can't trust wikipedia! Trust the mass media!

    --
    "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
  7. Inaccurate news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well I never!

    http://www.joejag.com/pics/cnn_columbia.jpg

  8. Surely... by jesdynf · · Score: 5, Funny

    Surely you're toking, Mr. Feynman?

    --
    Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
  9. Re:In other news by mysqlrocks · · Score: 3, Funny

    Or how about, "Reading Slashdot, Worse Than Marijuana".

    --
    Bradley Holt
  10. Re:Finally... by Propagandhi · · Score: 5, Funny

    But did they admit their mistake soon enough? I've been smoking pot 24/7 since that article ran (/. told me it was OK!) and now I may be severely retarded. Any other nerds in my boat?

    Man.. I've really gotta stop trusting everything I read on the internets, someday this is gonna get me in trouble. ..

    Oh well, I'll always have those free Xboxes and iPods I won...

  11. Re:Finally... by Hosiah · · Score: 3, Funny
    smoking pot 24/7 since that article ran

    On the plus side, you can program in Lisp, now.