Bad Reporting, Not Email, Worse Than Marijuana

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."

Comments

The "media" is just awful

[1010011010]

They want us to take them seriously. They want to shape the debate and control the dissementation of facts. But they're such idiots!

Good News

[freek808]

I guess I will go back to smoking dope and hanging out on IRC without feeling guilty anymore.

Re:What's wrong with Pot?

[YeEntrancemperium]

Marijuana has a spiritual effect and can help open your third eye. The Christian church does not want this.

kava, anyone?

[rock_climbing_guy]

While we're on the subject of drugs, I was just wondering if anyone else here likes to drink kava