Big Boob Blooper - A Story on FAIL Journalism

This is about a news article in The Star (published on November 12, 2009) that turned out to be a fake news fabricated by a supermarket tabloid 6 years ago.

To save myself the trouble of telling the whole story again, let me attach the complaint letter I wrote to The Star here:

Dear The Star Editor,

I am writing with regards to the news on  "a study in the US showing that women with bigger breasts were found to be smarter". For your information, this is a fake news which was reported in World Weekly News back in Nov 4, 2003. Yes, from six years ago. The original news is available here. You can verify that this "news" is identical to the one reported in The Star.

Evidence that this news is fake:

1. World Weekly News is a supermarket tabloid renowned for its outlandish cover stories often based on supernatural and paranormal themes and an approach to news that verged on the satirical.
   
   
2. Note the informal language this article is written with.
   
   
3. Read the previous and subsequent pages. Note the trivial and exaggerated writing.
   
   
4. A search in Google Scholar (Google's academic journal search engine) for published articles by Rossdale in chicago returned no matching result. Google Scholar is a comprehensive academic search engine so the lack of matching result implies the non-existence of the study.
   
   
5. A search for "yvonne rossdale" in Google shows only copies of the original article from World Weekly News. If you browse through some of the results, there are many websites in which people have pointed out that Dr. Yvonne Rossdale does not exist.
   
   
6. A search in Google News for "chicago breasts" shows that only The Star and Hindustan Times (which in turn copied The Star I believe) are reporting on this news. No other major news outlet is picking up on this "study".

I am absolutely appalled by The Star's negligence in verifying the authenticity of the news before the publication. This fake news has now been disseminated widely over the Internet, and your company's negligence is responsible for the misinformation. It is mentioned that this news is compiled from Sin Chew Daily which in turn is quoting from a Singaporean paper, but I have not been able to find the articles in Sin Chew or any Singaporean paper. I would like you to point me to the original article in these papers, so that I can forward this email to them as well.

More importantly, I would like The Star to publish a correction in a conspicuous corner as soon as possible. I fervently hope that in the future your employees remember to verify all news with primary sources (isn't that in Journalism 101 by the way?) before publication lest your reputation deteriorates.

Thanks.

Regards,
Chang Yang Yew

Let us see how The Star responds to the hoax story they have published.

Of Forwarded Hoaxes And Spams

A few minutes ago I received one of those emails.

That email claimed that for every person I forward itself to, I will be paid 245 dollars by Bill Gates; and if that person forwards it on, every secondary forward will give me 243 dollars, every tertiary forward will give me 241 dollars, and so on and so forth. In the previous forwarded content, there are apparently some people saying very convincing things like:

OH my god, it worksss!!!! I just checked my bank account and it now has 9500 dollars in it!

Another person said

I got 4000 ringgit from Bill / Melinda Gates Foundation! Amazing!!

Seriously.

Bill Gates and his foundation may be some of the most generous philanthropist around, but they donate to AIDS and Malaria researches, not to spoilt kids like you and I.

Some people forward emails like this and some other types of urban legends, because, they say, there's no harm trying / spreading it. But it's wrong. There are great harms.

By forwarding such chain hoaxes, you literally give away your email addresses, and spammers can easily collect a large collection of email addresses when they receive a copy of such emails. If you forward such emails, don't complain when you receive thirty Viagra and penis enlargement advertisements everyday - you gave out your email address merrily in the first place.

If you are concerned, here are some tips you could try to avoid spammers from collecting your email addresses in the future.

• Don't write your email addresses in public web pages e.g. forum, blog, blog comments etc. Spammers run automated programs which trawl every single email address they could find in all web pages, so posting your email is like leaving your key in front of your house door.
• If you have to leave email addresses in a web page, try to think of ways to rewrite it. E.g. abc [at] gmail [dot] com / doremi under yahoo / santaclaus--hotmail.
• If you have friends who forward emails to you regularly, ask them to put your email address in the BCC column. That way your email address would not be shown to the others.
• Don't forward emails. If you want to share something, post them on your blogs, Friendster bulletins, Facebook notes etc; but don't forward them if you could help.
• If you receive unsolicited emails which offer an option to "unsubscribe" from the list, don't be tempted to do so. Depending on the sender, very often the "unsubscribe" link is just a lure to actually confirm that your email address is valid. And if you "unsubscribe", you might actually get more spams in the future because they now know that your email address is a good one.
• Use Gmail. It doesn't exactly help you avoid spammers from collecting your address, but its spam filter is so effective that I haven't seen any spam for weeks.
• If some spams slip into your inbox, use the "mark as spam" option instead of deleting it. It helps the email service provider identify spam better for everyone.
  
• Unfortunately, if you already receive tons of spams everyday, there's not much you could do apart from setting up a new account, preferably from Gmail.
  

Try your best to protect your email addresses. In this age, your email address is as important as your mobile number, postal address, or your age - you don't want to give it to strangers and thieves.

Clockwise? Anti-Clockwise?

What can you see? Clockwise rotation? Anti-clockwise rotation? Both?

This is an interesting test posted on the Daily Telegraph website, and it is purported to test whether you are a left-brained or right-brained person. But from my one semester of neuroscience, I would say that the left-brain / right-brain dichotomy thing is mostly bullshit. While there are indeed dominant spheres for language processing (most people are left-sided, some people are right-sided, even less are both-sided) as well as spatial perception (which is usually on the right side); the left-side = rational, right-side = emotional / linguistic / artistic theory is a hypothesis and has not been substantiated scientifically. It is often exaggerated in popular psychology and often is used to sell "boost your left brain" or "train to use both your brains" kind of pseudoscience stuff.

After some searching around, I discovered a few web pages which discusses this image and the left-brain-vs-right-brain issue in more detail:

• Brain-sidedness and Its Tests - Real Dichotomy or Real Myth?
• Wikipedia: Lateralization of Brain Function (The discussion of that page is interesting)

Interesting, huh?

Source: The Right Brain vs Left Brain via Facebook

Distortion and Urban Legends

I once wrote a blog post about a forwarded letter which tells the tale of a smart student standing up against a stupid atheist professor who was "arguing against" God's existence. It was an excruciatingly long piece, and since it was just a mindless rambling, I have since put the whole behind my mind.

My memory was conjured when I was surfing today - I came across the very same post in Snopes (one of my favourite websites). In the Snope page, there was a lengthy analysis of the origin and content of the email. And guess what, the forwarded email turned out to be a variation of the original, and in the original version the student was supposed to be Albert Einstein. Needless to say it's one of the many parables which try to appeal to authority in order to validate their points; and as with many other stories, the tale was entirely fictional.

Anyway, if you are interested, the Snopes page (here) is a good review about this and some other similar stories. Besides, in general Snope is a great website for fact verification whenever you receive an email with horrific / stupid claims like "drinking cold water causes cancer". 9 times out of 10, you will find the answer there.

The Reason I Like Forwarded Emails...

Updated 23/05/06: Pointed the urban legends to its mythbusting pages.

Original 12/05/06: Promise.. This is a good one. I actually like forwarded emails. :P

I want to thank all of you who have taken the time and trouble to send me your damn chain letters over the past few years. Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of what's left of my heart for making me feel safe, secure, blessed, and wealthy.

Because of your concern...I no longer can drink Coca Cola because it can remove toilet stains.

I no longer drink anything out of a can because I will get sick from the rat feces and urine.

I no longer use Saran wrap in the microwave because it causes cancer.

I no longer check the coin return on pay phones because I could be pricked with a needle infected with AIDS.

I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot day. [There are indeed some research that points to carcinogenic compounds to anti-perspirant. Deodorants are fine, anyway]

I no longer use margarine because it's one molecule away from being plastic.

I no longer go to shopping malls because someone will drug me with a perfume sample and rob me.

I no longer receive packages from UPS or FedEx since they are actually Al Qaeda in disguise.

I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a stupid number for which I will get the phone ill from hell with calls to Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore, and Uzbekistan.

I no longer eat KFC because their chickens are actually horrible mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers.

I no longer date the opposite sex because they will take my kidneys and leave me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice.

I no longer buy expensive cookies from Neiman Marcus since I now have their recipe.

I no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me and St. Theresa's novena has granted my every wish.

Thanks to you, I have learned that God only answers my prayers if I forward an email to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes. (Geez, the BIBLE did not mention it works that way!)

I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl who is about to die in the hospital (for the 1,387,258th time).

I no longer have any money at all, but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special e-mail program.

Yes, I want to thank all of you soooooooo much for looking out for me!

I will now return the favor.

If you don't send this e-mail to at least 1200 people in the next 60 seconds, a large bird with diarrhea will crap on your head at 5:00 PM this afternoon and the fleas of a thousand camels will infest your armpits.

I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of my next door neighbor's ex-mother-in-law's 8th husband's 2nd cousin's 3rd husband's ex-wife's mother's beautician!

Reuse Plastic Bottle

It's long been rumoured that reusing plastic water bottles can be detrimental to health, and some even go to the extent of saying that the water bottle releases carcinogenic compound when it is used for more than once.

False.

Refer to this page for more information. Apparently this rumour originated from one of the graduate students' thesis, and despite its lack of peer review, the allegation was spread via our lovely media and forwarded emails. As it turns out, the "carcinogenic" compound described in the thesis was not at all carcinogenic, and the reason that some quarters recommend using water bottle only once is because of hygienic issues. To quote from the article:

Some organizations (including the IBWA) do recommend that plastic water bottles be used only once before recycling, but not because re-use is likely to cause carcinogenic compounds to leach from the plastic bottles into the liquids they hold. The concern is that people (particularly children) can too easily spread and ingest bacteria from their hands and mouths by re-using bottles without properly washing them or allowing them sufficient time to dry.

My two cents: Don't trust every single rumour out there.

Nokia Secret Code

In the Internet, there is a circulating forwarded email claiming that pressing *3370# on your Nokia mobile phone will activate your so-called spare battery which will give you 50% extra battery life.

Being the usual "inquisitive" guy, I decided to give it a try. So I pressed, *, 3, 3, 7, 0, #...

"Change active speech codec?"

What the heck?? Since when a battery is called "active speech codec"? Well, there are only two options there, "OK" and "Back".

Being the usual "inquisitive" guy again, I decided to press on OK. 一不做,二不休 marr... DONG! Off goes the light, and the whole mobile phone restarts and the same screen reappears. Nahh, no change in my battery bars also, it's still at its original position, no "increase in battery life" as claimed by the e-mail.

So I decided that this is a hoax, just like those claiming that you can elongate some part of your body with some daily exercise. Some googling on this issue proved my guess: This code indeed does *something*, but it doesn't give you some magical power boost. In fact, the activated "speech codec" mode actually consumes more power of your little battery!

At the end of my daily dawdling, a lesson is learnt: Never trust anything in the Internet so easily. If not, your some parts may suffer. :D