Mild mannered blogger PZ Myers over at Pharyngula recently labeled the Huffington Post a “stronghold of anti-scientific, anti-medicine woo.” I often check in with HuffPo for political commentary, so was bummed to see the litany of anti-science crimes that HuffPo has committed. Is it really the case that the Huffington Post gives blank checks to peddlers of pseudoscience? It seems so. Here are the numbers:
Method: A search was conducted for the word ‘homeopathic’ using the search box on three online news outlets’ web sites: The Huffington Post, NPR, and Fox News. The term ‘homeopathic’ was chosen because homeopathy is well established as a pseudoscientific practice that is now taking a serious beating in the UK, as physicians are calling for it to be removed from NHS coverage. The number of news stories containing the word ‘homeopathic’ were tallied for each news outlet, and each story was rated as to if it contained a favorable, unfavorable or neutral view of homeopathy.
Results:
- Fox news returned a total of 20 news stories; 5% were favorable towards homeopathy, 50% were unfavorable, and 45% were neutral.
- NPR returned a total of 8 news stories; 12.5% were favorable towards homeopathy, 50% were unfavorable, and 37.5% were neutral.
- The Huffington Post returned a total of 77 news stories; 68.83% were favorable toward homeopathy, 14.28% were unfavorable, and 16.88% were neutral.
Conclusion: Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that homeopathy is junk science, the Huffington Post appears to bias their ‘reporting’ to portray it as a valid medical practice. Both NPR and (even) FoxNews appear to err on the side of truth, and usually produce either neutral or completely honest accounts of homeopathy. Granted, HuffPo is a strange combination of proper news reporting and random bloggers’ opinions, so we should expect more woo to crop up. But it’s not a free-for-all either: their blog posts are in fact edited to fit their editorial guidelines. They’ve at least allowed a couple level-headed bloggers to post rational/evidence based discussions of homeopathy (e.g., Steven Newton, David Brenders), but give a much bigger soapbox to pet homeopaths and anti-science folks like Dana Ullman
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