1. Topic: Will fish-oil pills make a child a genius
Topic: Will fish-oil pills make a child a genius? Reading: Goldacre, Ben (2008). Bad Science, (Chapter 8, Pill solves complex social problem, ). Group 5: Shu Min, Yan Ling (Presenter), Yi Mou

2. Outline Fish-oil case study Problems Outcome of study
Implications of misleading data
Conclusion

3. Will fish-oil pills make a child a genius?

4. Fish-oil case study
The “Durham trials” was published by the British media
A trial of fish-oil capsules was intended to be given out to 5000 children
Impressive results had been confidently predicted

5. Methodology Recruit 5000 children in their GCSE year
Give them 6 fish-oil capsules a day
Compare their results
Children who are given fish-oil capsules
What the council would have estimated for children without the capsule
Methodology

6. Importance of a placebo group
“Whatever you do to children, in a trial of a pill to improve their performance, their performance will improve”
Children’s skills improve over time
Placebo effect
Hawthorne effect – alteration of behavior by the subject of a study due to their awareness of being observed.

7. Fish-oil case study Durham has a bad exam record
Current A-level syllabus are easier than old O-level papers
Present day university papers are easier than old A-level papers

8. Outcome
News reported many positive fish oil trials being performed on the children
Researcher who regularly appeared on TV, often used technical terms such as ‘limbic’
There were plenty of complicated graphics but no statistics.
There were no scientific literature or published studies about the positive effects of fish oil pills in children.

9. Medicalization
A process by which problems and issues become defined and treated as a medical problem.
Medicalization
Treatment

10. Fish-oil case study
GCSE results showed a decreasing rate of improvement
Durham council announced that there had never been any intention of measuring exam performance

11. Implications
Undermine the public’s understanding of the nature of evidence and research
Ethical issues
Educationalists, academic researchers, parents and the public should be permitted to review the methods and results and draw their own conclusion

12. Conclusion
Importance of a placebo group- researcher is able to better evaluate the true overall effect of the treatment under study.
Generating news coverage as a means of increasing brand awareness of a product is very common
We should exercise discretion with information presented to us by the media and make our own judgements.

13. Thank you!