It would be gratifying to report that the recent suspension of activities by the Dore company was the direct result of a better public understanding of research methods.
Unfortunately, it is not quite as clear cut as that. The direct cause of Dore’s demise seems to be financial. First Australian, then UK and USA operations have been suspended following unsustainable losses rather than methodological concerns.
You would hope that truth will out. Informed criticism of research which does not, on examination, support the central claim that the Dore method successfully ‘cures’ dyslexia should take a toll on sales.
If the Dore suspension is a result of public criticism rather than financial miscalculation, bloggers have played a key part.
Ben Goldacre has a generous piece which recognises the contribution of the other bloggers (that’s those without a Guardian column and access to newspaper libel lawyers) who have written about this. He also points out that the record of mainstream newspapers and TV in uncritically broadcasting PR for Dore has been abysmal. Read it here.
One of those bloggers, Holfordwatch, has a piece commenting on coverage of the Dore closure by the Sun, Times and Independent. Two of these are rated as good impartial reporting , one is not. Find out which ‘dismally fails’ “to assess whether there is good quality evidence that Dore works”, here.
It could be worse. You might have relied on The Leamington Spa Courier as your local paper of record. As recently as January 2008 The Courier relayed claims of a ‘major breakthrough in the treatment of autism‘ and that “the Dore clinic has achieved massive successes while working with 1,000 patients suffering from the symptoms of high-functioning autism”. Post-closure, Dore claims to have “successfully treated more than 10,000 people in the UK and helped patients in America, Australia and Hong Kong ” were reported as fact. A 2001 Tonight with Trevor MacDonald documentary is mentioned, the critical OFCOM judgement it generated is not.
Does it matter? No doubt the people who worked for Dore believed in what they were doing. (After all, they were told that the treatment methods were backed by research.) The Courier is a local paper without the resources for investigative journalism. It is difficult for non-experts to judge which research papers are good and which are not. Nobody told me. And so on.
But you will recall that criticism of Dore claims has been building for years (see Goldacre article above). It’s published on the web in academic journals and blogs. Do a search.
It matters because the public depends on journalists to interpret research. If journalists re-write press releases without subjecting them to critical analysis, they are failing their readers.
[…] The use and abuse of research PPA 117 How research is used and reported « Dore, bloggers and Bad Science […]
Thanks!
The thing about looking at the Dore research on their website is that they repeatedly mis-represent their findings. For example, they use percentages to express ‘improvement’ in ordinal data. It’s like lining a class up from shortest to tallest, then saying that the 5th tallest is twice as tall as the 10th tallest. Percentages sound nice & science-y, & they look dramatic, but they just aren’t an appropriate way to talk about that sort of data.
BTW, looking at you earlier ‘compare & contrast’ post on Dore, I’d strongly suggest this excellent Australian documentary:
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2007/s1994872.htm
After it was aired, Dore Australia had 50% fewer people sign up. It really is the best 45 minutes you could spend on an introduction to the area. Unusually, it also gives free full-text access to most of the most relevant research papers: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2007/s1997868.htm
Gimpy’s linked to just about everything from the blogs covering Dore in this post: http://gimpyblog.wordpress.com/2008/05/31/dore-clients-are-unlikely-to-recieve-refunds-more-media-coverage-and-a-collection-of-links/
The Australian ‘Administrators report to Creditors’ on this page is also revealing, though in financial-ese: http://www.woodgateco.com.au/creditor.php
Finally, ‘Translucent Science’ was set up by some of the bloggers involved, for the purpose of communicating with the mainstream media since Dore’s collapse: http://translucentscience.com/
Brainduck, dear readers, is something of an authority on Dore research.
http://brainduck.wordpress.com/
We have links to Dore journal articles from this site with some contextual comments.
http://iconpartnership.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/compare-and-contrast/#more-27
Or go direct
http://www.dore.co.uk/Research/DoreResearch.aspx
This is something many journalists have not done, or they have not understood what they were reading, or they have not cared.
Thanks!
The Australian administrators said that take-up of Dore dropped by 50% after a documentary which clearly laid out the issues with the research was broadcast, and the lack of research probably helped stop it getting into schools, so I hope it had at least a bit to do with that.
The frustrating bit is that any journalists would just have had to read the abstracts of the two journal articles published on Dore to see that even there, the results were a lot less definite than anything the media ever reported.