Jeremy Vine

[jobjockey]

What a scare on Friday's show when he
slipped up and quoted Canada as the country
with the highest number of the virus, albeit
quickly corrected to China.
The panei who had previousjy lectured us on
subjects such as why there are more male statues
than those of women in this country, hadn't a clue
on general knowledge e.g. Prime minister in 1936
Churchill and Attlee were given, very poor answers
for people in the media.

[Buenchico]

>>> Actors, journalists, singers, poets, etc. generally don't do the STEM courses

True enough but most quiz programmes don't include that many questions within those fields anyway.

Many years ago(in the early days with Bamber Gascoigne presenting) I used to watch University Challenge and note down how many questions could (loosely) be considered as 'arts' questions and how many could (equally loosely) be considered as 'science' questions. As someone who regards himself as more of a 'scientist' than an 'artist', it used to really annoy me that there were far more 'arts' questions than 'science' ones.

However, having since having had to devise question for pub quizzes (and a few online ones too), I've come to realise that it's actually extremely difficult to come up with questions that 'the man in the street' could be expected to answer on topics such as mathematics. Questions within such areas tend to be either so easy that almost anyone could get them right or so difficult that only someone with specialist knowledge could be expected to provide an answer. There seems to be little 'middle ground' available to question setters!

[birdie1971]

Buenchico - “True enough but most quiz programmes don't include that many questions within [STEM] fields anyway.”


That's not what I said and that's not what I was saying.

I was referring to the main-stream media's general lack of awareness in the areas of science and mathematics. For the most part they are so uneducated in these fields that they're unable to differentiate between actual science and pseudoscience. Most of them couldn't tell the difference between a double-blind experiment and an anecdotal study. They are – for the most part – scientifically illiterate. And yet that doesn't stop them from pontificating about matters of scientific principal about which they know literally nothing.

[Buenchico]

I really, really hope that you taken a look at Pasta's link, Birdie ;-)
https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/ChatterBank/Question1697794.html
It's not just people in the media who don't know the difference between a double-blind study and anecdotal evidence!

However it also annoys me that many scientists seem prepared to totally dismiss anecdotal evidence without ever testing it out.

For example, many doctors simply laughed at using acupuncture for decades before any of them actually got around to finding out whether or not it actually works. NICE now recommends it for consideration as a possible way of treating certain types of headaches.

[MartinMillar]

Lol I do love the fact there are people slating JV for his lack of general knowledge but said same people cannot use the correct variant of there, their or they’re!
Isn’t it ironic!