Mea Culpa: we do not need to contract out facts to ‘experts’
Questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent
My predecessor, Guy Keleny, used to warn our journalists about the word “expert”, and this week we had a demonstration of the problem. In a report about the MMR vaccine and the belief in some quarters that it causes autism, we concluded “... but experts have found it not to be true”.
Thanks to Mick O’Hare for suggesting we should just say that it isn’t true. He has an important point that there is no need to contract out the ruling to nameless “experts”. My problem is different, which is that no one, not even an expert, can prove a negative.
The thing about the “MMR causes autism” scare is that there is absolutely no evidence for it, and its principal author, Andrew Wakefield, has been discredited. We could just say that.
After all, The Independent has no need to appeal to outside “experts”: we and Jeremy Laurance, our former health editor, played a proud role in debunking Wakefield’s irresponsible and damaging claims.
Go forth and divide: This was the headline on a report about fracking this week: “UK has five times less shale gas than previously thought.” Thanks to Philip Nalpanis for pointing this out. It is not wrong, and we know what it means, but I think it is ungainly.
“Times” is a term for multiplication, whereas here we are dividing. The conventional way to express it would be: “UK has one-fifth as much shale gas as previously thought.”
Mixed metaphor of the week: “Jofra Archer derails Australia to keep England’s quest judderingly on course.” I don’t know much about cricket, but here we have the Australian train coming off the tracks while the English ship, possibly bumping into the train, manages to keep its bearings.
Clichewatch: The Labour leader peremptorily summoned leaders of other opposition parties, and prominent Conservative opponents of a no-deal Brexit, to his office for a meeting next Tuesday. Several of those invited said that they wouldn’t attend. In a comment article, we said: “Despite the lukewarm reaction to Mr Corbyn’s proposal, it might not be dead in the water.”
This was a dramatically evocative phrase once, conjuring visions of gritty crime dramas (or Ophelia in Hamlet, according to taste), but it has become a cliche. Time for it to join all those other hackneyed phrases in – where else? – the “dustbin of history”.
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