I went to the NYC Skeptics talk: Ann Reynolds: The Challenges of Science, Medicine and the Media. It was a very interesting talk in the way that it related to what we have seen in class. The speaker works for ABC as a producer who provides the material about medical information. One of the first things she mentioned was that she didn’t put a lot on the news due to the fact that it wasn’t news worthy. Not many people will watch the new if it’s boring, and this is a big problem. Some important information can appear to be very boring, and if no one learns it, it becomes lost. Another point she made was that she didn’t put things on the new if there was nothing that people could do about it. It would simply cause hysteria if it were something harmful. Her example of this was that she never aired a story on how the Alzheimer’s patients that are nose deaf almost always die in four years. This kind of story would simply cause people to check people’s sense of smell even though there is nothing that can be done about it.

One of the big points that she made was that always go to the source. She emphasized this immensely, and gave examples where it leads her to provide the public with true and precise information. She mentioned that a bunch of other news station were publicizing that Michelle Obama’s exercise movement for children was working. Upon further inquiry this proved to be false. The only children that had lost weight were those in the age range of 2-3 years old. These children aren’t even in school to be affected by Michelle Obama’s movement, and it meant that the information was false. This reminded me of what we did in class towards the beginning of the year with the baby face experiment because she practically does that on a daily basis.

I found this talk to be very interesting. It was filled be a lot more fun medical facts along with various things to know. It became a little more boring towards the end when she was accepting questions. The audience was filled with elderly people mainly trying to make their own point. It seemed like none of them were open to hearing her ideas, but rather came to state their own facts and see if they were correct. While, this did hurt my memory of this public talk, I still felt that it was a worthwhile experience.