Ben Goldacre VS Rentokil

The Problem with Bad Statistics

You have to feel a little bit sorry for Rentokil. The tenacity with which Ben Goldacre (quite rightly) went after them was really something to behold (and I urge you read the whole #tagged exchange here).

If you’ve never heard of Ben Goldacre, then allow me to explain. He is the author of the blog and Guardian column ‘Bad Science’ and the book of the same name published by us, here at 4^th Estate. He is a medical doctor who specialises in unpicking dodgy scientific claims made by scaremongering journalists, dodgy government reports, evil pharmaceutical corporations, PR companies and quacks.

Vitamin pill magnate Matthias Rath sued both Ben and the Guardian after Ben raised serious concerns over Mr. Rath’s practice of taking out adverts denouncing Aids drugs in South Africa, while at the same time promoting his own pills. Mr. Rath eventually dropped his case.

Ben was also part of the campaign to stop Gillian McKeith from using the title ‘Dr’ and constantly questioned her methods, results and ‘scientific’ claims about her products.

The short version is that if you’re peddling bad science, then on Dr. Ben Goldacre’s radar is the last place you want to be.

So enter Rentokil, the multi-million pound pest control company who press released a rather alarming (or should that be alarmist?) story about the number of cockroaches and other nasties inhabiting London’s buses and train carriages.

1000 cockroaches on the average train carriage? 1000? No wonder this raised Ben’s quizzical brow  – I mean, I know I keep my head in my book and music on loud when I get on the train but I’m fairly sure even in my early morning, bleary eyed state that I would notice 1000 cockroaches sharing my morning tube ride.

Now, any critical reader of a daily newspaper who notices a story about pest levels on public transport that has been commissioned by a pest control company may well raise an eyebrow, look around their tube carriage and correctly assume that the article is sensationalist nonsense, but that is not the point. Here is a quote from Rentokil as published in The Evening Standard:

People eat on the move, and there is a lot of food left on seats. Pests are thriving. Although we looked at a train not running in London, we believe that London trains, both underground and overground, will have a similar number of infestations.

The bus we studied was within the M25, and we are already in talks with bus and Tube operators about a new cleaning system we’ve developed, which heats the vehicles to kill the insects, and their eggs.

The problem is that this article also quotes specific figures and, as shown above, states that these figures were reached through actual study and sample collection from real life trains and buses. We know it’s nonsense. We have our own empirical evidence of this by virtue of taking public transport and having, you know, eyes. So what exactly is the problem? Well, as Ben rightly outlines in all his work, if you use scientific language and hint at real scientific methods being used – like a field study on, say, a tube carriage, to collect actual data –  and use that information to reach a conclusion in this way, when we know you’re lying, how can we ever trust scientists? How can we believe them when we know that ‘scientific evidence’ is really just a fancy way of saying ‘something I made up because it suited my cause’ (which in this case was what? I could say what I think, but I fear it would be libellous).

This behaviour allows people to pick and choose the evidence they want to believe, or that helps them achieve their aim – be that a scaremongering story in an evening tabloid, or a boost to your vitamin pill sales. If the public have no faith in the scientific community, then it is easier for you to turn the tides against that community and sell Joe Public your ‘alternative’.

After a long, drawn out campaign on twitter and some tenacious questioning from Ben, Rentokil relented and issued this statement.