There are lies and damned lies, and then there are stories produced by tabloid health editors. Yesterday one of their favourite topics, Patrick Swayze, star of Ghost, Dirty Dancing and various other films I've been forced to watch by girlfriends, tragically died of pancreatic cancer at just 57 years old. His death followed a two-year battle with the disease, and two years in which his every appearance fuelled a sort of sick and morbid game among tabloid hacks to predict his demise. Here's a little run through of the Daily Mail's various predictions over the last 18 months.

The story broke in the first week of March 2008, and the papers gave less chance of seeing the summer than Frosty the Snowman.

For me, ubiquitous stand-up Michael McIntyre joins the ranks of Alan Carr and Two Pints on my mental checklist of comedy entities which seem to be very popular even though nobody I've ever met, anywhere, ever, thinks they're funny. But one journalist at the Daily Mail seems to love the guy, a hack named Paul Connolly. For Connolly, the key to McIntyre's 'talent' is that "crucially, he rarely, if ever, puts people down."

He goes on to bemoan "infantile" modern comedy:

[bpsdb] The headline of the latest sorry excuse for health journalism in the Daily Mail (where else) says it all: "GCSE pupils 'brainwashed to support the MMR vaccine'". The article gives a platform to the disgraced Andrew Wakefield and the sadly misguided members of JABS that still follow him, in which they claim that an exam question about the MMR hoax is being used by the government to "indoctrinate" children with pro-vaccine propaganda.

Exam papers are of course not available online, so I'll have to rely on the description of the questions concerned presented by Beezy Marsh, the journalist who filed this piece (and more on her later):

Last year I wrote about what I called the "disgusting misrepresentation of British Muslims," the publication of heavily biased opinion polls by apparently Islamophobic lobbying groups, that were quickly picked up and promoted by elements of the right-wing press. This week, I'm pleased to say that a group of British Born Muslims who saw that coverage and my article, got in touch to let me know that they've been going out and collecting evidence to help fight for the reputation of their community. Those who saw my first piece for Liberal Conspiracy know that I'm here to advocate science-based policy, so this week I want to explore the science of opinion polls, and look at how the evidence has been abused by a network of right-wing journalists and lobbying interests.

Continue reading at Liberal Conspiracy.