John William Oliver is a British comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. Since 2014, Oliver has been the host of the HBO series Last Week Tonight with John Oliver that takes a satirical look at politics and current events. He has received widespread critical acclaim and popular recognition for his work on the series, whose influence over US culture, legislation, and policymaking has been dubbed the "John Oliver effect". For his work on Last Week Tonight, Oliver has won thirteen Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards.
In the episode titled, “Scientific Studies”,
which was aired on the 8th of May, 2016 with more than 16 million
views, John Oliver satirically and wittily expresses in what way and why media
outlets often report fallacious and fabricated information as science. He states
how scientific information has been twisted into gossip by media channels to
please the viewers. He shows a few examples of how journalists start the
headlines by stating that “news studies show that” and give ridiculous information
like how sugar consumption leads to the growth of cancer, hugging a dog is
harmful for the dogs, drinking red wine is equal to spending an hour in the gym
and so on.
He throws light on the fact that scientists
are always under immense pressure to publish their findings regularly that they
actually tweak the information and publish their theories that was surveyed
with a small sample group. He speaks about p-hacking which includes collecting
a lot of variables and playing with the data until they find something that is statistically
significant but is probably meaningless. A lot of scientists don’t take up replication
studies as fact checking or not discovering something novel is not awarded. Hence,
the study that is done with a small sample is left unverified and people consider
it as facts while they aren’t actually confirmed or true. This results in many
viewers believing in this misinformation. The viewers always enjoy eye-catching
stories and the media outlets use this to their advantage and show them twisted
information. He concludes by telling science is imperfect but is hugely
important and shouldn’t be turned into a morning show gossip.
The media has enormous effect on its viewers and it is necessary to present properly verified and surveyed facts to the viewers.
Reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw&ab_channel=LastWeekTonight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Oliver
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