The Sun “misrepresented” scientist in games/dementia article
Lewis Denby October 19, 2011 - 10:02 amBritish tabloid The Sun “misrepresented” Baroness Susan Greenfield in an article linking videogames with dementia, says a spokesperson at Oxford University.
Recently we reported that Baroness Susan Greenfield, a scientist and member of the House of Lords, had stated that videogames could lead to dementia in children. Her comments were quoted by British tabloid The Sun, allegedly following a conference on the matter – but a spokesperson of the scientist at the University of Oxford has now told BeefJack that her comments were “misrepresented” by the article.
“The Sun have misrepresented what Susan was talking about and it wasn’t at a conference; it was a school opening,” we were told. The spokesperson added that the Oxford Department of Pharmacology is “dealing with” the issue, but did not expand upon the context of Greenfield’s words.
Despite running a videogame reviews section, The Sun has developed a reputation for a strong anti-gaming stance elsewhere in the paper, and this is not the first suspicious story it has published in recent months.
After an extended campaign surrounding the supposedly damaging effects of the Nintendo 3DS, the paper claimed that videogames are to blame for rising obesity rates – even though the study to which the article referred drew no such conclusions.
Baroness Greenfield is no stranger to controversy herself when it comes to comments on the adverse effects of technology, however. She has made claims about the allegedly “addictive” properties of the internet that other scientists and health professionals – such as Dr. Ben Goldacre, of Bad Science fame – have criticised for being unsupported by research.
Greenfield is a ‘crossbencher’ in the House of Lords, meaning she has no affiliation to any particular political party.
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