'There is absolutely nothing in our study to support these kinds of conclusions'

'Looking at Page 3 makes you brainy' claimed the Sun on Monday:

The article by Emily Fairbairn - which includes one picture and two videos - begins:

Admiring The Sun's Page 3 lovelies can speed up your mental reactions, scientists say.

So Page 3 can make you 'brainy' and 'speed up your mental reactions'? Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

In fact, the scientists didn't look at Page 3 or whether looking at naked people made people brainier:

Recent event-related potential studies have shown that the occipitotemporal N170 component - best known for its sensitivity to faces - is also sensitive to perception of human bodies...

In two experiments, we measured N170 responses to nude bodies, bodies wearing swimsuits, clothed bodies, faces, and control stimuli (cars). We found that the N170 amplitude was larger to opposite and same-sex nude vs. clothed bodies...

We conclude that the early visual processing of human bodies is sensitive to the visibility of the sex-related features of human bodies and that the visual processing of other people's nude bodies is enhanced in the brain.

This blog emailed one of the researchers, Jari Hietanen from the University of Tampere, to ask for his response to the Sun's article (he said: "thanks for your e-mail. Nice to see that there are people who read what we really reported").

The paper wrote:

"And their results showed that it takes less than 0.2 seconds to process the image of a naked body — much less than when models are fully clothed or wearing swimsuits."

Jari says:

No, we didn't say this. All these stimulus categories produced a certain brain response roughly at the same latency...The important finding was that this brain response was larger for nude vs. swimsuit vs. clothed bodies.

So what about the Sun's claim that:

"The team's findings are good news for advertisers who use scantily-clad stunners to boost sales."

Jari replies:

I find it difficult to make this conclusion. If we had shown that nude bodies attract visual attention more efficiently than clothed bodies, then perhaps this sort of interpretation would have been justified. By the way, there are studies by other research groups which have shown this.

And how does Jari respond to the overall thrust of the Sun's piece - that his study suggests looking at Page 3 makes you 'brainy' and 'can speed up your mental reactions'?

This is the worst...There is absolutely nothing in our study to support these kinds of conclusions. We recorded brain responses (not mental reactions) which reflect how the visual system of the brain works.

These results showed that, at certain pretty early levels of processing (the visual processing is considered to form a "hierarchy" of different processing levels) nude bodies are processed more efficiently than clothed bodies.  

(Many thanks to Jari for his reply.)

News of Greece's budget deficit, from Page 3 of the Sun

When The Sun broke the story of Vernon Kay's 'sex-text' exchanges with a Sun Page 3 girl (purely a coincidence...), a lot of cycnics probably thought the married 35-year old was only interested in the blonde topless model, 12 years his junior, for one reason.

The cynics were, apparently, wrong. Rhian appeared on the Sun's Page 3 last Thursday and revealed a surprising knowledge of European monetary policy and Greek history:


Of course, there may be other cynics who believe Rhian never said any such thing and the above quotes (and lame jokes) are as completely invented by Sun journalists as every other 'News in Briefs'.

Or copied from Wikipedia as with Keeley's views on the Large Hadron Collider, and Katie's (20, from Birmingham) medical knowledge of bunions.

It is odd that every Page 3 girl seems to agree with the Sun on every issue going. Here, Rhian is clearly coming out against the euro. When the Sun switched allegiance to the Conservatives back in October 2009, Keeley declared 'her' support for David Cameron too.

There's many more examples of The Sun's Page 3 propaganda at Bloggerheads.

The aim of News in Briefs is, presumably, to make the Page 3 models appear informed about the issues of the day, thus making them seem more than young women who get their kit off. But by failing to let them speak for themselves, they end up reinforcing the impression that, as Tim Ireland says, they're being exploited rather than empowered.

For more, the News in Briefs website has every comment since the start of 2009.

Can a Sun columnist really complain about the 'early sexualisation of young girls'?

Last week, Nadia Saint commented on a Jane Moore column about 'the early sexualisation of young girls', in a paper where 'Rosie, 18, from Middlesex' is a Page 3 regular. But look at what the Sun say about Rosie:


If she is 18 now, and made her 'debut' nearly sixteen months ago, she must have been 17 then. Yet the 2003 Sexual Offences Act raised the legal age for topless modelling from 16 to 18.

So either the Sun broke the law then, or it is lying about Rosie's age now in order to make her seem younger than she actually is.

Which doesn't look good either way.

And for Moore to happily take the Murdoch shilling and then criticise the 'sexualisation of young girls' makes her seem a bit of a hypocrite.

But you get a lot of hypocrisy at The Sun these days...

Mail and Sun try to influence election; Sun tries to influence this blog

The lead story on the Mail website for most of yesterday was a very strange interpretation of an interview between Gordon Brown and Adam Boulton. Neither side emerged from the counter that well, but the Mail saw a bigger story:


Obviously a incident where the PM huffs out of an interview with a major broadcaster would be a big story. There's just one slight problem.

He didn't.

The Boulton & Co blog on the Sky website includes the line:

One man's "storming off" is another man's "getting up because it's over"...

Which immediately raises doubts about the veracity of the Mail interpretation. Watching the nearly twelve minute interview on the Sky blog reveals - shock of shocks - Brown doesn't try to leave at any point. The clip ends with Boulton saying:

Thank you very much Gordon Brown.

And Brown is still in his seat. Conservative blogger Guido Fawkes has posted part of what happened next on Youtube, complete with a juvenile Psycho sound effect. But it shows Brown remaining seated for a full three seconds before moving to get up.

So how does the Mail decide he 'cut the interview short' or:


He tried to leave once it was over. End of (non-) story.

Elsewhere, News International is clearly trying to set the agenda for the general election. During the interview, Boulton pressed Brown on Sky News' Leaders' Debate. Then yesterday the Sun revealed - to absolutely no-one's surprise - that it was backing the Conservatives to win the next election. These seem to be 'good' examples of where the media is trying to make the news - make itself the news - rather than just report the news.

Bizarrely, this blog received two emails (within 30 minutes of each other) from The Sun revealing the news about its change of allegiance in the early hours of 29 September. It even included a jpeg of the front page for inclusion. Why it would bother alerting a blog which has rarely written a good word about the paper is a bit of a mystery.

The Sun editorial writes about the:

failures of Labour in Government over the last 12 years.

Given the Sun backed Labour at the 1997, 2001 and 2005 elections, complaining about all twelve years seems a little...conveniently forgetful.

Inevitably, in listing Labour's failings, it mentions immigration, where they are accused of:

opening our borders without any regard to the consequences. Illegal migrants and bogus asylum seekers poured in.

The terminology here is very loose - 'illegal immigrants' and 'failed asylum seekers' would be far more suitable, but this sentence, which also includes the word 'poured', is designed to be highly emotive, rather than accurate.

The Guardian's Michael White points out that Rupert Murdoch does have a 'well-documented policy of being on the winning side' and with opinion polls putting the Conservatives well ahead, it was only a matter of when, not if, The Sun switched sides.

But even more importantly for David Cameron, he has the support of another key Sun figure, far more influential than Murdoch.

Yes, Page 3 girl Keeley (22, from Bromley, dressed in her blue pants for this special occasion) is backing him too:

[He] is the man...this is his time. Everyone will expect him to make things better. He can't possibly do this instantly as he will inherit huge, long-term, deep-rooted problems. We need to allow him time to implement fresh ideas and policies that will get the country off its knees.

Brilliant. With insight like that, she could get a reporting job at the paper.

Sun outrage at naughty stuff on the net

Today's Sun contains a story about the 'Pornification of our kids' - a survey that teens believe they should look and act like porn stars as kids find rude stuff on the internet.

The Sun decides to illustrate this story with a photo of a woman wearing black lingerie. Hmm. Even more inappropriate, the pic is cropped at the neck, thus giving the article a nice line in objectifying women.

The Sun homepage also contains a screen shot from the Adult Channel website, a 'meet all the entrants of Miss Scotland' pic fest and 'stories' which involve photos heavily focussed down the tops of Paris Hilton and Heather Mills.

The story has a totally unconvincing line in feigning shock, not least when reporting:

A girl of 14 says: “Guys are often into pornography because the girls have big boobs or they’re skinny or very pretty. You sort of feel you have to look like that to be attractive.”

Anyone remember when a girl who didn't have big boobs and wasn't pretty and wasn't skinny appeared on Page 3? No, me neither.