Dancing around the facts

Thanks to This Wicked Day for the tip.

Remember The Office? That show that was popular circa 2002? Today, the newspapers finally have an opportunity to use up the stash of photos of David Brent dancing that they clearly built up during the fat years.

Every news outlet today covers an article which recently appeared on the pre-print servers of Biology Letters: “Male dance moves that catch a woman’s eye“, by a team from University of Northumbria headed by Dr. Nick Neave.

What do they say?

MEN swinging their arms too much is a dance floor turn-off for women, scientists said yesterday.

Windmill movements like David Brent in TV’s The Office are signs of “bad” dancing, a study found. (The Sun)

Okay.

Running on the spot, windmill arms and spinning may attract ridicule on the dance floor but it will also attract the opposite sex, claim psychologists. (The Telegraph)

Wait a second…

MEN trying to impress women on the dance floor with the slick, cool moves of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever are making a mistake. (The Express)

Alright…

Ladies prefer smooth movements like John Travolta’s in Saturday Night Fever. (The Sun)

Hold on.

Psychologists have found that over-the-top fancy routines and nifty footwork are not what women want. (The Express)

Really?

If you use big body movements and fancy footwork you may look like a show off but subconsciously women will desire you. (The Telegraph)

This is just getting silly.

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Every press release is sacred

The Independent, The Mail, Metro, Sky News, CBS News, ABC News, FOX News, TIME, Newsweek and The Hindustan Times, among many others, have all carried in the past few days some variant on the following:

[A] dating site with a strict ban on ugly people, has launched a virtual sperm and egg bank for people who want to have beautiful babies.

By “an online sperm and egg bank”, what they actually mean is a forum on their site to let people exchange details and get in contact with donation clinics. Now, as you can probably imagine, there are a whole host of ethical, legal and logistical difficulties behind this, and you’d think this would make some interesting copy. How can a public forum respect donor anonymity laws? What prevents people from passing off other people’s gametes as their own? What stops people from using the service to send sperm directly from donor to recipient, which carries with it all kinds of disease risks?

And more to the point, what’s new? Solicited gamete donation has been around for decades (just ask the LGBT community), and most countries with legal donation frameworks permit the recipients to choose based, to a greater or lesser extent, on the donor’s appearance. So why is every news outlet reporting this as some sort of groundbreaking news?

Well, there was a press release.*