The merry merry month of May

Morning all. I've been away for a bit (business trip, incorporating another stay in Zafra, as it goes). Anyway I was waiting for a reply on an enquiry I made regarding the absolute nonsense that City AM allowed Ilya Merenzon to write last month

including some nonsense that's very familiar indeed.

Now whenever I come across this sort of stuff I have a commonsense reaction that it's not worth complaining about, since if the newspapers which publish articles like this cared about the contents, they wouldn't publish them in the first place. And yet I always have a counter-reaction

[But which one is giving me which suggestion?]

along the lines of come on, it only takes a couple of minutes, you never know your luck.

And so I always do.

Date: 5 January

From: ejh

To: complaints@cityam.com

Dear City AM complaints

I want to send you a complaint about a piece, but in advance of that I need to know whether City AM is affiliated to IPSO. Would it be possible to tell me?

Yours

ejh

The reference to IPSO might seem a bit odd here, particularly since they were less than no help on a previous occasion, but I figured that if a newspaper wasn't even registered with them, it probably wasn't worth proceeding further. However, the reply I got did actually invite me to submit a complaint directly...

Date: 7 January

From: Christian May, editor, City AM

To: ejh

Dear Mr Horton

Your email has been forwarded to me. We are not signed up to IPSO so please forward your complaint to me and I shall deal with it directly.

Regards

C May

...so I did.


Date: 8 January

From: ejh

To: Christian May

Dear Mr May

My complaint is about this article. It's full of dubious claims, but for the purpose of this complaint I'd like to draw your attention to this passage:

Chess is proven to promote improved brain functionality, raise IQ, help prevent Alzheimer’s, and aid recovery from a stroke.

These are claims about the proven medical benefits of chess. Mr Merenzon produces no evidence for them and there is none he could produce.

He is making a very big claim: not even that he thinks any of these things might be true, but that they are true, that these things are "proven".

This can't be a matter of opinion. It's simply something he is not entitled to claim, which it is dishonest and irresponsible to claim, and which City AM should not have permitted him to claim.

A correction would be both appreciated and in order.

Yours

ejh

You can take it, by the way, that

• no, I did not expect a correction
• yes, I did have a pretty good idea what at least the outline of the reply would be.

But, like the angel (or was it the devil?) said to me, it only took a couple of minutes.

Took a month to get a reply, mind.

After a fortnight's waiting I had another go

Date: 22 January

From: ejh

To: Christian May

Dear Mr May

I wonder if you had had time to consider this complaint.

Yours

ejh

and then again last night after getting home (and a little recovery time).

Date: 8 February

From: ejh

To: Christian May

Dear Mr May

As it has been a month since you asked me to submit this complaint I wondered if you have yet been able to consider it.

Yours

ejh

Much to my surprise, I got a response in ten minutes. Not much to my surprise, it was pretty much the sort of bullshit I'd expected. A little to my surprise, there was a small twist at the end, though not a novel one.

Date: 8 February:

From: Christian May

To: ejh

Dear Mr Horton

Apologies for having failed to respond to you.

I have considered this piece and am comfortable with the claims made by the author. The article is not specifically about the health benefits of chess, and the line to which you refer is, to my mind, innocuous. I have identified a number of studies and academic articles that support, to varying degrees, the assertions offered by the author and I believe that taken together he's making a reasonable claim about widely recognised benefits of regular chess playing.

Regards

Christian

Well of course it doesn't matter whether the piece was "specifically" about the health benefits of chess, of course the claim he's making ("proven") isn't reasonable and of course these benefits aren't "widely-recognised" and of course Mr May knows all this but is going to say so anyway.

But never mind all that, what is this?

I have identified a number of studies and academic articles that support, to varying degrees, the assertions offered by the author

I am sure that if you read previous articles on the subject - or indeed if you clicked on the relevant link above - or if you just Google a few appropriate search terms, which I imagine Mr May did, you'll have guessed what was coming. As did I.

Date: 8 February

From: ejh

To: Christian May

Dear Mr May.

Thanks ever so much. Would you be able to inform me of the names of these studies and academic articles?

All the best

ejh

He didn't disappoint....

Date: 8 February

From: Christian May

To: ejh

Here's one:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022252

Hardly definitive, I grant you, but interesting and illustrative of broader (and more recent) thought in this field.

Christian

... but as we all know, or ought to know by now, Verghese doesn't even mention chess.

Date: 8 February

From: ejh

To: Christian May

Dear Mr May

Thanks very much. You know the Verghese study doesn't mention chess?

(Nor does it prove that chess promotes improved brain functionality, raises IQ, helps prevent Alzheimer’s, or aids recovery from strokes, but as it happens, the word chess does not appear in it.)

Yours

ejh

I'm not expecting to hear back from Mr May with some better suggestions. I mean why bother, we all know it's bullshit anyway.

Still, the next time you're reading about fake news, or whatever way people want to put it, it's worth thinking on nonsenses like this

and nonsenses like this

and reflecting that, you know, it probably isn't the Russians.

It's our own, regular newspapers like City AM and the Times, and it's the ethics of their editors, and it's the ethics of the people they get to write for them.