ANGRY MOB

According to the Daily Mail 'Man flu is not a myth: Female hormones give women stronger immune systems'. Now, I'm not sure whether this is bad news for men or women. Men can perhaps now be ill without the women in their life mocking their 'man flu', which is surely a good thing for men. Yet, conversely, it appears that men are the weaker sex (a shocking revelation to be made in the Daily Mail) which must be a bad thing for men.

However, there seems to be little point in taking this too seriously if the story isn't entirely accurate, and - shockingly enough - the article doesn't seem to be. Now, my knowledge of medicine ends at reading instructions on boxes, jars or tubes of prescribed or over-the-counter drugs / treatments / ointments. I am not putting myself forward as an authority on the subject here, I'm merely going to make some assumptions based on logic.

Here goes.

Right, the bulk of the actual article seems to be reproducing the study fairly accurately; however, what the study never mentions (at least in the press release) is flu - man or otherwise. The study can be found here and whilst it does state that 'results demonstrate that women have a more powerful inflammatory response than men' it makes no inferences as to whether this has anything to add to the debate about whether 'man flu' is a real affliction or not.

This is because whether men have a worse natural immunity than women has no impact on the debate as to whether man flu is a real affliction or just a myth. Just because men may be more susceptible to illness in general does not imply that an illness exists or that men are catching it. Man flu is presumably considered a myth (correct me if I'm wrong) because no-one seems to have identified a particular strain of flu that only attacks men and that seems to be fairly mild (as in not fatal) or that doctors aren't convinced that men even have the flu but just a cold. This study adds no further information to this debate and it does not intend to. The only link to man flu is made by a Daily Mail journalist.

I therefore have a problem with the logic being used by the Daily Mail here. Just because men may have a worse immune system than women does not have any bearing on whether AIDS is a real virus or not (that is determined entirely in isolation from male or female levels of natural immunity). So, logically, the only conclusion that can be drawn from the study in relation to man flu is: if man flu exists, men may be more susceptible to catching it. So, another misleading piece of gutter journalism from the Daily Mail.

It wasn't the only misleading headline to catch my eye today. The back page of the Daily Mail¹ featured a headline: 'F1 meltdown' followed by the sub-heading: 'Ferrari quit in furious battle over £40m cap'. Strange, I hadn't heard any news that Ferrari had quit Formula 1. What I had heard from the BBC and every other source is that they had threatened to quit F1 if they did not get their own way.

Even the Daily Mail website acknowledges this: Formula One meltdown! Ferrari threaten to quit championship over £40m salary cap. It seems surprising that such a blatant mistake (or lie) could make it onto the back page headline. Still, I'm sure Paul Dacre will maintain that the Daily Mail never uses misleading headlines that contradict the content of the story.