More miscience on sex.

Another great example of the media rumor mill is circulating. This latest episode concerns a supposed "scientific study" in which "a Cambidge team" found that Jessica Alba has the "sexiest walk". The study was put together and released by Veet, and apparently serves no other purpose than to generate free advertisement for the word "Veet".

Of course there was no real study. The press release is really a scripted PR campaign that had shopped around for endorsements from real scientists. In the end, they disseminated the press release without getting any approval from the poor guy at Cambridge. Another researcher is now getting his name dragged through the dirt by the ignorant press apparatus.

After the press release was circulated in a variety of news outlets (including Fox News), the truth was posted on the Bad Science blog and printed in the Guardian. The blog's author, Ben Goldacre, claims he was approached by Calrion Communications (contracted by Veet) and asked to "come up with equations" to back up their preferred ordering of celebrity sexiness. The people from Clarion explained that "an equation will give the story more weight." In the end, this is the equation they came up with:

WAIST MEASUREMENT ÷ HIP MEASUREMENT = RATIO

The significance of this equation was emphasized by writing it out in all-caps.

Goldacre reports a lot more of this nonsense in his article, for instance, Clarion forwarded him results of a survey they have not yet conducted. In the end, Goldacre told them to buzz off and they turned instead to Cambridge mathematician Richard Weber for endorsement. Here's what he had to say:

The Clarion press release was not approved by me and is factually incorrect and misleading in suggesting there has been any serious attempt to do mathematics here. No such thing has happened. No “team of Cambridge mathematicians” has been involved in producing the results that have been reported. I do not endorse what the press release says. I did not approve it and would not have done so if asked.

...

Clarion asked me to help by analysising survey data on from 800 men in which they were asked to rank 10 celebrities for “sexiness of walk”. Jessica Alba was 7th on the list, near the bottom. I reported that there was little one could conclude from the data on the 10 names, but that of the variables I looked at, waist/hip ratio WHR had the greatest correlation with rank order in the list. Top of the list was Angelina Jolie, who had the second greatest WHR. Beyonce had the greatest WHR and was ranked 4th.

This is clearly the cynical exploitation of "science" as a brand, used as nothing more than a recognizable logo. I don't think this qualifies as anti-science or pseudo-science. To be anti- or pseudo-, some ideological conflict is usually required. Dr. Weber summarized the episode as "an example of disingenuous and perverted use [of my] simple remark, not of any bad science." The Jessica Alba stunt is just marketing, totally disinterested in ideology. Veet doesn't appear to have any interest in Jessica Alba, sexy walks, Cambridge scientists, surveys or anything else. They just want readers to notice their company's name in the article. This kind of "brand-name" abuse of science should probably be called "miscience" or something similar, to indicate the misuse of scientific symbols, rather than a real challenge to scientific methods or premises.

This incident is another fine example of failure in the conventional press, set straight by a blog that put readers in direct contact with the story's source.