Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Inconculsive data .. Why Report it ST?


Yesterday (6 Dec 05) I bought the papers. ... Yess ... I actually bought Ass Tee to read. :)
An article on the front page of the Home Section was headlined "1 in 25 gay men here may have HIV". Wow that certainly has caught my attention. A Dr Balaji Sadaivan made the statement. But as you read the rest of the article, these were pointed out:
1) data to come up with the figure was far from perfect
2) "There are many many questions about this data"
3) AFA (Action for Aids), a non governmental oranization has no idea how accurate the figure might be.
4) AFA's programme manager said the number could be an underestimate or overestimate

I fact almost 1/2 of the article went on to say how unreliable that headline/statement was. So I ask, if the data was not reliable, why the hell did ST even report it??? Was it to
1) scare the gay community?
2) warn the public about the local gay community? OR
3) sensationalize the news???

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i agree with you on the inaccurate reporting. It seems like ST was just going along with Balaji's logic/rhetoric as usual. Balaji himself is known to create sensational generalization as he deals with the HIV/Aids issue in Singapore, just to give the official stance of the government on the latter's wariness of homosexuality as a threat to social hegemony. One won't be surprised if Balaji, who is too ignorant and close-minded, will be transfered to a different portfolio soon.