This might seem trivial: so what if most of the people who work in the media have arts and humanities degrees from Oxford or Cambridge and don’t understand science, maths, statistics? Well, this actually costs lives: when that charlatan doctor in the pay of law firms who were mounting a class action lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers said that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism, the media didn’t bother to check their facts or understand the issue, they just reported the story in as sensational a way as possible. For years afterwards, as parents agonised about whether to vaccinate their kids and as a result exposed them to the risk of deadly diseases, the media reported Wakefield’s opinions as if they were respectable, balanced, and scientific. Even now, the BBC’s faulty idea of “balance” in reporting means that they don’t properly report just how vile and corrupt Wakefield’s work was