>I don't agree with that characterization of the Science news article at all. Here's the section of the news article that I feel reads like the journalist walk

>I don't agree with that characterization of the Science news article at all. Here's the section of the news article that I feel reads like the journalist walking back the central claim in her original news article. It also seemed to me that she was attempting to pin the blame for the misunderstanding on Tomasetti (by quoting from her initial interview with him, and reporting that he had vetted her initial piece): "...[W]as the “two-thirds” figure actually referring to a fraction of cancer cases? Tomasetti had explained to Science that “if you go to the American Cancer Society website and you check what are the causes of cancer, you will find a list of either inherited or environmental things. We are saying two-thirds is neither of them.” He also confirmed the news story's language describing the study before it was published. In a follow-up interview [...] Tomasetti clarified that the study argued that bad luck explained two-thirds of the variation in cancer rates in different tissues—a subtly different claim. Despite the confusion among reporters, Tomasetti did not feel they had been careless[...] And, he believes, he did his best to convey his findings to nonexperts. “If given enough time, or space, I can explain the subtleties of any given scientific result to anyone really,” but there were only so many hours he could spend speaking with reporters on deadline. The material is complicated even for statistical gurus, he believes. He has been busy preparing a technical report with additional details, and Johns Hopkins also sent a follow-up explainer to journalists and posted it online." Here's a pastebin of the article in case others are interested in it: http://pastebin.com/upWV95PK http://pastebin.com/upWV95PK I don't agree at all with your contention that the criticisms of the original paper are 'fact-free' and based on researchers feeling threatened. There are lots of problems with this paper; the fact that their conclusions may agree with data from other fields (or may even be right) doesn't change that.