That dangerous ‘O’ word

Opinion is something of a dirty word when it comes to science. Opinion happens all the time within the walls of Imperial, but it comes in the form of chitchat, idle speculation and the exchange of ideas. It rarely, if ever, worms its way into academic papers and serious propositions, and when it does it's usually questioned, dissected and made demands of. We're keen to segregate speculation and fact unless the former shows itself worthy of being considered the latter.

In some media outlets, however, 'Opinion' is a Get Out Of Jail Free card. It's a carte blanche to write what you wish, and as long as you pepper that writing with lots of 'could be's or 'may's then your poorly-supported behind is covered. What this means is that someone in a position of authority, with scientific letters before and after their name, can write an opinion column and claim more or less whatever they wish. Write it in the right way, and you might as well be penning the lead feature in New Scientist.

Write an opinion column in the right way, and you might as well be penning the lead article in New Scientist

So it was this week in The Times, where Baroness Greenfield wrote an Opinion piece in which she claimed among other things that gaming's inability to provide 'meaning' might be causing the brains of young, innocent, adorable children to decay into nothingness. The headline reads, "Are video games taking away our identities?” The headline might as well read, "Video games are taking away our identities."

Greenfield begins by describing videogames as 'literal' experiences, by which she appears to mean that videogames can carry no artistic meaning or emotional weight, and are essentially no different to playing with a cup and ball. She expresses herself most curiously by comparing playing Mario to reading a book: "When you play a computer game to rescue the princess, it is not because the princess is meaningful to you... Yet when you read a book, it is because you care about the characters."

It's easy to dismiss this as snobbishness – and in an article that quotes Shakespeare and Euripides that is a fairly simple argument to make – but what's clear is that Baroness Greenfield either has never played a videogame, or does not enjoy them. Giving her the benefit of the doubt that she wouldn't write such an article having never played videogames, the fact that she doesn't enjoy them easily explains why she doesn't feel they have meaning or emotional weight – because for her, they don't. Similarly, I don't enjoy much Shakespeare, and that makes it hard for me to relate to any of the characters or themes being conveyed. To say, as a result, that the medium of drama is devoid of meaning seems a little heavy-handed.

In any case, the real problem in the article is that Greenfield uses the lack-of-meaning argument to motivate – namely, that by consuming content that has no meaning we are thereby losing a part of our mental faculties. She heavily implies through a careful use of language that videogames are responsible for a “drop in empathy” in the population (whatever that might mean), an “increase in aggressiveness” and a rise in the prescription of ADHD medication, the latter being particularly forced as she proposes two likely causes for this rise, and then goes on to say that "a third possibility... if... might..." until the tail end of the sentence carries a vanishingly small probability.

But probability doesn't matter, because Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield CBE PhD BSc holds 30 honorary degrees, is frequently on TV and radio, and was awarded the Royal Society's Faraday Prize. Greenfield doesn't need to establish a basis for a claim; she merely needs to imply its veracity, and herein lies the problem.

Last month, Greenfield was quoted by The Sun as having said that videogames caused a form of “dementia” in children. A spokesperson later claimed this had “misrepresented” her views. She spoke out about Internet Addiction Syndrome, after which Ben Goldacre asked her to publish results or conduct a study. Greenfield likened Goldacre to those who used to claim smoking didn't cause cancer. Now, in this Times article, she constructs a weak argument against gaming's artistic merit, and uses it to imply a causal link between it and neurological disorders.

In her Times article, [Baroness Greenfield] constructs a weak argument against gaming’s artistic merit

If videogames were causing my brain to weaken and become damaged, I would want to know. I'd be surprised if I found a gamer who wouldn't want to know. No one is denying Greenfield's claims because they want to sweep this under the rug. They're asking questions because her claims are unsupported, they are fuelling suspicion and hatred of videogames, and above all else they're teaching the public that science is about people with letters after their name telling you what is true and what is false.

This is not how science works. But it remains to be seen whether anyone will really make a dent in Greenfield's arguments, or whether these 'opinion' pieces will be a regular fixture for the next half-decade.