Why proponents of intelligent design and climate change skeptics are not getting fair treatment.

More ranting on the BBC Sport "technically dead" issue. This post just collects some of the notes I made about the association between parapsychology pseudo-science and usage of the term "clinical death".

Proponents of intelligent design are not getting fair treatment.

Why?

Because any previous creationist attempts to introduce anti-scientific cods-wallop into the national lexicon quickly gets shot down. As soon as some religious nut pops up with a theory about bananas or peanut butter as being evidence for a designer God, the internet deployed the Hitch or Dawkins to rip them a new one in some glorious moments of ass kickin.


But the efforts of  and Near Death Experience proponents seem to get a free pass, in fact free repetition on major news channels.

So I try and prise open this phrase "technically dead" and what do I find?

I find a festering wikipedia article, and a mother-lode of pseudo-science babble.

This week I got a bee in my bonnet about the BBC using the phrase "technically dead" in a decidedly non-technical, and arguably fucking stupidly incorrect way:

"Bolton midfielder Muamba was technically "dead" for 78 minutes after collapsing in Wanderers' FA Cup tie at Tottenham last month."(BBC Sport http://is.gd/f7SQFB)

In order to determine whether I had completely misunderstood the whole premise of being dead, I was forced to actually do some research.

There are obviously a number of professional organisations that have domain specific usages of words derived from "dead", "death", "die" etc. Comedians have one and I'm sure there is a joke here about cloth and Analine for chemists but I'm not going to bother with it.

It is obviously possible to be declared dead in a legal sense, while still very much living in Vegas.

But I don't think that is the sort of "technically dead" that BBC Sport were getting at given that the man had just suffered a cardiac arrest in front of 60,000 people.

Indeed, the premature execution of Fabrice's will and distribution of estate was the least of his problems, during those 78 minutes.

Hello BBC, 1953 calling, we would like our medical dictionary back.

"Bolton midfielder Muamba was technically "dead" for 78 minutes" BBC Sport

 Despite being commonly used to refer to a kind of near death experience during unconscious cardiac arrest in certain circles, there doesn't appear to be a technical distinction between being medically dead and being actually dead.

You know. As a Can of Spam. Bit the dust. Kicked the Bucket. Dead. etc.

Update: the BBC have since revised the original article that provoked this blog post to remove the phrase "technically dead" from the title (edited article here http://is.gd/7qBpL2 16/Apr/2012), so I am looking to track down a screen-shot of the original article if I can, but it's still in the main body of the follow-up articles for historical record.



So they repeatedly described his condition as being "technically dead for 78 minutes". Despite him being not actually technically, or otherwise dead.

All something along the lines of this:

"Bolton midfielder Muamba was technically "dead" for 78 minutes after collapsing in Wanderers' FA Cup tie at Tottenham last month."(http://is.gd/f7SQFB)

But a few hours research into British and US technical terminology do not throw up any reliable source for the idea that medical or legal professionals use the term "technically dead" in a way that includes the reversible stage of cardiac arrest.