News of Baby Einstein Video Controversy Made It Into Nature

Nature, one of the most prestigious science journals, has a news report on the fight between the University of Washington and The Walt Disney Company based on Bob Iger's letter to the university demanding a retraction of its press release. This issue is covered in this week's edition of Nature (23 August, 2007, p. 848). There's nothing in here that we haven't known already from the various newspaper articles. However, there's one interesting aspect that I didn't know of till now:

Deborah Linebarger, an expert in child development and television at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, was asked by Disney to defend Baby Einstein to the FTC. Although believing such products can be useful, she declined. "I have concerns that anything called Baby Einstein, Genius, etcetera, is exploitive of a vulnerable population," she says.

Despite having "some methodological issues" with the paper, she says: "There are some valid conclusions in it that warrant additional research. I'm cautious, but it makes sense."

That doesn't sound very good for Disney.

While I can understand the Disney company's demand for the retraction of the UW press release (I think they tried to oversell it, as in most other press releases), I think the Disney company took the wrong tactic. As with any scholarly publication, and especially in this area of study where a lot of it depends on "stamp-collecting", i.e. doing survey and collecting data, the most effective means of countering the result is to either write a rebuttal to the journal, or to commission another study to verify the result, especially if the methodology is in question, as it appears to be in this case. Disney's letter has the effect of giving the impression that it wanted a retraction of the paper itself, even though it clearly stated that that isn't what it wanted. But with the public reading it, and with the media reporting it, this message is often lost.

While it may not be the most efficient and timely path to take, science cannot be done in the media. If the Walt Disney Company has issues with the accuracy of the work, then it should counter it in the scientific arena, not in the media, and certainly not by writing such letter, even if it is only demanding a retraction of the press release. The university can easily claim, as it is doing now, that it is based on the research work, and had the endorsement of the authors as being an accurate reflection of the published work. So now what?

The letter has generated more negative publicity for the Baby Einstein product than if the Disney company had just kept quiet and seek new research data to counter the paper. I hope they didn't simply consulted their attorneys and not their scientists (if they have any) on the ways to deal with this.

Zz.