If you subscribe to a news reader like Bloglines you will note that the description of The Green Man site is "Topical comentary on art, ethics, culture and science as seen through The Green Mans distorted lens."

The Green Man happily admits that what you are reading is not dispassionate. He reports on things that are of interest to him. For example new findings in breast cancer research are far less likely to get a guernsey on the site than postate cancer research simply because The Green Man is more interested in the latter.

Most, if not all media, fall into exactly the same category however they are not as ready to admit it as The Green Man. Victoria Brescoll and Marianne LaFrance of Yale University have found that, unsurprisingly,

"political ideology influences how the popular press reports research findings"

and also that

"when people read articles about science, they trust the information more precisely because they are reading about science."

We need to bear in mind that on any scientific "fact" you will be able to come up with a "scientist" that is backing the position that suits the ideology of your publication. Science is not quite the dispassionate pursuit of truth that is the ideal and we must recognise that.

Read more of Victoria Brescoll and Marianne LaFrance's work here.

Further, regular readers will know that The Green Man is also prone to looking beyond the obvious to the deeper questions that arise from an article. In this instance The Green Man is occupied with the profound question of whether, in a similar vein to the renaming of French Fries to Freedom Fries, Professor LaFrance was known as Professor LaFreedom during the period of the Iraq war.