But to my surprise, the guy looking for help was an alternative medicine guy ( read fraud) and he spoke at length about his theories of everything. He wanted me to help him to back his theories with some math as this was his weak point :), and help him publish in top journals. I tried to pursuade him about how science works, and specialy how in physics you have to calculate things instead of just vague story telling. But he said here you will come into picture. He tried to entice me with some good compensation on per hour basis but ofcourse I cared for my reputation more :).

Most importantly, the conclusion always precedes the story and even the investigation that leads to the story.”

There are rumored to be governments who might (Fred forbid!) consider such tactics to fool citizens into backing something as serious as an ill considered military action.

Thank Fred, that in the real world, we can be assured our Public Servants would never stoop so low.

Why it’s important to expose flawed reasoning, bad science–no matter how frivolous the venue. This is funny stuff… but only for as long as we can rend them important.

Well, you *would* want to exclude those countries, like the UK, where the average WHR is about 3….

Most importantly, the conclusion always precedes the story and even the investigation that leads to the story.

This approach would have set off loud alarm bells, 1) because they clearly knew the required conclusion 2) because it was pushing a product 3) there was a fee involved.
#1 tells you it’s a waste of the professor’s time.
#2 would be an absolute no for our campus, because they can’t use the university’s name to promote products.
As for #3, professors can act as consultants for outside entities — but there has to be a contract involved and that’s really getting away from a media function.

Now if a reporter had called me and said, “we want an expert on why Jessica Alba has an attractive walk,” I might have checked in with a couple of people in biomechanics that I can think of who actually might be able to say something about human gait.

We do get a lot of media queries that are pretty, um, basic. But I don’t have a problem with helping a local TV station do a segment on eg “What is New Car Smell?” IF a professor is willing and able to do it, because I think it’s an opportunity to reach an audience with very little exposure to science and show them that science has some relevance to them.

A similar type of query is the “we want to test something — can we use your lab.” We’ve accommodated these on occasion, but they’re generally more time and trouble to organize than they are worth, as the university does not generally have lab facilities and staff to do these kinds of things at short notice.