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Brings together in a single hour The Why Factor; More or Less and Trending.

The Thought Show: Bad Luck and Cancer

Factual: Life Stories

Bad Luck and Cancer

15/01/2015

BBC World Service - The Thought Show, Bad Luck and Cancer

In More or Less, Tim Harford unpicks the reporting of a new cancer study

More Or Less  unpicks the reporting of a new cancer study, Trending charts a sombre new social media challenge and the Why Factor looks at portrait photography.

Most cancers are caused by “bad luck” according to reports of a new study. But, actually, the study doesn’t say that. Tim Harford finds out for More or Less  what the research really tells us about the causes of cancer, speaking to PZ Myers, a biologist and associate professor of the University of Minnesota, Morris, in the United States and Professor George Davey-Smith, clinical epidemiologist at Bristol University in the UK.
 
Trending, presented by Mukul Devichand, reports on a sombre version of the ice bucket challenge on Facebook in which people are being challenged to show their face to call out clerics in Pakistan who defend militants. This follows the school attacks in Peshawar and targets Maulana Abdul Aziz, a cleric at the Red Mosque in Islamabad, known for its radicalism, who by failing to condemn the killings has angered Pakistanis. In China we find out how the Confucian theory of “face” is driving dangerous competitive drinking of the traditional Chinese spirit Baijiu.

From the first photographic portraits captured in the 1830s to the “selfies” of today, we seem fascinated by images of the human face. Mike Williams asks if it is simple vanity or something deeper, perhaps an attempt to learn how other people see us or a desire to capture something of ourselves that may live on when we are gone.
(Photo:  Dividing breast cancer cell:  Source: Science Photo Library)

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