I half heard this new science breakthrough / discovery story on radio news bulletins from both RTE and BBC during the week. “Careful out there folks, you can catch Alzheimers” cautioned the story. Scientists said so, apparently.

Over the course of the morning it developed a little, into the more specific “Alzheimers is definitely contagious and you can catch it from surgery and trips to the dentist”. By evening I think it there was more interesting news to mangle and this story had disappeared from the bulletins.

I gave it the usual mental shrug I save for stories like this, decided it was highly unlikely any of this was true and thought no more of it. If I hadn’t been busy with something else during I might have put in twenty minutes poking around online to find out a bit more.

Turns out it was rubbish. Which yet again leaves me disappointed that news outlets in the should-be-better–than-that category just aren’t any better than that, and disappointed that I can routinely disregard large swathes of the news as just wrong.