Discovery Discovers Hormesis
Here is an example from Discovery News of one way in which popular science articles fall down: by focusing too closely on the research immediately to hand and failing to present the wider context. This article looks at the effect of damaging free radicals on life span in laboratory animals, but fails to talk in any detail about the range of research on hormesis effects: "Conventional wisdom has held for decades that free radicals cause aging, and that antioxidants, which squelch the reactivity of these highly reactive molecules, are a way to slow the process. But new work adds to a growing body of research that suggests the story is not so simple. In the new study published in PLoS Biology, worms that made more free radicals or that were treated with a free-radical-producing herbicide actually lived longer than normal worms. What's more, when the longer-lived mutant worms were given antioxidants, the effects were reversed, and the worms had a conventional worm lifespan. The finding flies in the face of the idea that antioxidants battle the effects of aging. ... what is emerging from this and other experiments is a view of free radicals - or, more precisely, reactive oxygen species - as a normal part of the body's stress response, with beneficial effects at certain levels."
Link: http://news.discovery.com/human/aging-free-radicals-antioxidants.html