D M DEAMER (Letters, July 18) wrote in to decry the views of what he refers to as “so-called experts”, in this particular case with regard to healthy eating.

I suggest the problem isn’t the experts, it is the way in which we receive this information.

I may be doing Mr Deamer a disservice and he in fact scrutinises scientific and medical journals. But I suspect he sees these reports the same as the rest of us, via the media.

This creates at least two barriers to understanding.

The first is that the journalist has to understand the research in order to report it properly. That’s a tall order when you may have one writer, perhaps with no more than science A-levels, covering the entirety of science and medicine.

Understanding the complexities of such studies can be difficult with advanced degrees, what chance has the poor journalist got?

The second, and more pernicious, is you rely on the newspaper or TV channel reporting these things honestly.

Shock headlines about “X causes cancer” or “Y will cure cancer” sell more copies. If the subtle truths are lost along the way, who really cares?

All of this contributes to the situation Mr Deamer then exemplifies, where we stop trusting the people who have spent their life studying these subjects.

It is a dangerous one, because we then find ourselves at the whims of politicians and others preying on that greatest of misnomers, our “common sense”. Appeals to this fallaciously-named sense can see us wave through all manner of damaging decisions, believing they are right and that we are being listened to.

We all need to sharpen our critical faculties, not be led so easily by politicians and headline writers.

David Craven, York