Detoxing BBC News

In starting to write a post criticising this BBC story for claiming the OED “officially” defines the word detox in a certain way, I see that in the last few hours this offending adverb has already been removed (the story still appears on Google News with it included). It seems somebody beat me to it.

The reason for this single word officially being such a problem is, there’s nothing “official” about what the OED does: if the usage of the word detox has indeed changed to mean something more general than its current definition, then this would have to be reflected in the word’s entry next time it is revised, whether an individual lexicographer likes the usage or not. That’s why it’s considered a historical, rather than prescriptive, dictionary.

That dictionaries somehow act as arbiters for the meanings and uses of words is one of the most common misconceptions of how dictionaries work. This view is exemplified in Sarah Silverman’s Oxford English Dictionary Word Induction Ceremony, and nicely summarized by Ben Zimmer at the Language Log.

Incidentally, the BBC’s summary of the OED definition of the word (“the removal of toxic substances or qualities”) doesn’t seem to bear much resemblance to the actual entry as it currently stands (“colloq. abbrev. of DETOXIFICATION; also, a detoxification centre”). Maybe their next correction will be to put the name of the dictionary they actually used?

Despite this, it’s nice to see a story critical of health nonsense get some coverage for a change, thanks to the PR work of the charitable organization Sense about Science, who specialize in this type of debunking. In addition, the discussion around this story has led to a bonus bit of humiliation for the company Detox in a Box, as documented (and created) by Ben Goldacre. Who knows, maybe there will be less poorly researched pseudoscientific nonsense in the media from now on? Oh, hang on…