xual Abuse, or drug and alcohol use in the home, to name a few. The correction between the variables is also spurious, as it is not mentioned if another important factor, such as if it was a single parent family, could be isolated in the equation.It is important to realize that the experts, such as the academics, do not allow blame to dominate the structure of their research. Rather, it is the media who is responsible for framing studies as heavily concerned with the idea of blame as explanation. An overview critique of the article also brings to mind the idea that language, the words we use to convey meaning, is not clear or pure. Words take on different meanings in different cultures, classes, and even for individuals, depending on their background, experience, and training. Linguistic content makes meaning very tenuous, and therefore meaning cannot be as clear as we believed it was. For example. part of the headline of the article states, Habit in pregnancy thought to damage fetuss nervous system, causing long-term misbehaviour. The sentence is -4intended to convey a purported fact, though a close look at the language used (i.e., thought, which does not connote fact) does not agree with this intention.The construction of the media report on a correlational study between maternal smoking and male criminal behaviour suggests a media bias and framing of information to serve their biases. In a practical sense, the reader should only need the key facts to make a judgment on the reliability and validity of the reported claims. However, language, types of data description, popular fallacies, and spurious correlations deployed by the media can throw the reader off track. These media tactics make a critical analysis of the articles truth not necessarily easy in assessing the extent of blame for deviance and crime in contemporary society....
