The Sunday Telegraph launches unethical attack on LSE research about air pollution

This latest ill-informed assault demonstrates once again how The Sunday Telegraph distorts and misrepresents the evidence about environmental policies, particularly those promoted by opponents of the Conservative Party, writes Bob Ward.

The Sunday Telegraph newspaper has launched an unethical and politically-motivated attack to try to discredit the work of researchers who have found positive benefits from Labour politicians’ efforts to tackle air pollution in London.

The article on 18 August 2024 by the newspaper’s science editor, Sarah Knapton, misrepresents comments by other researchers about a working paper titled Putting Low Emission Zones (LEZs) to the test: the effect of London’s LEZ on education, which was published by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment on 8 August.

The publication of the working paper on the Institute’s website was highlighted to journalists in a press release. The Sunday Telegraph reported the publication of the paper in its print edition and online on 11 August.

However, the newspaper, which has been promoting misinformation about air pollution as part of its campaign against the Labour Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has now attempted to discredit the researchers’ findings because they show the benefits of regulation.

The Low Emission Zone was introduced in London by Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone in February 2008 to charge heavy diesel vehicles that did not meet minimum standards for emissions of particulate matter. The LEZ was expanded several times and now covers most of Greater London.

Research published in The Lancet Public Health has already shown that London’s LEZ has reduced nitrogen dioxide pollution, although not sufficiently to improve the lung capacity of children whose health is suffering as a result of poor air quality.

The new working paper by Antonio Avila-Uribe, Sefi Roth and Brian Shields concluded:

“This paper provides compelling evidence of the beneficial impact of London’s Low-Emission Zone on standardised exam scores among elementary school students, marking a significant addition to both academic literature and policy discussions. Utilising the National Pupil Database, and employing a rigorous difference-in-differences approach complemented by fixed effects, our findings reveal that primary schools within the LEZ experienced a meaningful improvement in test scores, comparable to traditional education interventions such as enhancing teacher quality or reducing class sizes.”

Knapton asked other researchers to criticise the study, but in a highly unethical move refused to share the comments with the authors of the working paper so that they could respond.

The newspaper article’s headline, ‘LSE “verging on irresponsible” to suggest LEZ boosted exam results’ was a distortion of comments made by emiritus professor of statistics at The Open University, Professor Kevin McConway.

The newspaper withheld from readers the fact that Professor McConway told Knapton, “I’ve got no objection to researchers posting this kind of thing on the internet before publication, as a research report and a working paper.”

Instead Knapton cherrypicked the following quote: “What I do think is verging on the irresponsible is press releasing it, with a release that uses language of cause and effect without expressing any doubt that the change in KS2 test scores was caused by the LEZ.”

Knapton did not disclose that her newspaper had reported the results of the working paper in its edition the previous week after the press release had been sent to journalists.

Her article’s headline also falsely claimed that Professor McConway has described the working paper’s conclusions as “verging on irresponsible”.

Knapton’s article also included the following quote from Professor McConway:

“The article itself is also strongly causal in its wording, and the authors claim that their methods establish that the association is indeed one of cause and effect. Obviously it’s possible that it is cause and effect.

“But I don’t believe that the analysis in the paper establishes this anywhere near firmly enough to make the claims that are made in the paper and the press release.”

In a commentary published on the website of the Grantham Research Institute on 12 August, one of the co-authors of the working paper, Dr Sefi Roth, addressed potential arguments that might be used to try to attack their work. He explained the methods employed to identify a causal relationship between the LEZ and the improvements in pupils’ test scores.

Knapton also quoted Dr Stephen Burgess, Group Leader at the MRC Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge: “If patterns of immigration were different in London from non-London cities across the time period, this could account for the difference in differences.”

However, Knapton hid from the newspaper’s readers other comments from Dr Burgess, including: “This is a well-recognized analysis strategy. I can’t be sure that the analysts have done everything correctly without reading the paper forensically (and looking at their code), but there’s no reason to doubt that they’ve done the right thing here.”

The online version of Knapton’s article created the impression that the research behind the working paper may have been influenced by the Mayor of London. She wrote: “A number of academic papers about the capital’s controversial road policies have been criticised amid claims they have been subject to political interference, and used to push unpopular agendas.”

In fact, the LSE research was completely independent and funded by la Caixa Foundation in Spain.

This unethical attack by The Sunday Telegraph is part of a campaign by the newspaper and other parts of the media which have been promoting highly partisan views about air pollution and climate change policies, particularly after the extension of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) by Sadiq Khan in August 2023.

The Sunday Telegraph in particular has a track record of publishing inaccurate and misleading news and opinion articles about climate change, air pollution and other environmental issues. In a leading article on 16 July 2023, the newspaper attacked the planned extension of the ULEZ without any reference at all to the expected benefits it would create by reducing air pollution. The following week, the newspaper featured a highly misleading and inaccurate leading article calling for a referendum on the UK’s legal target to reach net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.

The latest attack on researchers proves once again that The Sunday Telegraph cannot be trusted to tell its readers the truth about environmental issues.