Aric Sigman

Sigman was born in the United States into a Jewish family. His father and grandfather were both professors of medicine.[2] He has lived in Britain since 1973.[2]

He has made appearances on day-time TV, such as in 1994 in the role of an Agony Uncle giving advice to children on the Saturday Morning children's programme Live & Kicking.[3] He lectures in schools on the subject of PSHE (Personal, social health and economic) education.[1]

He has published medical journal articles and has authored books on alcoholism, eating disorders and children's screen time.[1]

In 2009, an opinion by Sigman was mis-used as the basis for articles in the Daily Mail and other outlets which falsely implied that using Facebook could directly cause cancer. Sigman's article did not mention cancer.[4] NHS issued a statement emphasizing that Sigman's study was not a systemic review, and the studies cited by Sigman did not support these conclusions.[4] Physician and science writer Ben Goldacre has said that Sigman's work includes cherry picking of other scientist's studies to support a specific view.[5] In response to these claims Sigman said that "It was clear that my article on daycare wasn't a scientific paper."[6]

One such example of this is in his use of the paper "The Internet Paradox" in his Article "Well connected? The biological implications of 'social networking'".[7] In this article, he cites the 1989 paper The Internet Paradox", which finds a weak correlation between Internet use and depression/loneliness.[8] However, when the same authors revisited their sample group 3 years later, and found that the observed effects had dissipated, and that "This sample generally experienced positive effects of using the Internet on communication, social involvement, and well-being."[9]