“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me…..”
Science journalist John Bohannon has done it again – providing another example of how easy it is to get slipshod studies published, and now, how easy it is to get naive news coverage of a slipshod study.
“I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here’s How” is Bohannon’s story of how he and co-conspirators dreamed up and executed a plot to do an actual, albeit shoddy, study….submit it to a questionable journal…get it published almost overnight…write a news release…and watch the silly news coverage roll in. I won’t repeat the “here’s how” of his article; you should read it yourself. (And don’t miss some of the hundreds of reader comments left on the ion9.com website, where his article was published.)
In 2013, Bohannon reminds us, he:
“…had run a sting operation for Science on fee-charging open access journals, a fast-growing and lucrative new sector of the academic publishing business. To find out how many of those publishers are keeping their promise of doing rigorous peer review, I submitted ridiculously flawed papers and counted how many rejected them. (Answer: fewer than half.)”
Over on the Retraction Watch blog, Ivan Oransky asked me to react to the stunt. You can read what Ivan and I wrote – “Should the chocolate-diet sting study be retracted? And why the coverage doesn’t surprise a news watchdog.”
I pulled the image of the little girl at right because it helps capture the moment. A chocolate-stained mess demonstrating how easily the health/science news food chain to the consuming public is contaminated. And how some journalists bit the bait with child-like naivete.
Addendum on May 29: NPR interview me for this piece, “Why A Journalist Scammed The Media Into Spreading Bad Chocolate Science.” More than 200 comments have been left online as I write this.
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
The @nytimeswell effort is shown to be unwell once again.
There's pervasive media bias toward hyping treatment benefits while neglecting negative results & harms.
Big part of this is reliance on experts with financial &/or intellectual conflicts of interest.
Att'n journalists: Use this list 100 independent experts to correct imbalance https://t.co/Twzc1Sp8Vw
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like