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How a Scientist Fooled Millions With Bizarre Chocolate Diet Claims
__roo writes: Did you know chocolate helps you lose weight? You can read all about this great news for chocoholics in the Daily Star, Daily Express, Irish Examiner, and TV shows in Texas and Australia, and even the front page of Bild, Europe's largest daily newspaper. The problem is that it's not true. A researcher who previously worked with Science to do a sting operation on fee-charging open access journals ran a real—but obviously flawed—study rigged to generate false positives, paid €600 to get it published in a fee-charging open access journal, set up a website for a fake institute, and issued press releases to feed the ever-hungry pool of nutrition journalists. The doctor who ran the trial had the idea to use chocolate, because it's a favorite of the "whole food" fanatics. "Bitter chocolate tastes bad, therefore it must be good for you. It's like a religion."
Schadenfreude is the best freude.
i just don't eat it.
Well, it works for brocoli...
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The fact the journal is open access is irrelevant. The problem is that they just exist as a money-making scheme. The muddling of these things muddies the waters around the open access debate, needlessly mixing together good open-access publishers like PLoS with the numerous junk ones.
TFA lays out a template for getting press for lousy research: publish a paper (doesn't matter where), create an institute and a website, write press releases that lazy journalists can copy almost verbatim. I don't see why this won't work for legitimate and useful science.
Building Better Software
The OP is wrong on this, the guy is a JOURNALIST not a scientist. (He may have a science degree but he acts as a journalist).
If a scientist had done this they would be losing their job any minute. Any of the following would be enough to disgrace a practicing scientist (I am one):
1- carrying out research on human subjects without approval of the study by an independent review board
2- asking people to undergo a study that he knew before hand that was not beneficial to the subjects, in fact could likely be the opposite (this would mean he'd never get approval of the study)
3- lying to people about his affiliation and credentials in the paper
There are a lot of other problems with this "study", but it surely was not done by a scientist.
What it does reveal is that people cannot rely on popular press stories about science as journalist pay no attention to the important details of publications and fall for any hype. Unlike what the guy says, journalist can never be "peer" reviewers of any science... their role is different and yet they are not doing it properly.
metageek
WTF?
Go eat your milk chocolate, fools. I'll take the 80% Madagascar coco bad bitter stuff, you can have the Cadbury/Hershies.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Anyone who trusts scientists has no idea how science works. You don't trust the person or title, you trust the chain of independent verification of the data. This is a critical thinking issue.
Did you seriously just use a list of tabloids as an example of 'fooling millions'?
If so, you must have been born yesterday since tabloids aren't exactly new and are in fact designed around 'fooling millions' on a daily basis.
Just because they print a lot doesn't mean they're reputable news sources.
Oh, and by the way, Katie Holmes is an alien. She didn't used to be, but Tom Cruise has her DNA manipulated by Xenu so now she's like the chick from Species. Its all over the cover of Daily Star.
Its like you guys thought that line in MiB where he says all the best news comes from tabloids wasn't fictional. You know MiB was just a movie too, right?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
more trolling in this thread... this was not to demonstrate anything about fee-charging journals (by the way all journals charge fees, just to different people). This was an exercise in vanity of the author, showing he is all too powerful fooling the establishment. I wish he gets punished!
I disagree.
Scientists are widely distrusted.
Except when they tell us what we want to hear.
How dare a highly processed food made largely of fats, not be good for you.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
It was never science in the first place. He used known flaws in experimentation to prove that you can make the mainstream publish anything. Which was the point he was trying to make.
Fat people eat on the basis of cues not internal hunger. You lose the normal cues to overeat when you eat a new diet and if it satisfies some psychological effect, you feel full while not eating so many calories (if you are fat and your normal cues are really messed up). http://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/... and.... is there anything (ok, sex, dope, being proved right) that is more satisfying than chocolate? https://www.psychologytoday.co... so, it would work very temporarily.
Forget all those so called diet plans.. The only thing I know that works is actually eating less. Many of my friends will not agree, but I wonder how one can gain weight by putting less calories in their system.
xkcd's "Significance" pithily explains p-hacking.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Here's the trick: You and I know this, but the average schlub out there does not.
That distinction is kinda vital, and it's what I think GP was driving at.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
As a matter of fact, the study itself seems to provide a positive result that, ironically, authors have used to discredit similar studies :)
That said, from personal experience (as someone who lost 60 lbs by making changes to my diet) chocolate does have beneficial effect on weight loss, in that at a very least consuming smaller amounts of chocolate (in terms of calories) satisfies craving for sweets better than consuming much larger (in terms of calories) amount of other sweet foods (such as pastries). Just this benefit alone is sufficient to recommend (prudent) use of chocolate in a calorie-controlled diet.
As far as "bitter chocolate tasting bad" - well, tastes differ and some people find caviar or foie gras to be disgusting, but by an large they are smart enough to keep those opinions out of research papers. Me - I'll take my 90% dark any day (but don't shy away from milk chocolate, as long as it's not Hershey's anyway)
Somebody had to say it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
More to the point, it's impossible to independently (& personally) verify the data and claims of everything that you would like verified. There's not enough time in the world.
More to the point, it's impossible to independently (& personally) verify the data and claims of everything that you would like verified. There's not enough time in the world.
But I saw it on facebook!
Here's the trick: You and I know this, but the average schlub out there does not.
Science journalists should be better than "average schlubs". They owe it to their readers to do at least a few minutes of fact checking before publishing.
I trust Dr. Oz. He told me about this new miracle chocolate infused coffee bean oil that I could rub on my butt hole to make me loose weight. It's exclusively sold on his website and it really works. I mean, Dr. Oz wouldn't lie me, he's a Dr!
Gosh people believed what a scientist had to say... WHAT A STORY... next thing you know people will be taking their doctors advice! Scientists by and large are a trusted segment of the public, with the public having an understanding of the scientific process and that scientists CAN be wrong. That's how our information works. Researchers do experiments and publish results. News outlets pick up stories and broadcast them to a wider audience. If this disinformation had been allowed to just stand on it's own merits, it would eventually fall flat on its face as other scientists put the information to the test. The only thing this journalist accomplished was damaging the credibility of scientists! *DING* I think we have our motive.
"and even the front page of Bild, Europe's largest daily newspaper. "
That's the yellowest yellow rag existing. If it's in there, it must be wrong.
The statement was that those people believe something without basing that belief on facts - that's faith.
Most people don't have time to do this, even if they had the requisite level of knowledge, so we trust other people to do it for us, and we call those people "journalists." Ideally, there would be multiple people doing independent reviews, but in the days of the AP and Reuters, we just get 1 semi-literate write up and then syndication, unless it has to do with whether some soccer people took bribes or how cute kittens are, and then we can count on no less than 20 independent reporters and weekly follow-ups.
The other problem is that there is no genuine nutrition research, nor genuine nutrition practitioners. As someone above mentioned, the only way to have controlled trials which pass ethical considerations is if you believe a substance will help, or very certain that it won't harm someone. You can't just feed them a diet of Twinkies and red meat and then see what happens, and say "oh yeah, heart disease, sorry about that" but you can't have a controlled trial without doing that either.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Peer review hasn't killed AGW so whats your problem with it? Of the scientists who have expressed an opinion on AGW 97.2% endorse the consensus. only .7% reject it.
Now I understand science is not a popularity contest, but what are your credentials compared to theirs? If you are not willing to accept peer reviewed science then why the hell are you bothering to post here.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
_roo wins best pun category with "and issued press releases to feed the ever-hungry pool of nutrition journalists."
lose != loose
"It has long been established that mainstream media will publish anything, I don't think anybody with an IQ above 100 was not aware."
So you thing that about half the people is not aware? That's still a lot of people.
The fact that the study purporting for the hypothesis to be true was fake doesn't mean it's "not true", it means that we don't know whether it's true. In fact, the reason so many people believed it is that it's pretty plausible, at least if you stick to dark chocolate with little sugar content.
People frequently make the same error even for valid scientific studies: "study X failed to show a difference between A and B" is not the same as "study X showed that there is no difference between A and B".
This is a very strange article.
I'm happy if folk are drawing attention to issues of statistics, flawed studies or ways one can inappropriately draw conclusions from relatively small data sets. Reminds me of the old adage "Figures don't lie... but liars do figure".
But this seems to trivialize (or outright ignore) the actual purported benefits of cocoa. Why in the WORLD would it be acceptable to suggest "whole food" folk are fascinated with dark/bitter chocolate because of the weird idea that "since it tastes bad, it must be good for you". Is it really that hard to dig into the research, propaganda, whatever, in order to find out WHY folk are suggesting cocoa is good for you? Here's a clue. The dark/bitter chocolate is suggested not because it tastes bad (which is, of course an opinion - I like it dark) but because you have half-a-prayer of having more genuine cacao in such.
Next, I must confess I was ignorant of any study or claim that eating chocolate would help one lose weight. Even if I heard of it, I almost certainly would have simply immediately discounted it because of a number of factors. It's just one study. Let peer review deal with it. It also smells too much like other factors predominate. You're on a low-carb, calorie controlled diet? If you ADHERE to those two requirements, you can probably eat whatever you want and lose weight. Caloric balance/control is within an order of magnitude all that matters.
So, I may have an unwarranted perspective here. But it seems strange to get all excited about folk trouncing a study or argument I never heard of, nor would have respected to begin with. In essence, it seems like they're setting up a straw man to knock down.
This was an exercise in vanity of the author, showing he is all too powerful fooling the establishment. I wish he gets punished!
Yes! Let's just kill the messenger for bringing us news we don't want to hear!
So if this is the case, my initial question stands; What was he trying to show? That scientific journals will publish bad science (IMHO it's not their job to check the results and conclusion of studies, that is up to the scientific community)?
Any reputable journal will use a peer review process that will at least provide some level of filtering for this sort of thing, effectively the first step in assessment by the community. Junk journals hardly even bother pretending to do this, and are fair game for sting operations. However, I think that issuing press releases to the mainstream media is more questionable. How many of these newspapers will even bother printing followup articles explaining the sting? A fair proportion of their readers will probably never find out that the claims had no real basis, and will add the chocolate nonsense to their mental store of other dubious 'facts' that get reported in these papers (especially in the 'nutrition' section!).
Your numbers are from a paper that was published in an "OPEN ACCESS" Journal. Just like this article is talking about!
The point of science is to challenge accepted wisdom and refine it, a process that runs somewhat counter to the idea of a consensus.
They are journalists not scientists. the reader is the product. Except for the subject there is no difference between a scientific or e.g. a sports or gossip journalist.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
But that is counter balanced by owing it to their editors and share holders to skip those few minutes and facts to publish an article that will catch more readers eyes.
They can still do that, while reporting accurately. They just need to include a disclaimer in the article that there was no peer review, and it likely total nonsense. Responsible publications have articles about unconfirmed preliminary research all the time, they are just careful to label it as such.
Girl buying a Kale drink (or some crap) talking to the cashier:
"Yeah, it tastes like crap... but it's good for you!"
lol
For the record, I was there buying roses for my wife who's been away for a few weeks. They have the BEST prices around on fresh roses...
Interesting. Nobody here claimed that was the consensus. I've never heard anyone anywhere claim that was the consensus. I wonder why you would choose to pick a fight with a straw man?
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Science journalists should be better than "average schlubs". They owe it to their readers to do at least a few minutes of fact checking before publishing.
Gary Schwitzer, who runs the Health News Review blog, gave a checklist that makes it easier.
http://www.healthnewsreview.or...
Tips for Understanding Studies
Mixed messages about statistical significance
Surrogate markers may not tell the whole story
Be careful with composites
Does The Language Fit The Evidence? - Association Versus Causation
Odds ratios
Resources for Reporting on Costs of Medical Interventions
"Off-label" Drug Use and Marketing
7 Words (and more) You Shouldn't Use in Medical News
News from Scientific Meetings
Absolute vs. Relative Risk
Number Needed to Treat
Commercialism
Single Source Stories
FDA Approval Not Guaranteed
Phases of Drug Trials
Medical Devices
Animal & Lab Studies
Yes, but good journalists cost money and most people have stopped wanting to pay for journalism. That said, there are still some publications out there that have a healthy body of paid readership willing to find actual non-sensational journalism.
Did anyone pause to just look at the numbers?
it's mostly fat and sugar. Neither of them are detrimental, of course, but one 100 g chocolate bar has something between a third and a quarter of daily calories. Do people realize what does that mean?
and more interestingly, at least for the ritter sport i happened to have checked earlier today, the 73% cocoa variety has *more* calories than the 50% one. Initially one might be excused to think that it is weird... it is more bitter, how can it be less "healthy"? Doesn't take long to think that 1) it is cocoa *butter*, which is *fat* 2) you won't need to eat as much to satisfy your tastebuds. The 73% one is 100 g portioned into 64 pieces. That's less than 2 grams per piece. Tiny piece, yes, but they pack a punch and they are less than 20 kcal.
Recently i've started noticing that to eat properly healthy is very expensive and time consuming if you are preparing only for yourself. Certainly, as one finds tricks and combinations, to save time and money.
Don't read this as gloating, but where i live i have access to really high quality foodstuffs and i consider myself lucky that i am not in the UStates. I'd sell my granny for a proper texas burger tho... Wendy's and mcdonalds don't really count, do they?
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
the reader is the product.
That is not always true. There are still journalists who write for publications for which the reader is the customer.
Anyone who claims that there is consensus of 97%, as if that means something, doesn't understand what the consensus is.
You are one of those people.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
NOT bringing your loved one at least some chocolate on Valentine's day can be bad for both your physical and emotional health. Negative physical effects can include sore back from sleeping on the couch to pneumonia from sleeping in the dog house, as well as bruising from flying saucers (and cups and plates and anything else handy) to not being able to have sex until you atone :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Anyone remember spinach? Or vitamin C?
I've gotta headline for you!
Thousands of Scientists Fool Millions of People with Non-Reproducable Studies
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
But, it's got electrolytes. It's what plants crave!.....
Hey, UN-F*CK BETA! I'd glady pay for a moderated discussion, without never-ending comments from the peanut gallery. Sorry peanuts, I just don't have time,.
The problem here is thinking of trust as a binary choice rather than as a probability (float). Everybody, when they stop to think about it, realize that trust isn't all or nothing, but somewhere intermediate. But people often take shortcuts, and one easy shortcut is deciding trust as binary.
So, no, you shouldn't blindly trust an authority, but neither should you blindly distrust them. Each case needs to be evaluated separately based on the evidence you have on hand, and then given a temporary weight...which is subject to being changed when more evidence arrives. Unfortunately, this is not a good model for convincing people that you are correct, because you don't have the emotionally driving certainty. But even though that certainty is a great tool for convincing people, it's quite dangerous. You should immediately doubt whenever you hear someone being certain. This is a matter of self-protection, it's not that they are always wrong, or always malicious, often they aren't. But their goals are quite likely to differ from yours. And certainty is driven not be evidence, but rather by emotions, which are almost always self-serving in either a narrow or in an extended sense. (OTOH, life isn't a zero sum game, so their being self-serving doesn't mean that they are necessarily detrimental to you, your purposes, or your goals.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
To be fair, while dark chocolate may not help you to lose weight, it's not all that bad a thing to add to your diet. You just need to remember to count the calories in it as a part. (My preference is unsweetened cocoa powder, which may not really be chocolate, I've never been sure.)
And I rather like chicken mole (my recipie, as I have a requirement that neither the chicken nor the sauce have added salt).
The problem is the people who think that chocolate flavored bars of fat are a weight loss aid. (Check out the carbs of unsweetened cocoa power, though. It's quite low.)
Also, I believe that, as with coffee, chocolate contains useful phytochemicals. Just as do kale, chard, and other dark green leavy vegetables. (I'm not so sure about most beans, as nobody seems to have been pushing them. Probably, however, kidney beans have them, as they are generally found in darkly colored vegetable foods...like broccoli and brussel sprouts.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
More to the point, it's impossible to independently (& personally) verify the data and claims of everything that you would like verified. There's not enough time in the world.
Very true. The rational man realizes this, and doesn't hold strong political opinions on the rest of it. We're all going to be ignorant of most science in the modern world - the time has long passed when the educated man could know all of the scientific knowledge there was. It's important to therefore set arrogance aside, and not try to tell others they're idiots, or force your uneducated opinion on others by law, unless you actually care enough to do the diligence first.
Far too many people mistake fashion for education. If you're going to call others fools for trying to stop the teaching of "evolution" in schools, call them fools because you took the time to understand the science, the counter-arguments, and why a smart, ration person could somehow not believe in evolution. Until you understand the other side, and why it's wrong, stay out of the argument. For the evolution case: if you had a solid biology class, this takes just a few days of reading the talk.origins site. It's not an undue burden, and otherwise arrogance about your uninformed opinion is just idiocy.
For newer fields like the climate change debate, it will take longer to dig up the details, as there isn't a handy website that collects all the pro and con arguments. For climate change, can read through the pro and con sites and understand where they're coming from, understand the Vostok ice core data for perspective, spend time pondering the satellite temperature data, and so on.
For any such issue, treat both sides as intelligent people who are in earnest in their beliefs and not trolling, and read enough to understand how this can be true. When you understand how intelligent people can disagree on the issue, and see where both sides are coming from, then you can act out of knowledge instead of arrogance, and stop polluting the debate with idiocy. If your only basis for argument is "everyone knows the smart people believe X, and the losers believe not-X", well, that's fashion, not knowledge. This pretty much applies to anything being debated politically, BTW, not just the science stuff.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
More to the point, it's impossible to independently (& personally) verify the data and claims of everything that you would like verified. There's not enough time in the world.
But I saw it on facebook!
That's good enough for me!
Then, something amazing happened...
A possibility is that you had a very bad early experience with a bitter food. (Food poisoning?) You wouldn't necessarily remember it, which makes this hard to validate, but your attitude towards bitter foods could, essentially, be a phobia. It probably isn't worth treating even if this is true. (No idea how plausible this is, but it's just an explanation that occurred off the top of my head.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Anyone who argues against things that people didn't say is wasting their own time. You are one of those people.
(Reread my post. Show where I state that there is any consensus, on any topic, of any magnitude.)
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Anyone who argues against things that people didn't say is wasting their own time. You are one of those people.
That is true, I am wasting my time, since you don't even understand what you are saying, you think there is a consensus, but you don't know what that consensus is.
If you understood what there is consensus on, then you would be more interesting to talk to. Instead you're just ignorant to talk to.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And how do you define "facts" - scientific consensus perhaps?
No. Observable and testable. Consensus has nothing to do with it.
Science routinely re-evaluates its own scientific conclusions and often returns a very different outcome than the previous.
Can you say the same about people who believe what is written in a book that's thousands of years old? Of course not - you're told to take it on faith and not question (re-evaluate) what was written.
I think science seeks "truth", not facts - the same way faith does albeit by way of a different methodology.
No, science seeks observable and testable facts.
The Economist sells 1.5 million issues per week. Their subscriptions number over 1 million. Their subscriptions are growing almost 50% per year. They also charge more than most weekly magazines.
Science routinely re-evaluates theories. That's appropriate. And it doubts and tests purported "facts". Any organized system that doesn't do that is not worthy of being trusted. (Even governments do that to some extent.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
But that is counter balanced by owing it to their editors and share holders to skip those few minutes and facts to publish an article that will catch more readers eyes.
They can still do that, while reporting accurately. They just need to include a disclaimer in the article that there was no peer review, and it likely total nonsense. Responsible publications have articles about unconfirmed preliminary research all the time, they are just careful to label it as such.
Guess I needed a sarcasm sign with your response and a down vote too. What happened to everyone's sense of humor?
They also charge more than most weekly magazines.
The Economist charges more per magazine, but if you consider the amount of news you get, it is actually cheaper. The Economist is mostly actual news and analysis. Time, Newsweek, and most other "news" magazines contain a huge amount of photo spreads, celebrity gossip, ads, and other fluff.
There's really only one thing to eat while reading a story like this (other than Moar Chocolate, for Research Purposes.) It's Scalzi's Schadenfreude Pie. Dark, bitter, sticky, chocolately.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
you think there is a consensus
You really like constructing those straw men, don't you? Nothing I've written here could lead to this conclusion. So not only do you not have any way of knowing whether or not I think there is a consensus, you don't have any information as to what I think that consensus might be. And yet, your're 100% positive that I must be wrong about it.
Since you're so knowledgable about information you don't have access to, can you tell me if the tie I'm going to wear next Tuesday goes with the shirt I was planning to wear it with?
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Are you saying 97% agreement among expert judges does not fall under the term consensus?
That's not what I said. I said you don't understand what they agree on.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Since you're so knowledgable about information you don't have access to, can you tell me if the tie I'm going to wear next Tuesday goes with the shirt I was planning to wear it with?
I have no idea.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
My preference is unsweetened cocoa powder, which may not really be chocolate, I've never been sure
It depends if you consider chocolate to be the finished product or the processed beans, but it's a sliding scale. You can get 99% chocolate that has no extra sugar or milk and it's still recognisable as chocolate.
You sound like you know all this, but the processed beans produce "cocoa mass" which is made up of two components;
- Cocoa butter (a pale yellow fat with little flavour)
- Cocoa solids (a dark, strong powder, pretty much what you buy as cocoa powder)
White chocolate is only the butter with a bunch of milk, sugar and flavourings, and is often said to not be real chocolate because it doesn't contain solids. This is where I remain unsure also - is the determining factor the presence of solids, or the presence of both solids and butter? Personally I am happy to call it all chocolate.
I think one should distinguish between 'Science journalists' and 'Science reporters'. I like to think that 'journalist' means that a serious effort guided by a minimum of insight has taken place, whereas a 'reporter' is more akin to a simple repeating station, transmitting whatever it receives. There are not many real science journalists in the world, but there are plenty of reporters, who don't understand and don't really care either.
That much is obvious.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Cost per issue is an objective measure. Cost per unit value ("actual news and analysis") is a subjective measure. While I personally agree with you, I feel objective data makes a better answer to the question of publication funding.
Indeed. As obvious as the fact that you are quoting a 'consensus' you don't understand!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
damn lies, and statistics.
I've quoted one thing in this thread, and it was your words. I'm not sure what drugs you're on that are causing you to imagine something else that I quoted, but at least you're loyal to your delusion.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
So, do you know what the consensus is or not?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I never said that I did. I may well do, but it's really quite beside the point, as what the exact nature of any consensus is was never part of any comment I made.
As I originally stated, you claimed that someone else's opinion was wrong. Yet the opinion was never expressed by someone else, only imagined by you. This is the very definition of a straw man argument.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
As I originally stated, you claimed that someone else's opinion was wrong. Yet the opinion was never expressed by someone else, only imagined by you. This is the very definition of a straw man argument.
Nah. It was attacking a supporting argument to his spoken point.
That is, there is no consensus at all that global warming needs to be 'solved' or even how to 'solve' it if it does need to be solved. There's no consensus that it's a problem, which was implicit in that guy's response.
His point was that science journalists and scientists never could be fooled by similar claims, but they already post silly claims all the time related to AGW, like this one by a scientist, which was widely reported before being debunked by other scientists (and soon by time as well).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Most people don't have time to do this, even if they had the requisite level of knowledge, so we trust other people to do it for us, and we call those people "journalists."
You rely on journalists to peer review scientific papers? You may want to rethink that...
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.