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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.
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.
I disagree.
Scientists are widely distrusted.
Except when they tell us what we want to hear.
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.
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?
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.
Because they also carefully pre-selected a result that would generate a desire in journalists to carry the story. Real science doesn't get to do that.
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!
For most people, a diet of bitter chocolate covered broccoli would probably result in a weight loss. You read it here first.
"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.
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
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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
Are you referring to processed chocolate or the growing of the beans? My impression was that Central/South America don't do much processing of chocolate, and that the U.S. doesn't grow cocoa. Beans are generally roasted, blended and processed in first-world countries.
So you'd want to say;
"The best beans come from Central and South America rather than Africa", or
"The best chocolate comes from France, Switzerland and Belgium"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's my understanding.