Slashdot Mirror
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."
True, though it sadly proves P.T. Barnum's maxim, and says more about a gullible public, the lack of peer review in the field of nutrition (and worse, the sheer incompetence of so-called 'nutrition journalists' and 'specialists'), than it does about a science journal's shady/sloppy practices.
Long story short, it exposes a hell of a lot more than just what the scientist initially wanted exposed.
Maybe someone could do and publish a sociology study from it?
(/me ducks and runs like hell...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
xkcd's "Significance" pithily explains p-hacking.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
0) Oh, he's not a scientist? He's doing fucking SCIENCE here. He had a hypothesis, conducted an experiment, published the fucking result. He created new information about the state of scientific journalism. But maybe you're confusing academics with science.
1) Get real. There was no potential for harm. Your "review board" requirement raises the bar high enough to render unethical every science fair project ever done.
2) Exactly like, for example, every control group, ever?
3) That was the basis. Of. The. Study.
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.
The big problem is that everyone will now remember the fake study and continue to believe it, because the rectification doesn't get nearly as much coverage. People are still refusing to vaccinate children because they're afraid of autism even though the author of that study actually confessed having made the whole thing up.