Posted on 05/28/2015 8:35:16 AM PDT by Drango
“Slim by Chocolate!” the headlines blared. A team of German researchers had found that people on a low-carb diet lost weight 10 percent faster if they ate a chocolate bar every day. It made the front page of Bild, Europe’s largest daily newspaper, just beneath their update about the Germanwings crash. From there, it ricocheted around the internet and beyond, making news in more than 20 countries and half a dozen languages. It was discussed on television news shows. It appeared in glossy print, most recently in the June issue of Shape magazine (“Why You Must Eat Chocolate Daily”, page 128). Not only does chocolate accelerate weight loss, the study found, but it leads to healthier cholesterol levels and overall increased well-being. The Bild story quotes the study’s lead author, Johannes Bohannon, Ph.D., research director of the Institute of Diet and Health: “The best part is you can buy chocolate everywhere.”
I am Johannes Bohannon, Ph.D. Well, actually my name is John, and I’m a journalist. I do have a Ph.D., but it’s in the molecular biology of bacteria, not humans. The Institute of Diet and Health? That’s nothing more than a website.
Other than those fibs, the study was 100 percent authentic. My colleagues and I recruited actual human subjects in Germany. We ran an actual clinical trial, with subjects randomly assigned to different diet regimes. And the statistically significant benefits of chocolate that we reported are based on the actual data. It was, in fact, a fairly typical study for the field of diet research. Which is to say: It was terrible science. The results are meaningless, and the health claims that the media blasted out to millions of people around the world are utterly unfounded.
Here’s how we did it. The Setup
I got a call in December last year from a German television reporter named Peter Onneken. He and his collaborator Diana Löbl were working on a documentary film about the junk-science diet industry. They wanted me to help demonstrate just how easy it is to turn bad science into the big headlines behind diet fads. And Onneken wanted to do it gonzo style: Reveal the corruption of the diet research-media complex by taking part.
I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How.
The call wasn’t a complete surprise. The year before, I 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.)
Onneken and Löbl had everything lined up: a few thousand Euros to recruit research subjects, a German doctor to run the study, and a statistician friend to massage the data. Onneken heard about my journal sting and figured that I would know how to pull it all together and get it published. The only problem was time: The film was scheduled to be aired on German and French television in the late spring (it premieres next week), so we really only had a couple of months to pull this off.
Could we get something published? Probably. But beyond that? I thought it was sure to fizzle. We science journalists like to think of ourselves as more clever than the average hack. After all, we have to understand arcane scientific research well enough to explain it. And for reporters who don’t have science chops, as soon as they tapped outside sources for their stories—really anyone with a science degree, let alone an actual nutrition scientist—they would discover that the study was laughably flimsy. Not to mention that a Google search yielded no trace of Johannes Bohannon or his alleged institute. Reporters on the health science beat were going to smell this a mile away. But I didn’t want to sound pessimistic. “Let’s see how far we can take this,” I said.
SNIP
http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800
They setup a kiosk in a mall, and the women fell for it in droves.
Hmm, attacking chocolate now ... reminds me that I have a few chocolate mini-bars left. Now letsee, Almond Joy or Whoppers or Reece’s Cup?
"...it's like a chocolate stair-master in your mouth"
For the record, I don’t care. Give me chocolate!
There are many women in their 30s that apparently fell for it.
What about that chocolate triggers serotonin study?
I can swear it’s real. So, I may not lose weight, but eating chocolates make me feel good.
When will the journalists start doing this to “Global Warming” science.
Those “scientists” seem to be using bad science, also.
It seems it doesn’t take much “science” to get a paper like “Childhood Obesity caused by Man Made Global Warming” or some other ridiculous hypothesis published.
Obama will even pay for it with money from his “Obama stash”
It’s never just the weird old tip.
I have a friend whose wife is a nurse; she asked him to take over the cooking duties for her. He did, and cooked mostly in lard (as he does when he camps), but didn't tell her until she had her regular check up and saw that her cholesterol levels had dropped fairly significantly, and she praised him saying, "It's your cooking -- what have you been doing?" At first he just shrugged his shoulders and (wisely!) kept her in the dark because he knew that conventional medicine has so demonized lard that she wouldn't be able to handle the truth. But after a few more months, finally let her know that he was cooking with lard instead of margarine, plant oil, or butter. By that time she could take such "wrong" news as right.
Moral of the story? A lot of non-junk "science" is just as much junk as "junk science." Nutrition is not linear, it's chemistry.
This article focuses on health studies, but it perfectly describes about 95% of the popular science reporting on climate change.
Save for later.
Science by press release. Science Codex, Science Daily, Phys Org, etc. live by them. They mostly republish them uncritically, although some do link to the actual study. All too often, though, they’re behind a paywall.
On a low-carb diet - chocolate ain’t the problem - it’s the sugar typically used to sweeten it that is.
I make a low-carb chocolate mousse for Mrs. kevrkom and myself that’s a perfectly fine low-carb dessert, as sugar is the only ingredient that really needs to be subbed. (I’ve also done it as a mousse pie by making a crust out of ground almonds and a bit of butter and scooping the mousse into that baked shell.)
It doesn’t help weight loss in and of itself. But it does provide a legitimate sweet tooth option that helps us stay on-plan, so perhaps I can claim it’s indirectly helping. *shrug*
Mrs. kevkrom also uses unsweetened chocolate in her chili recipe, which gives it a rich taste and offsets some of the spice heat.
There is no subject where people are more easily misled or misinformed than nutrition. Almost everyone has a strong opinion and it is usually based on some type of lefty or sales propaganda.
The two diet fads that currently cause the most health problems are the anti-gluten movement, and the high protein low carb movement.
Anti-gluten adherents can stereotypically be identified as middle to late middle aged women who are pudgy and having hair loss problems. There is a very small percentage of the population that actually have celiac disease and have actual problems from gluten. The rest of the people eating “gluten-free” are just depriving themselves of foods that have important nutrients, not the least of which is gluten itself. Lack of these nutrients help prevent hair loss, poor skin integrity, easy bruising, and often moodiness and psychological problems.
The vast majority of those who have either self-diagnosed celiac disease, or had the help of a health food store employee, or even a self proclaimed “naturopath” do not actually have celiac disease. If you suspect you do... it would be much better to go to an actual doctor with an actual degree from a real medical school to have this properly diagnosed.
I don’t have the patience of the time this morning to get into a battle over the anti-carbohydrate high protein fad diets this morning. Suffice it to say that any diet that does not provide some sort of nutritional balance is just not a good plan for the long term. Fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are all mostly carbohydrate. If you cut them out of your diet you are going to have a difficult time replacing the nutrients that they provide with protein bars, mixes and frozen dinners.
I have been round and round with friends who literally have destroyed their health by going on fad diets for extended periods of time. You can usually get away with it when you are young, but going on a fad diet when you are middle aged or older can literally trigger health problems that will eventually do you in.
Good nutrition is not complicated... eat a balanced diet that contains fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, meat, fish, poultry, and dairy products. Avoid excessive amounts of fat and refined sugar. If you are going to be eating deep fried foods then try to make sure they are fried in fats that help raise your HDL (good cholesterol) like olive oil. Use alcohol only in moderation. And exercise regularly. Am I forgetting anything?
Most of us know this almost instinctively and know that fad diets that promise amazing results are a lie. Isn’t that what everyone’s mother told them back in the day. My mom was a registered nurse so this is the type of advice she passed on. Why are people are easily misled on nutrition?
Sorry for the typos.
Ice Cream is a key to a long life!
The notion that chocolate helps weight loss hardly started or ended with Johannes Bohannon.
I’ve been reading about it scientific literature for 25 years.
That is a FABULOUS idea!!! Going in the recipe mix here!!!! Thank the missus for me!
Yep — it’s not the carbs, it’s the STARCHY carbs. People who think eating the carbs in fruit is the same as eating carbs in bread or pasta, STAY FAT for a reason.
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