On Wednesday, journalist John Bohannon revealed to the world how he “fooled millions into thinking chocolate helps weight loss.” In a boastful piece for i09, he details how he and German television reporter Peter Onneken performed a faulty clinical trial and used flawed statistics to make it seem like chocolate was a weight loss wonder. The team then wrote a bad paper and managed to publish it in a (non-peer-reviewed) journal. They intentionally concocted an enticing press release to tell the world about their not-so-reliable results, and managed to get a few large sites to bite the hook they carefully baited. “For far too long, the people who cover this beat have treated it like gossip, echoing whatever they find in press releases,” Bohannon wrote to explain why he agreed to the elaborate sting. He hopes that the shame of being called out for bad journalism will be enough to get reporters and the public to be a bit more skeptical of science news.
Of course, some were quick to point out that Bohannon mostly fooled the most well-known churnalistic sites, and that overall, science journalists didn’t fall for the ruse. I’m inclined to agree with their criticisms both of ethics of how the sting was conducted and the bold conclusions about the lazy nature of science journalists drawn from it. But it’s hard to stand on my soapbox, fist in the air, when it seems like every week there’s another example of just how shoddy science journalism often is, even when the studies reported on are actually quite wonderful.
You see, I’m in a particularly sour mood because I didn’t want to bring up John Bohannon or the failings of science journalists today. Instead, I had planned to write this awesome post about a fascinating new paper published in BMC Genomics. I wanted to talk about how this research (which details the venom transcriptome and proteome of the largest of the deadliest class of invertebrates in the world, the box jellyfish Chironex fleckeri) is an incredible, fresh look at an evolutionarily old venom. I wanted to expound extravagantly on the novel toxin types Diane Brinkman and her colleagues from Queensland found in the terrifying tentacles of a species that has killed more than 60 people and caused serious injury in multitudes more. Most importantly, I would have loved to dive deeply into the study’s methods and results, discuss what this new information tells us about some of my favorite venomous animals, and how it builds the foundation for future studies.
But instead, I was so nauseated by the coverage of this study that I feel obligated to take the time to correct the lazy reporting of others. Bohannon’s chocolate fake-out may not have been right, but it’s hard to say he’s wrong about science news coverage.
Continue reading “Believe in the chocolate diet? I have a box jelly antivenom to sell you.”
