….When reporters contacted me at all, they asked perfunctory questions. “Why do you think chocolate accelerates weight loss? Do you have any advice for our readers?” Almost no one asked how many subjects we tested, and no one reported that number. Not a single reporter seems to have contacted an outside researcher. None are quoted.
These publications, though many command large audiences, are not exactly paragons of journalistic virtue. So it’s not surprising that they would simply grab a bit of digital chum for the headline, harvest the pageviews, and move on. But even the supposedly rigorous outlets that picked the study up failed to spot the holes.
…But most disappointing? No one dipped into our buffet of chocolate music videos. Instead, they used vaguely pornographic images of women eating chocolate. Perhaps this music will take on a life of its own now that the truth is out…
….There was one glint of hope in this tragicomedy. While the reporters just regurgitated our “findings,” many readers were thoughtful and skeptical. In the online comments, they posed questions that the reporters should have asked.
“Why are calories not counted on any of the individuals?” asked a reader on a bodybuilding forum. “The domain [for the Institute of Diet and Health web site] was registered at the beginning of March, and dozens of blogs and news magazines (see Google) spread this study without knowing what or who stands behind it,” said a reader beneath the story in Focus, one of Germany’s leading online magazines.
Or as one prescient reader of the 4 April story in the Daily Express put it, “Every day is April Fool’s in nutrition.”
“Here’s some math: 13 out of potentially hundreds or thousands of
reporters who read the release covered it. And from that he concludes
that reporters are lazy, treating science “like gossip, echoing whatever
they find in press releases.” I don’t need statistics to call BS on
that.”
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/culture-beaker/attempt-shame-journalists-chocolate-study-shameful