What To Expect

Articles, commentaries, as well as peer reviewed studies, which have or will appear in a variety of publications, and cover a wide variety of issues, such as:

• How the sport supplement industry exploits consumers.

• The media's ongoing chronic problem of reporting counterfeit or junk-science as science.

• Consumer education pieces related to the food production process, health, physical development and nutrition issue.

• How the organic food industry exploits consumer misunderstandings about the food supply process.

• Obesity. Whose responsibility is it?

• Evolution vs Creation

• Book reviews

• More to come.

Sports Nutrition Issues

The Media and Counterfeit Science Reporting

This section highlights the chronic problem the media has in accurately reporting on food and health related issues, and why consumers should not rely on the media for objective science reporting. The media's  misinformation can be blamed on several factors, some of which are as follows:

• Television in need of ratings and programming which will attract consumers regardless of the scientific accuracy, and a disregard of misleading viewers, such as the Dr. Oz show.

• Journalists who are unqualified to be critical of the data presented to them. This allows many environmental groups, such as the Natural Resource Defense Council, Environmental Working Group, or other self-serving organizations a podium for their misinformation by deceiving journalist to report or publish misinformation. The public is then left with the mistaken impression that the reported "news" story is relevant, which in fact it is not. Unfortunately, due to either the naivete of the journalists reporting it, their own preconceived bias, or their failure to validate the reliability of the information or its source, presenting counterfeit science as science is a frequent problem.

• The media rarely clarifies the limitations of the research it is reporting on and the information it provides is only preliminary at best. The public is unaware that any new research published in a peer review journal allows other researchers to analyze the methodology used, and validate the study's findings by duplicating the study themselves. This allows for accountability. The media is eager to report on preliminary information as relevant, or factual, but never follow-up when the study has been replicated and found to be bunk or often retracted due to misconduct.

• The media may not understand that just because something is correlated to something else, it did not necessarily cause it. This must be determined by long-term controlled clinical studies where all the variables involved, called confounders, can be controlled for, and not the epidemiological or observational studies which most health news reports are based upon.

• The media failure to clarify that the chemical study results in question were based upon high dose rodent studies, which have no direct application to the minuscule level of exposure humans may be exposed to.

If you believe this is a biased position on the media's failure to accurately report the news, consider the following comments from:

1. Ruth Kava PhD. Senior Nutrition Fellow with the well-respected American Council on Science and Health.

2. Richard Horton M.D. Editor-In-Chief of The Lancet.

3. Marcia Angell M.D. past Editor-In-Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine.

4. John Ioannidis, professor of disease prevention at Stanford University in the journal PLoS/Medicine.

5. Center for Science Integrity.

6. Live Science.

1. Ruth Kava PhD. "But now, I am forced to admit that, as expressed on the website 538, much of what we think we know about nutrition probably isn't so." Reliability of Nutrition Research Questioned. October 4th, 2016 article from the American Council on Science and Health.

2. Richard Horton M.D. “Science publication is hopelessly compromised [my emphasis].” This was the title of an editorial by the Editor-In-Chief, Richard Horton M.D., of The Lancet, in the April 11th, 2015, edition, after attending a symposium on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research, Dr. Horton wrote: 

“A lot of what is published is incorrect. I am not allowed to say who made this remark because we were asked to observe Chatham House rules. We were also asked not to take photographs of slides. Why the paranoid concern for secrecy and non-attribution? Because this symposium – on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research – touched on one of the most sensitive issues in science today: the idea that something has gone fundamentally wrong with one of our greatest human creations. The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted with studies of small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analysis, and flagrant conflict of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn toward darkness. As one participant put it, ‘poor methods get results’.”

3. The New England Journal of Medicine, 2009, past Editor-In-Chief Marcia Angell M.D. “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the NEJM.”

4. PLoS / Medicine, August 30th, 2005, “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” By John P.A. Ioannidis, professor of disease prevention at Stanford University. “There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false… Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”

5.  In 2010, The Center for Scientific Integrity, a 501 (C), non-profit organization started Retraction Watch, due to the increasing amount of counterfeit science appearing in the “science,” literature, and report “500-600 retractions per year.”

6.  On December 28, 2016, Live Science reported, “Publish or perish: That's the mantra among academics. The pressure on researchers to publish new studies, however, may have turned this saying into "publish and perish," as more than 650 scientific papers were retracted in 2016, jeopardizing the integrity of scientists, and threatening the public's trust in their work” [my emphasis].

Examples of Media Counterfeit Science Reporting



Book Reviews

The Fabricated Organic Food Market