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Jewish World Review August 31, 2005 / 26 Av, 5765 ‘Successful’ scientists and their gimmicks By John Stossel
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Have you cut down on salt? Forced the kids to eat spinach
because it's uniquely healthy? You may think you're eating healthy food, but
you're really swallowing junk science.
When I was a kid, my mother thought spinach was the healthiest
food in the world because it contained so much iron. Getting enough iron was
a big deal then because we didn't have "iron-fortified" bread. It turns out
that spinach is an OK source of iron but no better than pizza, pistachio
nuts or dried peaches. The spinach-iron myth grew out of a simple
mathematical miscalculation: A researcher accidentally moved a decimal point
one space, so he thought spinach had 10 times more iron than it did. The
press reported it, and I had to eat spinach.
Moving the decimal point was an honest mistake — but it's
seldom that simple. If it happened today, I'd suspect a spinach lobby was
behind it. Businesses often twist science to make money. Lawyers do it to
win cases. Political activists distort science to fit their agenda,
bureaucrats to protect their turf. Reporters, like other people who aren't
scientists, keep falling for it.
And so does the government. Consider salt. Uncle Sugar hasn't
tried banning salt — yet — but he has decided to make all of us pay for a
program to tell us salt is no good. But it's the science that's no good.
The federal anti-salt bureaucracy launched expensive public
service announcements that warn Americans to cut back on salt. The ads
intoned, ominously, "You eat more than 20 times the salt your body needs."
Eat "no more than 2,400 milligrams a day," said Dr. Jeffrey
Cutler, the official behind the government's anti-salt campaign.
I feel sorry for you if you follow your government's
recommendations. A maximum of 2,400 milligrams a day makes for a miserable
diet. Three dill pickles put you over the limit.
Cutler decided that Americans should eat less salt because high
blood pressure can lead to heart disease and eating less salt can lower
blood pressure. It's a plausible theory, but it doesn't prove that less salt
leads to less heart disease. Too many other things may be going on.
Many experts on blood pressure told us there isn't enough
scientific research to justify the government's anti-salt campaign, and
there definitely isn't enough to justify Cutler's 2,400-milligram limit.
"I can't imagine how they came up with that number. I mean,
there isn't a single bit of evidence that suggests 2,400 milligrams is
better than 2,100 or 3,700," said Dr. Michael Alderman, who headed the
American Society of Hypertension, America's biggest organization of
specialists in high blood pressure. He says some people should cut back on
salt, but for most people, it's pointless. Some studies have found that
those who ate the least salt were four times more likely to have heart
attacks.
I couldn't read Cutler's mind, so I don't know that he pushed
his anti-salt campaign because he wanted to build himself a little empire.
But consider the choices of the bureaucrat: If he finds that you're probably
eating "more than 20 times the salt your body needs," his findings may be on
"Good Morning America," and he's important.
Scientific communication is very stilted, as if to convey
impartiality. Scientists are happy to have non-scientists view them as
uniquely unbiased, and reporters fall into the trap of believing them. But
supposedly "dispassionate" scientists are as passionate about their ideas as
any entrepreneur. They have all sorts of reasons to lose perspective and get
carried away with hope and excitement. If they discover something, they may
be famous. If they don't, they may have spent years in some windowless
laboratory for little good. So if they can convince themselves their theory
is right, they are eager for the public to hear about it.
When there's a broad scientific consensus behind a theory, it's
quite likely — though still not certain — to be right. But some theories,
including some backed by the government, deserve to be taken only with a
grain of salt.
Give Me a Break.
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© 2005, by JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc. |
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