Scientific Fact or Fiction? Don't Be Fooled by False Claims
Impressed by the latest claim that a certain vitamin supplement can cure all your ailments? Don't let the fancy scientific talk fool you. Learn how to see through the smoke of false claims.
Though scientific breakthroughs benefit society in many ways, consumers should be aware of the proliferation of "junk science," or bogus scientific research, discoveries, and claims. Planting itself throughout the social landscape via misleading product claims backed up by faulty research, personal injury lawsuits against deep-pocket businesses, and various researchers who fudge the facts, junk science sways consumers, juries, politicians, and many others.
WE WANT TO BELIEVE
According to Peter R. Wolfe, M.D., chief of the department of medicine at Century City Hospital in Century City, Calif., "Junk medical science is on the rise because people don't want to believe that often unexplainable or serious conditions, such as various diseases, can happen to them."
People want to feel they can prevent disease, Dr. Wolfe ventures. "They read in the newspaper that some researchers found that oat bran or some vitamin helped prevent colon cancer, so they start eating oat bran or taking vitamins three times a day." The only hitch is, consumers may not realize that the studies lacked a random sampling of research subjects or that only eighteen people were tested, and for a brief duration, at that.
"Because the general public tends to be credulous of science that is outside their field of knowledge," Dr. Wolfe says, "it is difficult for them to distinguish between science and gobbledygook that is cloaked in the trappings of science."
