It was reported in 20 countries and six different languages. Major publications like London’s Daily Star and the Huffington Post were tripping over each other to bring their readers the news.
Dr. Johannes Bohannon from the Institute of Diet and Health had made a breakthrough discovery — eating a chocolate candy bar every day could make you lose weight 10 percent faster.
Of course, there were three problems with the story.
There is no Dr. Johannes Bohannon. The Institute of Diet and Health doesn’t exist. And the study results were entirely bogus.
You may have heard that an award-winning journalist conducted a shocking experiment proving how medical researchers scam the media into reporting health news that isn’t true. News that can even be dangerous.
Now that the smoke is starting to clear, we’re learning more about exactly how he did it. And once you see how easy it was, you may never trust anything reported by the mainstream health press again.
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A sweet deception
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“The key is to exploit journalists’ incredible laziness,” said John Bohannon, the actual reporter behind the imaginary Dr. Johannes Bohannon.
Bohannon, a contributor for Science and Discover Magazine, has spent his career exposing shoddy health reporting and how medical journals often barely review research they publish.
And recently he turned his attention to a dangerous phenomenon I warned you about last week — Press Release Medicine.
Drug companies and researchers regularly issue press releases making bold and unproven claims about their studies — and then count on lazy and under-qualified reporters to publish the information, no questions asked.
To bring attention to the issue, Bohannon decided to prove he could invent a fictional doctor and organization, design a useless study, and still get worldwide media coverage.
Here’s exactly how he did it — and how plenty of other medical researchers do it, too.
The study: Believe it or not, Bohannon did conduct a study — a terrible one to prove how scientists intentionally design their experiments to get favorable results.
He divided 15 people into three groups of five. One group followed a low-carb diet; another a low-carb-plus-chocolate-bar diet; and the rest of the subjects ate whatever they wanted.
By keeping the groups small, Bohannon could make the differences among them appear more significant. For example, if two people in the chocolate group lowered their cholesterol — compared to one in a non-chocolate group — he could claim that chocolate is twice as effective at cutting cholesterol.
Drug researchers do this all the time. And Bohannon measured 18 different variables, such as weight, blood pressure and quality of sleep, to practically guarantee he’d find something.
Fudging the data: When Bohannon crunched his final numbers, he looked for any ridiculous conclusion he could find — and he discovered a doozy.
Both of the low-carb groups lost an average of five pounds. But through some coincidence, the low-carb people who also ate the chocolate bar hit the five-pound mark a couple days earlier.
So Bohannon claimed his study proved chocolate helps you lose weight 10 percent faster — even though the chocolate group didn’t lose any additional weight and the time difference wasn’t statistically significant.
“It was terrible science,” Bohannon said. “The results are meaningless.”
Any reporter who took time to dissect the study would have learned that. But none did.
The dubious journal publication: To increase the chances that the media would pick up his bogus study, Bohannon got it published in the The International Archives of Medicine under the name Dr. Johannes Bohannon from the Institute of Diet and Health.
That sounds awfully prestigious, but The International Archives of Medicine is one of a growing number of journals that will publish anything for a fee. For $673, Bohannon got his research published — no peer review and no changes.
The press release: Armed with a “published” study, Bohannon turned his attention to the press release. It promised reporters that the “key details are already boiled down” for them, allowing them to simply copy and paste.
Which they did — in droves.
According to Bohannon, hardly any reporters asked how many subjects he tested before concluding candy bars accelerate weight loss. And he couldn’t find a single reporter who contacted an outside researcher for help.
After Bohannon revealed the hoax, a couple of publications like Prevention posted a retraction. But many never bothered to remove their stories — you can still find some of them online right now.
And refusing to research or correct bogus health information isn’t just irresponsible. It’s how the media operates — even when we’re talking about issues a lot more serious than chocolate.
