Not yet news

When you read “The university did not reveal how the study was carried out” in a news story about a research article, you’d expect the story to be covering some sort of scandal. Not this time.

The Herald story  is about broccoli and asthma

They say eating up to two cups of lightly steamed broccoli a day can help clear the airways, prevent deterioration in the condition and even reduce or reverse lung damage.

Other vegetables with the same effect include kale, cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and bok choy.

…

Using broccoli to treat asthma may also help for people who don’t respond to traditional treatment.

‘How the study was carried out’ isn’t just a matter of detail: if they just gave people broccoli, they wouldn’t know what other vegetables had the same effect, so maybe it wasn’t broccoli but some sort of extract? Was it even experimental or just observational? And did they actually test people who don’t respond to traditional treatment? And what exactly does that mean — failing to respond is pretty rare, though failing to get good control of asthma attacks isn’t.

The Daily Mail story was actually more informative (and that’s not a sentence I like to find myself writing). They reported a claim that wasn’t in the press release

The finding due to sulforaphane naturally occurring in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables, which may help protect against respiratory inflammation that can cause asthma.

Even then, it isn’t clear whether the research really found that sulforaphane was responsible, or whether that’s just their theory about why broccoli is effective. 

My guess is that the point of the press release is the last sentence

Ms Mazarakis will be presenting the research findings at the 2014 Undergraduate Research Conference about Food Safety in Shanghai, China.

That’s a reasonable basis for a press release, and potentially for a story if you’re in Melbourne. The rest isn’t. It’s not science until they tell you what they did.