October 22, 2016

Cheese addiction hoax again

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Three more sites have fallen for the cheese addiction hoax

As you may remember, this story is very very loosely based on real research from the University of Michigan. However, the hoax version misrepresents which foods were most addictive and makes up an explanation based on the milk protein casein that isn’t mentioned in the real research at all.

The reason I’m calling this a hoax is that it wasn’t the fault of the researchers, their institution, or the journal, and it’s obvious to anyone who makes any attempt to scan the research paper that it doesn’t support the story. It isn’t an innocent mistake, and it isn’t a simple exaggeration like most misleading health science stories.

There’s a good post at Science News describing what was actually found.

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »