A colleague of mine from grad school has some thoughts on the recent “chocolate causes weight-loss” bruhahaha. If I had to try to distill his piece down to a single sentence it would be:
Teaching people to ask critical questions about things reported as scientific discoveries in the popular press is good, but it is way too easy of falling into the trap of doing so in a way that undermines people’s confidence in science itself.
Three line sentence, arg. Must simplify more.
Making people feel stupid by abusing their trust isn’t a good way to encourage them to believe you in the future.
Maybe it’d be best just to go read the original post.