During my listening to NPR over the past 4 days, I have heard some major science reporting fails. I reported on one the other day: the way in which a study of organic food nutrition was reported. Today, while working out in the early hours of the morning, I heard a second.
NPR’s “Morning Edition” did a two-story series related to the diabetes epidemic accompanying the obesity epidemic in the U.S. The first story in the series focused on diet [1]. Specifically, it focused on the claim that some diets are better than others when it comes to weight loss and/or weight maintenance. The story VERY SPECIFICALLY focused on research conducted by one medical researcher, David Ludwig (who holds both a Ph.D. and M.D.). There is nothing, per se, wrong with the research. However, there was something fundamentally wrong with the reporting.
This is how the story SHOULD have gone:
” . . . Ludwig and colleagues recently published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that offers some tools you might use to fight back. Researchers compared the low-carb, low-fat and low-glycemic diets to see which one burned the most calories per day. The low-carb diet was the clear winner. The low-fat diet was the loser. But it was the diet in the middle, the low-glycemic index diet, that Ludwig suggests is more promising. It burned more calories per day than the low-fat diet and proved easier to stick to over the long term than the low-carb diet. Ludwig is quick to caution that his study was short and not conclusive. He’s working now to design a long-term study that looks at diet and weight loss maintenance over a number of years.”
This, unfortunately, was how the story was assembled:
” . . . Ludwig and colleagues recently published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that offers some tools you might use to fight back. Researchers compared the low-carb, low-fat and low-glycemic diets to see which one burned the most calories per day. The low-carb diet was the clear winner. The low-fat diet was the loser. But it was the diet in the middle, the low-glycemic index diet, that Ludwig suggests is more promising. It burned more calories per day than the low-fat diet and proved easier to stick to over the long term than the low-carb diet.
… [FOUR PARAGRAPHS OF WRITTEN MATERIAL, OR ABOUT 3 MINUTES INTO A 4:15 MINUTE STORY AND AFTER AT LEAST 1 ANECDOTE] …
. . . Ludwig is quick to caution that his study was short and not conclusive. He’s working now to design a long-term study that looks at diet and weight loss maintenance over a number of years.”
So while Ludwig was quick to caution the reporter about the inconclusiveness of his own work, the reporter (Patti Neighmond) was NOT quick to report on that inconclusiveness. Until the last 55 seconds of the story, in fact, the reporter is completely credulous about the findings of Ludwig and his colleagues! It’s only at the very end that she brings in a dietitian to talk about the importance of person-to-person variation in factors related to weight loss and weight maintenance, and the importance of EXERCISE to those two goals.
Of the three big diet stories I’ve heard recently aired on either NPR’s “Morning Edition” or “All Things Considered”, two of them have been highly questionable in the way in which the science was presently.
Usually, NPR does a fantastic job of reporting on science. Even with these fails, they are still doing a better job than the network or cable news outlets. I still recommend NPR science reporting to the casual listener; but, I expect better from the best.
