逆风笑的直播时间:What if 'Science' depends on media sensation ...

来源：百度文库 编辑：九乡新闻网 时间：2024/04/29 22:57:16

What if 'Science' depends on media sensation ?


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2011-5-31 15:43




Would you trust an economist's explanations of food science? Most people would immediately answer "No." But plenty of the "scientific" information in the Chinese media comes from people who have no scientific background, and yet the public swallows their arguments without qualm.

For example, many people believe that L-Carnitine, a supplement used in weight-loss products, can automatically burn their body fat by a significant amount without having to do physical exercises or to limit their diet. This is because a dietician called Dr Ximu, who holds a PhD from a US college, was promoting this idea on mainstream media. But they seem unaware that the PhD degree Dr Ximu held was actually given by that college's business school and he has no valid scientific background at all.

The science community has been trying to clear up the exaggerations around L-Carnitine. During last year's International Congress on Obesity held in Stockholm, Sweden, studies conducted by the university of G?ttingen in Germany and Exeter and Plymouth in the UK have found that L-Carnitine is no different from other supplements used in weight-loss products, and they all have little effect on weight-loss.

However, it seems that some influential Chinese mainstream media outlets prefer to give more weight to Dr Ximu's business qualifications than the actual scientific findings from foreign universities. They are still promoting L-Carnitine associated weight-loss products, over-exaggerating their effect and labeling them as "magical." No wonder the scientific community feels insulted by the media.

But business school graduates can do more than explaining the mechanism of weight-loss products. They can also explain to you why plant hormones can cause sexual precocity in humans bodies, as Zheng Fengtian, a professor of economics at Renmin Universityof China, recently claimed.

His argument was based on children showing abnormal sexual development in many places in China, which he attributed to plant hormones.

This claim, combined with media sensationalism, has had a devastating effect on China's fruit industry. Since plant hormones are widely used in fruit growth, many people are now worried that eating these fruits will cause abnormal sexual development in their children and have stopped buying fruit for their kids.

But the chemicals that make up plant hormones are completely different than those of human hormones. Plant hormones, although harmful to humans in heavy doses, can't trigger the same effects as human hormones, such as precocious sexual development.

Actually, Zheng also admitted in his article that there is no scientific research that can prove the link between plant hormone and abnormal sexual development in humans. But that didn't stop him from jumping to conclusions.

Zheng also wrote in his blog that growth accelerators were to blame for the rash of bursting watermelons in Chinese fields. Although scientists have been trying to explain the cause of exploding watermelons, which they attribute to tough weather and irregular rainfall, Zheng's comment was quickly picked up by the media and heavily damaged watermelon farmers' reputations and businesses.

Having said all this, it is important to realize that the media these days often has the power to determine what is seen as science. The public needs to be aware of the dubious nature of many so-called "shocking scientific truths". Quite a number of these reports haven't yet been proved by the scientific community and are purely a product of sensational reporting.

People also need to check the background of those so-called experts and professors before giving their trust to them. Experts or professors who have no scientific background know only as much as ordinary people. They tend to believe that science can tell what's right and what's wrong, and if something haven't proved "right" by the science community, they think it must be "wrong".

But there is really no absolute right or absolute wrong in science. Science can show you both sides of the coin and present the statistics for you to decide which side is better.
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