Ever get the impression that medical researchers aren't as smart as we give them credit for? (see details)

Question

They come out with some big announcement that a certain food or drink either causes health problems or prevents them, and we all go running to the supermarket to stock up them, or avoid them like the plague. Then, a year later, they conclude that the particular food or drink either has NO real health benefits, or NO real risks associated with consuming it......

MAKE UP YOUR FREAKIN' MINDS, PEOPLE! : P

Answer 1

President Jimmy Carter once said "Hunger is the enemy, not the scientists who are trying to eliminate it."

You can substitute in lots of words for hunger and get the same meaning. Try 'cancer', 'Alzheimer's', 'AIDS', 'Tay Sachs', 'mental illness', 'heart disease', 'diabetes', 'birth defects', and perhaps thousands of others. Try it with one of the diseases that affects your family.

Take cancer, for example.
President Richard Nixon declared a "war on cancer" in the early 70s. Much progress has been made, and it has been made through the efforts of tens of thousands of dedicated people with genius IQs working 50 - 70 hour work weeks, often for marginal salaries. Science is hard to do, and only special people can even try. And many of them have lost close family members to cancers, and so the motivation is deep and personal.

Even so, cancer is so hard to understand that a lot of work remains for scientists to do before this 35 year old war can be won. But that doesn't mean that scientists are incompetent, unmotivated or corrupt. It really means that cancer - and all those other diseases I mentioned above - is *really* that difficult. Dealing with the complexities of something as intricate as a human body in health or disease makes going to the moon look like child's play - after all, it only took 10 years to "land a man safely on the moon", as was President John Kennedy's goal.

If you actually want to find out what researchers are like and what it is like to try to make scientific progress, go voluteer in a lab at a nearby university or medical school. Labs are always looking for help, since money is tight and there are never enough people. I dare you: if you prove that you have what it takes to do research, then maybe I'll accept your criticism.

Until then, you should pay closer attention to how the news is presented. Scientists publish their results in obscure journals for other scientists to read and analyze. It is the news media who take those findings and make them into publicity stunts. Not only that, if you watch with a bit more intelligence, you'll notice that the findings that make the headlines are the things that interest the public. That's why you see stuff about diet or sex so often: millions and millions of people drink coffee, and so Fox news guarantees audience interest when they do a story about coffee and cancer. But a research finding entitled something like "Multimodal fast optical interrogation of neural circuitry" which is actually a very important advance in neuroscience sure isn't gonna make it on TV.

Answer 2

Ever thought that the "spinning" of the news and the exaggeration might come from the journalists and not from the medical researchers? We tend to put facts into the right context and to give experimental proof for what we claim! When we publish a research study, our writings are generally peer-reviewed by 2 or 3 competent people in the field who judge and criticize in order to improve scientific communication.
This (the peer-review) certainly does not happen when a piece of news is published or broadcast!

Why should we always be the ones to blame? We work so hard to cure and prevent diseases and this is what you get from people...............

Answer 3

No body knows what they are talking about... like you said one day it is good for us the next it is bad...I think we should eat what we want when we want... what doesn't kill us will only make us stronger... take a look back into the 40's, 50's and 60's... everyone was perfectly healthy and there was no labels on any of the food...

Answer 4

Yeah, exactly! Makes you think they actually have a deal with a company to advertise their goods or vice versa.... It was margarine vs butter, cyclamat vs saccharine, vitamins, supplements, mentos and coke... the list is endless.... I could never figure out what they were trying to tell us.

Answer 5

omg! yes,
they are supposed to be all brilliant and everything but if theyre so smartwhy cant the come up for a cure for the cold?? i just dont think theyre as smart as we all think theyre supposed to be! :]

Answer 6

You mean like the latest claim that vitamins cause prostate cancer? Yeah. They have no clue.

Answer 7

THAT'S WHY THEY ARE CALLED RESEARCHERS. THEY HAVE NO IDEA UNTIL THEY ARE TOLD, AND EVEN THEN THEY HAVE TO WAIT FOR SCIENTIFIC RESULTS, AND TIME FOR SIDE EFFECTS. JUST GIVE ME THE NATURAL, HOME GROWN FOODS FROM MY LOCAL FARM. YOU CAN KEEP YOUR FAKE NUTRIENTS..

Answer 8

YES, booze bad, booze good
coffee bad, coffee good
eggs, bad, eggs good
sex good, well sex is always good ;)

Answer 9

that's the truth!!! i don't trust drs very much anyway.