What is your point? Are you suggesting that they are not to blame? They certainly write the articles. They may even be a part of juicing up the headline sufficiently to become a perfect clickbait.
Only few months ago, an article was written about recovering in 'no work' spaces, which happened to include cars. Fortune title? Scientists say car is your meditation spot ( I am paraphrasing a little since I am quoting from memory ).
When they're literally quoting almost verbatim the claims of the researchers, no they aren't to blame. And the vast majority of the time you see an article with some breathless claim, it is capturing the essence of the research summary, or the press release put out by the university or think tank.
See, journalists like their jobs to be easy. They generally aren't spinning whole wool. As Graham's The Submarine describes, often they're basically reprinting something sent to them with minor wording changes.
That's my point. And my point was amply clear in my original post. Blaming the journalists is often nonsensical sophistry. A hail mary to try to recover some semblance from busted research, as if it's the messenger who is to blame. The worst part is that the blame the journalist people create a vacuum in which even worse sources of information grow.
Not sure the vaguely remembered, poorly communicated anecdote (which I can find zero references for) supports your point.
You do have a point.
I feel vaguely attacked. See article[1]. Original title that you can still see in search engines, because it was only changed after pushback:
>>You need to detach and 'psychologically recover' from work, professors say. The solution: commuting<<
What I appear to be getting from your post is: 'No one is to blame. No one could be held liable for their actions. It is all sophistry.'
Which is funny, because I am willing to agree the system has perverse incentives to mess with things at numerous checkpoints, but you cannot realistically claim this, because researchers ( and indeed all humans ) like their jobs easy as well.
[1]https://fortune.com/2023/02/02/remote-work-why-do-i-miss-com...
I am quite specifically hanging the blame on researchers who are perpetrating junk science. Most observation / survey based science is junk science. Most "study of studies" research is junk science. It's lazy science to get media attention, and the more salacious or contrarian the outcome, the more appealing it is for some subset of researchers.
This isn't an attack on science or scientists in the whole, clearly. But when you see some breathless article exclaiming that eating an olive pit twice weekly makes you live twenty years longer, blaming the columnists seems foolish. In almost every case they're simply repeating the claims of bad science.
I am not automatically disagreeing, but that is a pretty strong claim. I am relatively certain that a well chosen survey participants ( that are not mturk or local body of students unless actually applicable to the study ) could make for a decent study. I can't really opine of observation, but on the surface it strikes me as a very strong claim as well.
<< But when you see some breathless article exclaiming that eating an olive pit twice weekly makes you live twenty years longer, blaming the columnists seems foolish. In almost every case they're simply repeating the claims of bad science.
And this is where it gets tricky. Do editors/publishers merely parrot it or add media cycle friendly spin on it?
<< I am quite specifically hanging the blame on researchers who are perpetrating junk science.
I think I am willing to mostly agree with that statement in a sense that they ultimately responsible.
That said, it is hard for me to believe that editors/publishers would publish it if standards were a tad higher and not chasing attention.
The parent comment is trying to dismiss an entire field and also preemptively dismiss new studies based on some past anecdotes.
It's the exact same trick used by climate science deniers who go back and cherry pick some old studies where the conclusion changed: Pick some old studies where the conclusion changed, announce that science is fallible, then dismiss the entire field.
It's ridiculous logic to anyone who understands how science works, but it's very appealing to people who like to be contrarian.
If they're observational or survey based studies, they should be dismissed generally, or at least given incredibly little attention. Even worse they're usually 2nd order "I took some terrible observational studies, put them in a pile, and now I have a study of studies" bit of bunk that is a bit like CDOs: Just layer the junk and pretend it has value all together. We have decades of doing this now to have learned that it is extremely low value, and simply repeating the same pattern again with new biases and assumptions is not going to improve the situation.
Nutritional studies are really, really hard, short of creating concentration camps and assigning diets to sections for decades.
If you were studying physics by doing a survey on what people's opinion of gravity is or what their recollection of their acceleration rates for the past year, you'd probably not have great results.
Only if one looks any deeper they find that the journalists printed the summary provided by the researchers. That they accurately captured the message the researchers were pushing. Researchers want eyeballs, and they want the funding that comes with attention, along with the personal prestige, and this has proven incredibly corrupting. Add that a pretty good percentage of nutrition research is funded by parties with deeply conflicted interests.
In any case, the site is largely accurate. The nutrition field has made extraordinarily little progress. Right now, in 2023, pretty much the only solid nutrition conclusion is "don't eat too much. Eat a variety". Almost everything else does not stand any scrutiny at all. It seems entirely valid to dismiss the nutrition field given the past forty years.
It's actually interesting watching a subreddit like /r/nutrition. The place could as easily be people discussing their healing crystals and chakras. That's where we're at right now.