Earlier this year, Dr. Johannes Bohannon and a team of German scientists revealed a study that said people on low-carbohydrate diets could lose weight faster if they ate a bar of chocolate every day.
News organizations, especially in Europe but also in the United States, ran with the story until it was revealed to be a deliberate hoax – to find out whether scientists and reporters could detect junk science. They couldn’t and didn’t.
With the help of a German television reporter, Bohannon went further, creating a fake organization, the Institute of Diet and Health, contacting test subjects, performing experiments and writing news releases. In doing so, he intentionally falsified some data and left out crucial details in the news release. Again, no one questioned it.
“There are smart people out there who are getting fooled by this stuff because they think scientists know what they’re doing,” he told the Washington Examiner.
The public may not trust the media, but they revere the words of scientists.