Skepticism is one of the fundamental characteristics of a good scientist. Scientific journals use public relations firms to promote stories, getting more publicity, subscriptions, and advertisers. Scientists are thrilled that someone besides other researchers wants to hear their story, and they tend to oversell their point of view. The public is obsessed with simple answers or magic bullets for extremely complicated disease processes. Remember, no one story will be an answer.
Science is based on slow, plodding accumulation of bits of information.
This may sound boring to a nonscientist, but for those who do the work nothing could be more exciting. Now when nutrition news gets confusing, there IS a place to go to get the real story. Our FREE daily email newsletter, Nutrition News Focus, helps you make sense of it all. It's written by Dr. David Klurfeld, Chairman and Professor of the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at Wayne State University. Find out what our readers are saying about us by clicking here.