Food For Thought

Considering consistency by the news media: CBS This Morning has a regular series, "What’s Working," which investigates innovations in America that seem to be paying off. On one particular episode a few weeks ago they went to the University of Vermont to highlight a program to discourage the use of drugs and alcohol and move students toward more healthy activities.

Near the end of the piece the professor who designed the program explained that the brains of college students are not yet fully developed. "You couldn't come up with a worse age to send someone to college than when they're 18.” The reporter feeds back the notion, “The brains are not done developing at 18?” He responds, “Not even close.” 

This was not the only report emphasizing the immaturity of college students, and is not confined to CBS, with some saying the brain is not done developing until the early twenties. Some sources put the age of a fully developed frontal cortex closer to 25. Such statements have been fairly common when discussing various crimes and indiscreet tweets. Then why were these same reporters so excited just ten months ago about the apparent wisdom of a group of high school students lecturing the country on gun policy?

Considering income inequality: If we didn’t have rich people, there would be no designer goods. Nobody would be able to show off for their friends by buying the cheap knock-offs.

Considering trusting medical information based only on endorsements: Bloodletting was a common practice among doctors for thousands of years up to about one hundred years ago. Today bloodletting has been shown to be ineffective and mostly harmful. (A controlled variation is used today only in the treatment of a few very rare diseases.)

Since there would have been no opportunity for controlled experiments, the only way it could have continued to be practiced for so long would be through endorsements and by doctors hyping their own successes. “Marie-Antoinette, for instance, seemed to benefit from a healthy dose of bloodletting while giving birth to her first child, Marie-Thérèse, in 1778” – an endorsement from the Queen! 

Doesn’t this same practice of celebrity and friends’ endorsements and doctors hyping their own successes sound like anything we might see on TV or read on the Internet today for any number of miracle cures?

Considering the cancer conspiracy: Did you know that doctors, Big Pharma and the FDA are working together to suppress cancer research for fear that discovery of a cure will put them out of business? They also try to undermine real cures provided by alternative medicine. Many Americans do believe this conspiracy theory. Wired reported on a video that came out last July on the Internet about a miracle cancer cure derived from moss and available online. It “quickly racked up millions of views.” The video used the usual lure of “what the pharmaceutical companies don’t want you to know.”

The problem was the video was intentionally faked for the purpose of education, “teaching people to be skeptical of videos exactly like this one.” Do the same people who endorse this cancer-conspiracy myth also believe that firefighters want more fires and do not promote the use of smoke alarms and the practice of fire safety? Do they think dentists don’t want you to brush and floss? All this is equally hard to believe.

It doesn’t take much research (and critical thinking) to find obvious distortions and contradictions in the news and social media. As always the bad information flies around the world at lightning speed, while the truth struggles to catch up (often just in time to be slapped down by committed advocates or enterprising charlatans).