Misreporting Health Benefits Of Champagne.

Every day we come to learn of new scientific developments taking place around the world with the purpose of improving the quality of human life. But this information may prove to be rather harmful when falsely or carelessly reported by the media. One such example is an article that was published in 2017 by Marie Claire, a leading French publication with a focus on women’s lifestyle and fashion. Sensationally titled “Study Says Champagne Can Help Prevent of Alzheimer’s and Dementia”, it was a report on the findings of a research study conducted by the University of Reading (United Kingdom) in 2013 in which scientists performed an experiment to identify the potential health benefits of the phenolic compounds present in champagne wine. The article starts with:“In the best news we’ve heard all day, a study has proven that champagne is linked to good health, in particular, preventing the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s. “In the best news we’ve heard all day, a study has proven that champagne is linked to good health, in particular, preventing the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s.

There is use of emotional language already creating a subtle bias in the reader’s mind. Further, a bad case of causation and correlation is included when the article reads, “champagne is linked to good health” because having good health does not necessarily equate to not having dementia or Alzheimer’s. The article then goes on to say that drinking “not one, but three glasses per day will do the trick”. This is an absolute falsity because if one is to go through the press release published by the University of Reading, it reads that the prescribed amount of champagne consumption that will prove beneficial is one to three glasses per week and not per day. Professor Jeremy Spencer who is from the Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Reading explicitly states, “ We encourage a responsible approach to alcohol consumption, and our results suggest that a very low intake of one to two glasses a week can be effective. ” There is quite a considerable difference between the reported number and the real number highlighting a lapse on part of the journalist.

Moreover, it can be observed that one of the aims of the article is to cater to the confirmation bias of the readers who already enjoy drinking alcohol by telling them what they want to hear in order to confirm their preconceived beliefs and notions. This makes them more likely disseminate the article on various social media platforms and become a regular subscriber thereby generating revenue for the publication. In fact, this exaggeration of figures could prove to be very harmful, diluting the purpose of the research. WebMD cites “long time alcohol and drug use” as one of the main causes of dementia and an article by NHS also recommends keeping alcohol intake to a minimum. It puts forth that more effective ways to reduce the risk of dementia are eating a healthy balanced diet, maintaining healthy body weight and blood pressure, regular exercise and stopping smoking. This kind of sensationalization of the benefits of alcohol could be detrimental to the health of unsuspecting readers. One more crucial thing to note is that the article doesn’t provide a link to the press release or the source of the research on which it is based. Readers less likely to put in the effort to investigate further into the topic and read the real findings of the research and more likely to accept the content of the report as it is. A case of selective reporting is also seen in the fact that the article fails to mention a very vital piece of information that conclusions drawn by scientists from the research are based on experiments that were conducted on rats. In the experiment three groups of adult male Wistar rats were put on three intervention diets – a placebo (non-alcoholic drink), an alcoholic drink with 12% ethanol content and Champagne wine (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, 12% alcohol).

The rats were then tested for six weeks over their ability to navigate through a maze and eventually find a treat. At the end of six weeks, results showed that the rats that consumed champagne were able to locate the treat approximately five times out of eight as compared to the control group where the rats’ approximate score was three out of eight. When their brains were examined, it was observed that the hippocampus region of the rats that were on the champagne diet showed an increased amount of dystrophin, a protein which “may protect against loss of reasoning and spatial memory. ” While this does seem like a significant difference, it must be noted that number of rats used was very small. Furthermore, at the beginning of four weeks all the three groups had an approximate success rate of locating four treats out of eight, thereby making the improvement very slight. It is thus difficult to directly translate the results of this experiment to humans while taking into account that the rats were given a very small amount of champagne (1. 78 ml per kilogram of body weight) and the overall physiology of a rat vastly differs from humans. Article published 4 years late, may be sponsored.

Now, if one is to take a closer look into the press release and research study, there are a few points that need to be taken into the account:-Although the press release clearly states the purpose of the experiment and what lead to the conclusions drawn from it, it does not mention that the experiments were carried on rats. Coming to the research study, it appears to have been conducted in a credible and ethical way as the scientists have explained the procedure in detail, there was use of a control in the experiment, the authors of the paper have stated that no competing financial interests exist, and the study was published in a peer reviewed journal. Nonetheless, there was a considerable flaw in one of the graphs included in the paper: The graph which plots the correct choices made by the rats against the duration of the experiment has the y-axis cut off which overemphasizes the results of the experiment. When drawn to scale, the difference between the three groups and the collective results over three weeks looks significantly less stark. This is still an early stage animal research and the first time a link has been found between champagne wine and cognitive functioning. Until now, there has been no replication of the study through independent research to check for consistency of results and thus the outcomes recorded from this cannot be deemed absolute without further investigation. To conclude, scientific research is a slow and incremental process and it is imperative that publications understand this and avoid reporting each modest development as a breakthrough. Hasty and irresponsible reporting only adds to the current sea of misinformation that surrounds us in the form of rumours, exaggerated claims, and misreported figures. It is the responsibility of both the media and the audience to be conscious of the content that they are put out and consume respectively to tackle the issue of misinformation effectively. (anything else?)