Stay away from the fat people!

Another day, another piece of junk "science" being given wide and uncritical coverage in the media.

And this time?

Wait for it folks, because this is going to shock you - having fat friends may make you fat too!

Truly! There's a "study" that says so. And it's been in the papers and on the telly.

Pretty much settles it doesn't it? Fuck, there goes what ever social life I had.

Apparently, hanging out with fat people may influence you to think that also having a gut hanging over your pants is in reality a good look, and send you elbowing your way to the sweets trolley for a fourth helping of pudding.

Makes sense to me! I mean, in a world where failed American politicians seeking to recast themselves as the saviours of the planet and narcissistic uber-consuming celebrities are actually taken seriously on climate change, a single mangy hedgehog proof of global warming and The Secret a best seller, none of this is exactly surprising.

Disappointing and maddening yes, but surprising? Sadly no.

But as Junkfood Science notes:

Not one health or medical writer, even at the most prestigious consumer or medical publications, has critically reported on this study or even appears to have read it. Not one has made a critical examination and pointed out its unorthodox methods, its findings that conflict with known science and known biological mechanisms, or the flawed and contradictory findings within the study itself. Not one.

And yet this idiot garbage was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a “peer-reviewed” medical journal.

Which only goes to show that peer review increasingly means nothing these days. It was The Lancet that published peer reviewed "research" that claimed over 650,000 excess deaths in post-war Iraq on the basis of a sample of just 547 real deaths.

Oh, and you are probably imagining that this study was based upon looking at real people right?

If so, you'd be wrong.

"It was computer animation and, in essence, created a virtual reality."

Gee. Who could be responsible for suspect pseudo research like that?

And then the light goes on. One of the researchers, while a physician, is a professor of medical sociology.

Ah, the problem starts to come into focus. In a world of pseudo research, you don't get much more "pseudo" than sociology, a ridiculous pretend academic "discipline" if ever there was one.

Our other scientific researcher is in fact a professor of political science.

Anyway, Junkfood Science has a lot more to say. Go. Read.