MediaWatch: February 1997
Table of Contents:
Science Spinners
Polls put scientists among the most trusted professionals, but is what they say always true? That was the focus of a January 9 ABC News special Junk Science: What You Know That May Not Be So. Reporter John Stossel looked at salt, dioxins, breast implants and crack babies, where science has been manipulated to serve greed or a quest for power. Plus: "And we in the media, well, we're part of the problem too. We often take a grain of truth and run with it."
The report opened with salt, noting that government bureaucracies "don't like it when their ideas are challenged...Look at the empire built on salt." Stossel talked to Dr. Jeffrey Cutler of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the biggest advocate of cutting back on salt. Stossel declared: "They have the government churning out pamphlet after pamphlet. However, most experts we consulted don't agree with the government's message about salt."
After pointing out to Dr. Cutler that the Journal of the American Medical Association found that reducing salt in diet has little effect on blood pressure, Stossel stated: "What led him [Cutler] to conclude that less salt is good is that years of studies have found that eating less salt often leads to lower blood pressure. And we know that high blood pressure leads to heart disease. But this doesn't prove that less salt leads to less heart disease. If it did you could also argue say, that, since sunbathing gives you Vitamin D and Vitamin D's good for you, sunbathing's good for you."
