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The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

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Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#31

Post by fenwick67 »

BFatts wrote: post #20

Someone has to do the research and "Big" whatever seems to be the ones with the money to do so. So, what should we expect from them? They are going to look for research that is compelling to their business model, but as long as it's not wholly misleading, why is it bad? All research should be taken with a grain of salt. I also have another question: Everyone in media is always looking for that story to break about "B…

> "All research should be taken with a grain of salt"

It's hard for any one person to read tens or hundreds of papers on a subject and critically examine them for fallacies, look for fake data, etc. It's just not plausible.

At this rate, if us commonfolk are just expected to take a default position of not believing a scientific study or consensus until we personally vet them, what are we to actually believe? Do I need to go out and personally vet that evolution is real by personally reproducing some fruit fly studies?

We're heading down a scary road if we cannot trust our scientific institutions to be unbiased.

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#32

Post by denzil_correa »

BFatts wrote: post #20

Someone has to do the research and "Big" whatever seems to be the ones with the money to do so. So, what should we expect from them? They are going to look for research that is compelling to their business model, but as long as it's not wholly misleading, why is it bad? All research should be taken with a grain of salt. I also have another question: Everyone in media is always looking for that story to break about "B…

> All research should be taken with a grain of salt.

The very fact of science is that you can take the same experiment and under the said assumptions; you can repeat the same experiment yourself and come to similar conclusions as the one done by the original scientists.

> I doubt that mom and pop have the cash to do research. And I sure as hell won't trust any mom and pop research about pharmacology.

AD Hominem fallacy - the status of someone has no relation to the outcome of a scientific experiment.

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#33

Post by carbocation »

trendia wrote: post #26
BFatts wrote: post #20

Someone has to do the research and "Big" whatever seems to be the ones with the money to do so. So, what should we expect from them? They are going to look for research that is compelling to their business model, but as long as it's not wholly misleading, why is it bad? All research should be taken with a grain of salt. I also have another question: Everyone in media is always looking for that story to break about "B…

Suppose that cocoa does not have direct effects on health. Recruit 60 people, give 30 of them cocoa and 30 of them placebo. Due to random chance, you'll sometimes get positive results, and sometimes get negative results. If all of those studies are published, then there isn't a huge problem -- a metastudy would show that on average cocoa doesn't affect health. But instead, support that only the positive studies are p…

Yours is a good description of publication bias. I think it's worth mentioning that funnel plots can give you a visual sense of whether there is publication bias, and tools such as Egger regression can help to try to tease out a less biased estimate in the face of publication bias.

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#34

Post by blackguardx »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #16
JosephLark wrote: post #9

> “Dark chocolate probably has some beneficial properties to it,” said Salt Sugar Fat author Michael Moss, “but generally you have to eat so much of it to get any benefit that it’s kind of daunting, or something else in the product counteracts the benefits. In the case of chocolate, it’s probably going to be sugar.” Interestingly, the chart just below this quotation shows that it takes ~70 calories of straight cocoa…

Not really a dark chocolate connoisseur, but your post got me wondering. Hershey's Special Dark (which a lot of people are probably familiar with and is way better than regular Hershey's milk chocolate) is 45%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey%27s_Special_Dark Can't imagine 80%, but it's easy to get on Amazon. Thanks for the extra weight.

I recommend trying Lindt chocolate bars. It is a good, entry-level (sort of cheap) chocolate brand that is pretty wildly available.

Try the 70% and then work your way up to 90%. They make a 99% as well, but it is harder to find.

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#35

Post by bdamm »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #16
JosephLark wrote: post #9

> “Dark chocolate probably has some beneficial properties to it,” said Salt Sugar Fat author Michael Moss, “but generally you have to eat so much of it to get any benefit that it’s kind of daunting, or something else in the product counteracts the benefits. In the case of chocolate, it’s probably going to be sugar.” Interestingly, the chart just below this quotation shows that it takes ~70 calories of straight cocoa…

Not really a dark chocolate connoisseur, but your post got me wondering. Hershey's Special Dark (which a lot of people are probably familiar with and is way better than regular Hershey's milk chocolate) is 45%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey%27s_Special_Dark Can't imagine 80%, but it's easy to get on Amazon. Thanks for the extra weight.

82% can be found in common drug stores; at least in SF Bay Area and Portland area.

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#36

Post by bdamm »

emodendroket wrote: post #19
wallace_f wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop perpetuating the cultural idea that 'anything white collar is OK as long as you do it for money.' The corrupt researchers should be left without a job, just as, say, a food truck worker who plotted to intentionally profit from selling expired products would be fired and criminally charged. In both cases the actors are unethically profiting from your misfortune.

Surely it is primarily the organization which deserves censure, rather than individuals operating within the system. Unless you basically want to lock up entire fields' worth of scientists I don't see how individual responsibility is a solution.

Isn't this part of the problem? When we (Americans) work for money, we don't do much investigation of where that money comes from. And really, how could we? It would take forensic accountant type of skills to really do that job. Maybe that's the fundamental cultural basis; if people felt it was important to know where the money comes from that is paying them they might think more about what work to take.

There's a sense of urgency to getting and staying employed in America which counteracts this ability to be judicious about what work you take, which is perhaps the underlying cultural driver.

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#37

Post by arcbyte »

fenwick67 wrote: post #31
BFatts wrote: post #20

Someone has to do the research and "Big" whatever seems to be the ones with the money to do so. So, what should we expect from them? They are going to look for research that is compelling to their business model, but as long as it's not wholly misleading, why is it bad? All research should be taken with a grain of salt. I also have another question: Everyone in media is always looking for that story to break about "B…

> "All research should be taken with a grain of salt" It's hard for any one person to read tens or hundreds of papers on a subject and critically examine them for fallacies, look for fake data, etc. It's just not plausible. At this rate, if us commonfolk are just expected to take a default position of not believing a scientific study or consensus until we personally vet them, what are we to actually believe? Do I nee…

It's a scary road if everyone is just blanket assuming their sources of information are correct. We're living it.

There are NO institutions WHATSOEVER that we should trust.

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#38

Post by bllguo »

denzil_correa wrote: post #32
BFatts wrote: post #20

Someone has to do the research and "Big" whatever seems to be the ones with the money to do so. So, what should we expect from them? They are going to look for research that is compelling to their business model, but as long as it's not wholly misleading, why is it bad? All research should be taken with a grain of salt. I also have another question: Everyone in media is always looking for that story to break about "B…

> All research should be taken with a grain of salt. The very fact of science is that you can take the same experiment and under the said assumptions; you can repeat the same experiment yourself and come to similar conclusions as the one done by the original scientists. > I doubt that mom and pop have the cash to do research. And I sure as hell won't trust any mom and pop research about pharmacology. AD Hominem falla…

It has a relation to the ability of someone to actually conduct an experiment... Larger groups have more resources, from knowledge to experience to money.

It is not an ad hominem fallacy. I don't know how you twisted his meaning to come to that conclusion.

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#39

Post by Retric »

fenwick67 wrote: post #31
BFatts wrote: post #20

Someone has to do the research and "Big" whatever seems to be the ones with the money to do so. So, what should we expect from them? They are going to look for research that is compelling to their business model, but as long as it's not wholly misleading, why is it bad? All research should be taken with a grain of salt. I also have another question: Everyone in media is always looking for that story to break about "B…

> "All research should be taken with a grain of salt" It's hard for any one person to read tens or hundreds of papers on a subject and critically examine them for fallacies, look for fake data, etc. It's just not plausible. At this rate, if us commonfolk are just expected to take a default position of not believing a scientific study or consensus until we personally vet them, what are we to actually believe? Do I nee…

My suggestion is to ignore anything that's not a meta study.

Material science puts out thousands of papers a year, and ignoring them is easy because I lack context to understand them. IMO, the same is true of any field without a lot of study and literature review.

Re: The Mars company has sponsored hundreds of studies to show cocoa is good

#40

Post by emodendroket »

bdamm wrote: post #36
emodendroket wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it is primarily the organization which deserves censure, rather than individuals operating within the system. Unless you basically want to lock up entire fields' worth of scientists I don't see how individual responsibility is a solution.

Isn't this part of the problem? When we (Americans) work for money, we don't do much investigation of where that money comes from. And really, how could we? It would take forensic accountant type of skills to really do that job. Maybe that's the fundamental cultural basis; if people felt it was important to know where the money comes from that is paying them they might think more about what work to take. There's a se…

> There's a sense of urgency to getting and staying employed in America which counteracts this ability to be judicious about what work you take, which is perhaps the underlying cultural driver.

Uh, yeah, of course there is, because the alternative is penury. If you make scientists liable and change nothing else the result is not going to be a great scientific system that works for the average Joe.

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