Does Coffee Cause Cancer? by Dr. Christopher Labos

Author:Dr. Christopher Labos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2023-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

“But what was the source of the data?” Alexi asked.

“Wikipedia mostly and a few other websites to get the chocolate statistics for each country.”

“Did Wikipedia become an authoritative source of medical information when I wasn’t looking?”

“I hope not.”

“I’m starting to see why you think this was all satire.”

I had to admit to Alexi that I was in doubt for a while. But one night, when I couldn’t sleep and was mindlessly searching the internet, I stumbled on an interview Messerli gave where he explained his reasoning for doing the research.

One evening, he was in a hotel room in Kathmandu and saw a study about flavonols improving scores on cognitive tests. He decided to look into the issue. He figured Nobel Prizes were probably a good sign of overall intelligence, and he knew chocolate has flavonols. A few quick Google searches later, he had the chocolate consumption per capita of each country and the number of Nobel Prizes. He plotted the data out and was amazed by how strong the correlation was.

At first. In an interview he gave to Reuters, he called the association meaningless and the whole idea absurd. He also said he was trying to make a point about how people can misuse data to draw faulty conclusions. The same news article interviewed Eric Cornell, who won the Nobel for physics in 2001. He obviously thought it was a joke because he was quoted as saying: “I attribute essentially all my success to the very large amount of chocolate that I consume. Personally, I feel that milk chocolate makes you stupid. Now dark chocolate is the way to go. It’s one thing if you want like a medicine or chemistry Nobel Prize, okay, but if you want a physics Nobel Prize it pretty much has got to be dark chocolate.”

Alexi laughed. But he had some sympathy for Cornell, who obviously thought he was making an off-hand comment that wasn’t going to be taken seriously. Instead, it was sent out over the Reuters wire service and got reprinted in numerous articles across the internet.

“Somebody should tell journalists that different departments mock each other all the time.”

“It’s true. I make fun of surgeons continuously.”

Alexi’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Oh really? How so?”

“What do you call two surgeons trying to read an ECG?”

He shrugged.

“A double-blind study.”

“Okay. How many cardiologists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

I didn’t know so I waited for the punchline. I assumed it would be a large number.

“Six,” Alexi said. “One to screw in the lightbulb and five to say how much better they could have done it.”

All good comedy is based in truth. We traded barbs for a while until Alexi remembered what had gotten us onto this tangent.

“I wonder if the moral of the story is don’t try to be funny when giving an interview.”

“That’s very cynical. I don’t think we can fault the journalist. The original Reuters article was very clear.”

When you read the whole article, Cornell does go on to say that he was joking and that he didn’t think the association was real.

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