columnists and general idiocy

I'm frequently staggered by the claims made by the New York Times health columnists. Their usual target is the vitamin industry: why do people keep taking all those supplements, they keep whining, when study after study shows that vitamins don't prolong life? The vigor of the NYT attack on the vitamin industry has been consistent enough to make me wonder what the underlying agenda might be. Insofar as vitamins don't harm anyone, and given that few of us manage to get all the nutrients we should have into our daily caloric blend, the ongoing attack seems, well, odd.

More about that below. For now I'm flabbergasted by an even more astonishing report: one published just today that claims that exercise has virtually no health benefits.

Exercise, according to today's health column by Gina Kolata, does not help you lose weight; muscle does not burn significantly more calories than fat; exercise has minimal benefits for heart health; exercise does not help offset osteoporosis.

Wow! That must explain why there are so many obese athletes running around. And to think that my doctor has been steering me wrong all these years!

What's astonishing about this article is the complete misinterpretation of the data. Kolata vaguely points to studies that show the benefits of exercise on all the above, but then proceeds to dismiss every one of them, claiming that the cause-and-effect has not been demonstrated. None of these studies is footnoted or cited, and the one expert Kolata coughs up for a salable quote cites only the example of his own difficulties with weight loss--as if analogy can substitute for large-scale scientific data or a systematic and unbiased analysis of the evidence.

The problem here is the reporter's bias. Kolata is no scientific expert. She claims to have read the data, which she "objectively" passes on to us. But the data--if it exists at all--is piecemeal, selected and discarded as necessary in order to point to a predetermined argument. Why Kolata is invested in this argument, I don't know: perhaps it's personal and she's feeling frustrated with her own metabolism; perhaps it's professional and she's trying to be controversial in order to attract readers. Who knows? All we can know is that this is bad reporting, and unfortunately for all of us, bad reporting has bad consequences. People read this stuff. They internalize it. They act on it.

Don't reporters have an ethical responsibility to try a little harder?

Bad writing and faulty thinking are such everyday occurrences in my life as an English teacher that I often despair. This is, of course, based on my own utopian dream of living in a Star Trek world where we all live by the Prime Directive, seeking knowledge and the greater good of humanity just 'cause it's pretty good fun. When people ask me what a degree in English is for, I like to mutter things about how learning to read is about learning to perceive, and how allowing your own mind to be open to different perspectives and values enables you to negotiate and appreciate difference and, at the very least, to avoid things like fraud and manipulation when we encounter the not-so-utopian folks out there. For there are many of those folk, and an awful lot of them seem to have jobs in mainstream media.

It's when we learn that writing is the single most effective tool for mass manipulation--precisely because it effectively masks the subjectivity of its author--that we realize the absolute necessity of reading between the lines. Most writers can't be trusted. Nor can we trust ourselves as writers. If only I could get my students to realize this simple and incontrovertible tragedy of life! That's why we get ourselves into trouble so often....not only can we not recognize an agenda in other people; we can't even see it in ourselves.

I wonder all the time why writers seem so invested in arguing skewed viewpoints. It seems much more rewarding to me to go at most problems from the reverse angle--which is to say, not from the self, but from outside the self, so that perhaps the self can learn something and change. I like writing that is exploratory, that makes me think new thoughts or see old problems in a different way. If you already have the answers, why write at all? Why read? For that matter, why live at all?

Which brings me back to the vitamin issue. The predetermined answer already legislated into foregone conclusion by the media in an oft-trotted out theme is that people are just pissing their money away (literally!) when they buy vitamin supplements. Into the mouth; out through the toilet. There is nothing to be found in vitamin supplements, they claim, that cannot be found in food. Further, supplements don't increase lifespan.

The particular way columnists pose the question is in itself irking, as if the only thing that counts in life is longevity. They ask themselves "Why is everyone taking vitamins when vitamins don't prolong life?" But they have no real interest in knowing why everyone is taking vitamins. They have no interest in whether the other reasons for taking vitamins might be legitimate. I take iron, for example, because if I don't I need a good long nap by the end of the afternoon.¹ Omega-3 tablets really do reduce cholesterol, meanwhile, while vitamin B supplements are great for stress. All in our heads? No more so than the effects of any of the other medically prescribed chemicals that simply wear the proud banner of FDA approval on them. Prescription drugs, street drugs, vitamins, herbal supplements--all these things have an effect on body chemistry, and more often than not, medical studies reveal how little we know about the intricate complexity of how it all works together.

But these are issues the media fail to address--probably because they require thought and doubt, as opposed to certainty and a quick sale. No one wants a challenge--challenges are too much work, and it was work enough just getting that article written in the first place. So much easier to presuppose that we already know what most people want and how most people think, and to keep on whacking the public over the heads with untried premises whether we want it or no.

There's a deadline to be met, after all.

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¹ Not to mention the fact that if I run out of iron I start craving hamburgers. There's nothing wrong with hamburgers, mind you, but perhaps I shouldn't be eating them every day, and certainly not like a ravenous she-wolf who might not find prey for another month. One must strike a balance between calories and nutrients, after all--as this nice article by the Washington Post demonstrates quite well.