My Google news feed and Twitter feed have been saturated with links to this article since it came out. I’m getting bombarded, even after telling Google I’m not interested.

Besides the dangers you already cite, bad science reporting like this does harm by undermining public confidence in the scientific process.

Most of the public lack training in science and already have a hard time understanding the difference between correlation and causation. Why anyone would want to further that misunderstanding is beyond me. I mean, with only a bachelor’s of science myself, I don’t want to misrepresent myself as a trained scientist, but all my life I’ve watched people learn to mistrust science because of bad science reporting. (And sometimes because of bad science itself.)

It’s discouraging, but given how hard this story is getting pushed, it must be profitable.

Once upon a time I was a very serious runner. When I was training pretty much every day, I needed to consume a ridiculous amount of food to keep my body weight up. Once in a while after a long weekend run, I would stop at a local food stand and buy a chili dog.

Now, hot dogs are not something that I eat. I can’t remember the last time I ate one or ate any processed meat other than the tiny bit of pepperoni on top of a slice of pizza.

Clearly, those hot dogs I gulped down after running 15 or 20 miles did not subtract minutes from my life. The miles I ran every day arguably added to my lifespan, but even that is a difficult assessment to make and would have to figure in all sorts of other factors, including my genetic predisposition to various illnesses and my lifestyle today.

For as far back as I can remember, lots of people have complained about how generally terrible science reporting tends to be.

I ask myself, when will popular science reporters finally stop doing such garbage work? Will they ever?

I sure hope so, but so many people value money over responsible action that I’m not optimistic. My Google feed seems to agree with me.