on the other hand, the story and the speculation are half of the fun of science. the discussion section of the article was created for just this reason, to put ideas and interpretation out there for others to consider. unfortunately, the spin that is granted in the discussion section of the article, often gets confused and misinterpreted as the actual result once the media gets a hold…

anyone that reads enough peer-reviewed papers can see that interpretation is everything. any team with a finding that boarders on hot, sexy science will tend to exploit specific angles that would give the work more exposure. as a reader and author of peer-reviewed papers, it seems to me that in order to even have a remote shot at being accepted at a high impact publication like nature or science, scientists must over-simplify exceedingly intricate and complicated discoveries, to such an extent that the work is almost unrecognizable to the very investigators conducting the studies. journals love a spin, (they eat it up) especially when the general public can relate to the subject matter. and scientists love to publish, particularly when perish is the sole alternative. perhaps its not so difficult to understand how investigators, who initially formulate their hypotheses with innate curiosity of what they may find, could get wrapped up in the romance of the discovery. a little polish of this exciting, socially-relevant effect here, a little sweep-under-the-rug of this significant confound, there, “look editors, all clean! call fox news, we got a spiffy little scientific study to help fuel your favorite cause, spreading misinformation and mass hysteria!”

YES the media is to blame, but what major problems in the world can’t attribute the main thrust of that predicament on the media in some way, shape, or form?

i agree with mike on the take-home message: dont trust anything the media asserts as fact, be it fox news or science magazine, in some way shape or form its all spin. read and judge for yourself!

I’m curious how this will get spun.

Thanks for the comments. I’ve had a large burst of new readers the last two days (because of this post) but not many people are chiming in! I was hoping to hear more about what everyone thought.

Pan/Thanatos: Great point on the “secondary ingredients”. If in fact they repeated this study with proper controls and sampling, and the result was the same, I’d expect more attention to what aspects of wine are actually causing this effect.