Stossel of abc 20 - Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity

MYTH-BUSTING IS fun. I wound up doing it by accident: Researching consumer stories, I discovered that much of what I thought to be true was nonsense.

On the other hand, myth doesnt necessarily mean falseit can also mean a popular belief or tradition. Occasionally, just as we were ready to shovel the nonsense away, a myth would turn out to be true.

Usually, however, the shovel dug up lies and stupidity.

I hope that some of the lies behind the myths will make you as angry as they made me. Others may make you laugh. The later chapters will save you money, time, improve your sex life, reduce your anxiety, and even make you happier. This book is really the work of many of us at 20/20. I wrote it, I put my spin on it, and I hold the shovel on the cover, but the shovels were really wielded by a hundred crack researchers. They dug through the nonsense and found the truth. Im grateful to be able to take the fruits of their work and share them with you. Senior producer Martin Clancy, a talented writer and editor, was pivotal in making that happen.

Along the way, we met some very interesting people: scam artists, heroic seekers of truth, liars, and dimwits. In the following pages, youll be able to eavesdrop on our conversations, so you can hear the truthand the lies just as I did. In fact, were trying something new: If your appetite is whetted to actually see and hear some of what you are reading about, see the ABC Web links we provide in the endnotes. Youll get another perspective on the events and personalities Ive had the chance to report on.

I have learned a great deal along the way. Who would have believed, for example, that walking on hot coals is actually painless? Or that you can swim in the polluted rivers around Manhattan and not get sick? Or that outsourcing is good for America?

Now Id like to share my on-the-job education with you.

T homas Jefferson said hed rather live in a country with a free press and no government, than in one with a government but no press. The only security of all is in a free press, he wrote. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.

I couldnt agree more. Without media to tell us about the excesses of government, the risks of life, and the wonderful new ideas that emerge constantly from every cranny in America, our lives would be narrow, and our freedom diminished. The Fourth Estate both informs and protects us. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, said Jefferson, all is safe.

However, thirty-six years working in the media has left me much more skeptical of its product. Reporters are good at telling us what happened today: what buildings burned down, what army invaded, the size of the hurricane thats coming. Many reporters take astonishing risks to bring us this news. We owe them thanks.

But when it comes to science and economics, and putting lifes risks in perspective, the media do a dismal job.

MYTH: The media will check it out and give you the objective truth.

TRUTH: Many in the media are scientifically clueless, and will scare you to death.

We dont do it on purpose. We just want to give you facts. But the people who bring us story ideas are alarmed. Then we get alarmed, and eager to rush that news to you.

We know that the scarier and more bizarre the story, the more likely it is that our bosses will give us more air time or a front-page slot. The scary story, justified or not, will get higher ratings and sell more papers. Fear sells. Thats the reason for the insiders joke about local newscasts: If it bleeds, it leads.

Also, raising alarms makes us feel important.

If we bothered to keep digging until we found the better scientific experts, rather than the ones who send out press releases, wed get the real story. But reporters rarely know whom to call. And if we did, many real scientists dont want to be bothered. Why get involved in a messy debate? It might upset someone in government and threaten the scientists grant money. Id rather be left alone to do my work, and not have to babysit dumb reporters, one told me.

One real scientist, Dr. Bruce Ames of the University of California, Berkeley, did make the effort. He urged a skeptical reporter (me) to be more skeptical of pseudologic from pseudoscientists: The number of storks in Europe has been going down for years, the birth rates going down for years, Dr. Ames pointed out. If you plot one against the other, its a beautiful correlation. But it doesnt mean storks bring babies.

Weve been swallowing the storks-bring-babies kind of logic for years. (My favorite version: I see fat people drinking diet soda; therefore diet soda must make people fat.) For instance, stories about pesticides making food carcinogenic would fill several pages of a Google search. To the scientifically illiterate, the stories are logical. After all, farmers keep using new pesticides, we consume them in the food we eat, and we keep hearing more people are getting cancer. It must be cause and effect! Get the shovel.

MYTH: Pesticide residues in food cause cancer and other diseases.

TRUTH: The residues are largely harmless.

Ames laughs at the claims of chemically induced cancers, and he should knowhes the one who invented the test that first frightened people about a lot of those chemicals. Its called the Ames Test, and its first use in the 1970s raised alarms by revealing there were carcinogens in hair dye, and in the flame retardants in childrens pajamas. Ames helped get the chemicals banned.

Before the Ames Test, the traditional way to test a substance was to feed big doses of it to animals and wait to see if they got cancer or had babies with birth defects. But those tests took two to three years and cost $100,000. So Dr. Ames said, Instead of testing animals, why not test bacteria? You can study a billion of them on just one Petri dish and you dont have to wait long for the next generation. Bacteria reproduce every twenty minutes.

The test proved successful. It was hailed as a major scientific breakthrough, and today, the Ames Test is one of the standards used to discover if a substance is carcinogenic.

But after getting the hair dye and the flame retardants banned, Dr. Ames and other scientists continued testing chemicals. People started using our test, he told me, and finding mutagens everywherein cups of coffee, on the outside of bread, and when you fry your hamburger!

This made him wonder if his tests were too sensitive, and led him to question the very bans hed advocated. A few years later, when I went to a supermarket with him, he certainly didnt send out any danger signals.

DR. AMES Practically everything in the supermarket, if you really looked at it at the parts per billion level, would have carcinogens. Vegetables are good for you, yet vegetables make toxic chemicals to keep off insects, so every vegetable is 5 percent of its weight in toxic chemicals. These are Natures pesticides. Celery, alfalfa sprouts, and mushrooms are just chock-full of carcinogens.

STOSSEL Over there it says Organic Produce. Is that better?

DR. AMES No, absolutely not, because the amount of pesticide residues man-made pesticide residuespeople are eating are actually trivial and very, very tiny amounts! We get more carcinogens in a cup of coffee than we do in all the pesticide residues you eat in a day.

In a cup of coffee? To put the risks in perspective, Ames and his staff analyzed the results of every cancer test done on rats and mice. By comparing the dose that gave the rodents cancer to the typical exposure people get, they came up with a ranking of the danger. Pesticides such as DDT and EDB came out much lower than herb tea, peanut butter, alcohol, and mushrooms. We moved over to the mushrooms as the cameras continued to roll, and Dr. Ames put his mouth where his convictions were.