A few weeks back, NFI issued A Call for Responsibility to end journalists reckless and lazy practices of colluding with agenda-driven activists, distorting scientific truth, championing inferior research and causing irrational fear among consumers.

You may have read it.

Fortunately, the failures of journalists who report on poorly conducted or shirt sleeve research are getting more attention, hopefully increasing pressure to curtail unbalanced and uncritical journalism. Calls to ignore phony health scares rather than perpetuate them are actually mounting.

Baylen Linnekin from Keep Food Legal is the latest heavyweight to shame the news media for promoting shoddy research without noting that the science and the reporting on said science may ultimately be bad for your health. In his Reason article, The Sorry State of Food-Related Public-Health Research and Journalism, Linnekin writes:

Increasingly it appears to be the case that there are two types of public-health publications pertaining to food. There is bad research. And then there is bad reporting on bad research. the seemingly rote regurgitation by journalists of sketchy research, often coupled with brainless quotes from a small sample of go-to researchersare no less common.

Hats off to someone who uses the power of the pen to highlight just how far off track some members of the Fourth Estate have gone.