As everyone in the world seems to know, some fish stories are so good people can’t help but tell them over and over again, and even borrow them from one another.

A reminder of that phenomenon came out this morning when a story moved on the Dow Jones News Wire concerning a claim by Richard Gelfond, the CEO of IMAX, that he suffered from a case of mercury poisoning as the result of eating two pieces of sushi per day. And in a world where inhabitants of nations like Japan eat far more fish per capita than we do here in the U.S without suffering from any widespread negative health effects, that claim seems awfully suspicious.

As you might imagine, it was hard right off the bat not to recall the curious case of Jeremy Piven, whose claims we’ve repeatedly debunked for about two years. Rather than rewind all of those posts, we’d like to simply reiterate some incontrovertible facts: No peer reviewed medical journal has ever published any evidence of a case of methylmercury poisoning caused by the normal consumption of commercial seafood in the U.S.

The health effects of mercury exposure as science understands them are the result of industrial poisonings of the food supply in Japan and Iraq over three decades ago, not consumption of commercial fish found in your local grocery store or restaurant. Furthermore, in 2007, the Journal of Nutrition reported, “poisoning from fish consumption has not been reported since those 2 events.” In short, anecdotal claims aren’t sufficient to pass scientific muster.

One wonders why Dow Jones, a media outlet with a good reputation, didn’t bother to check the facts.