The NY Daily News, Time, The Huffington Post and Glamour Magazine (really, Glamour?) are all reporting on the newly discovered, anti-virus fighting properties of humulone—the chemical that makes hops bitter. This, apparently, earth-shattering revelation was the result of research done by Sapporo Medical University and funded by ...wait for it... Yes—Sapporo Brewery.
Wow! I mean, really—wow! A brewery paying for a study that finds beer to be not just benign, but healthful—who'da thunk? I can only hope that all those french fry tests being done at Hamburger U will also be as positive. 2012 looks like it's going to go down as a red-letter year in science.
Yeah.
Don't get me wrong, if the research supports the findings—great. I also realize scientist and doctors have been endorsing beer for generations—but c'mon. Should three well respected news outlets—and the Huffington Post*—be waisting their time with this? This wasn't an independent medical study—this isn't like trying to find out why sharks are cancer resistant. This was an industry-funded experiment to sell beer. What if the results came back with nothing? Would Time and the Daily News have reported that? Would we have seen this headline?
"Researchers at Sapporo Medical University have concluded that beer is yellow... and sometimes it's not."
I'm not sure if it's a slow news day, or they were just going for an easy headline. Maybe they just ran with the press release—but, talk about taking the bait.
*That joke was just to easy to pass up.
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| Does anybody want to buy a bridge? |
Yeah.
Don't get me wrong, if the research supports the findings—great. I also realize scientist and doctors have been endorsing beer for generations—but c'mon. Should three well respected news outlets—and the Huffington Post*—be waisting their time with this? This wasn't an independent medical study—this isn't like trying to find out why sharks are cancer resistant. This was an industry-funded experiment to sell beer. What if the results came back with nothing? Would Time and the Daily News have reported that? Would we have seen this headline?
"Researchers at Sapporo Medical University have concluded that beer is yellow... and sometimes it's not."
I'm not sure if it's a slow news day, or they were just going for an easy headline. Maybe they just ran with the press release—but, talk about taking the bait.
*That joke was just to easy to pass up.
"three well respected news outlets"... And therein lies the problem. That those can be well respected news outlets...
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