December 4th, 2007
Today's "duh" study is a honey
Honey won’t cure the common cold, but it may help kids feel better.
This headline has been splashed across the Internets and the Teevee today by all the major networks. Here it is at MSNBC. Here it is at CBS. And at ABC.
Gee, Grandma was right, they chortled on CNN. And the Today Show. And its imitators. (The picture is from ebeehoney, which sells a wide variety of very good honey.)
But read the stories. Read all the way through, please:
- The study was sponsored by the National Honey Board.
- It began when researchers at Penn State found there was no difference between a placebo and cough syrup in treating coughs due to cold.
- The study emerged soon after we were told kids under 6 should not be given cough syrup.
In other words this is PR, not medicine.
What happened is 105 families were given bags containing either a dose of cough syrup, the same amount of honey, or nothing. Kids were given the contents a half-hour before bedtime, and parents rated how they felt before-and-after, on a scale of 1-7.
Here’s the simple truth, as reported near the bottom of the MSNBC story from a professor at Yale’s nursing school:
“Give them a little time and they’ll get better.”
But is that what parents are being told today? No. They’re being told to dose their kids on honey, with funding from the National Honey Board.
And people wonder why we don’t trust the media…
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 12/04/07
