I have a good friend who is a car enthusiast. His current passion is for (I'll use a neologism so that no one can determine the car he actually owns) a Korbett G-06. I trust that this is sufficiently obscure.
His love for this car is entirely based upon magazine articles which tout its lap, 0-60, and quarter mile times. He will use his own G-06 for none of these things, but, nonetheless, what the magazines print is the defacto gospel.
Whether the magazines indicate that his G-06 will do 0-60 in 2.9 seconds...or 4.1 seconds...can make or break his day. He and I have a mutual friend who feels exactly the same way. Both of these men are very successful in the business community and can well afford to trade their cars frequently and eagerly do so.
The complete lack of science behind road tests is irrelevant to them...or perhaps misunderstood. They do not care that there are no double blind, yoked control, analysis of covariance or multifactorial regression analyses utilized. They do not care if the drivers differ in age or weight nor do they care about the altitude, relative humidity or temperature of track conditions. They do not care if the driver has seasonal allergies, descending hemmorhoids or is arears in child support.
They simply care that the car they currently own was, by someone in some magazine on some date, shown to be the quickest or fastest...or at least reported as having been.
They make purchase decisions based upon these commercial tabloids.
They are placated by favorable reviews and traumatized by critical ones.
They use terms such as muscular, aggressive, and menacing. They also refer to their cars as "she" and "her." (I do not know if they see the contradiction in those two frames of reference, and I am uncertain as to whether they send Hallmark cards to their cars.) I just know that, to them, these articles are extremely, life-changingly important.
Now, true clinical studies are quite a bit different than this. You cannot simply write an article that proposes that Zoloft results in less erectile dysfunction than does Paxil when treating major depressive disorder. Indeed, you must have the article peer-reviewed, edited and then critiqued (and quite often rejcted/re-edited/resubmitted) before your findings are considered worthy of publication...if ever.
And you are enjoined to reveal any ties that the researchers have to the pharmaceutical (or surgical instrument) company or its competitors and, of course, whether the research was based upon grant monies funded from the same corporations.
These, ideally, provide the public with a buffer between the goals of selling a product and the safety/sanity of manufacturing claims.
Now, why does this not occur when a Ferrari slanted, Chevrolet biased, or German advocating, publication prints road tests? Well, simply because it is simply a magazine that represents a hobby. Hopefully, the hobbyist has more of a life than just his hobby and can keep all of that well within proportion.
Ron Popeil and Ronco cannot review medications.
They can, if they wish to do so, review cars.
Car magazines can be entertaining, and, with some publications, you can increase your accumen of data and nosology. Magazines are meant to be fun, and many of them are.
Hobbies are not life; they are what we do with what little time the true committments of life permit us.
- doc
