The headlines were too good to be true – “Scientists say chocolate can help you lose weight”, “Trick your body with chocolates”, “Slim by chocolate!”, “Satiate your sugar tooth and lose weight”. Not so long ago, a team of researchers from the Institute of Diet and Health claimed people on a low-carb diet lost weight 10 percent faster if they also ate a bar of chocolate every day. The study found out that chocolate not only helps you lose weight but also maintains healthy cholesterol levels and increases overall well-being.

The media went berserk, and the internet crashed! The report was all over talk shows; magazines ran cover stories on it, and dietitians started recommending chocolate.

There was only one problem – the whole thing was a hoax. And the ‘researchers’ behind it were the first to tell.

The idea for the operation came from Peter Onneken and Diana Lobl, German reporters who were working on a documentary about “junk science” in the diet industry.

The reporters hired a doctor to run clinical trials. Around 15 participants were recruited and told they were going to be part of a documentary film on dieting. The participants were divided into three groups – Group 1 ate a low-carb diet, Group 2 ate the same diet with an additional 1.5 oz bar of dark chocolate, and Group 3 acted as the control. All participants underwent blood tests to ensure no one had any major illnesses that might put their lives at risk. Post the 21-day study, across 18 different measurements, Onneken and Lobl examined the results to see if there was anything there that they could turn into a news story.

It turned out that members of Group 2 lost 0.1 percent more of their body fat than those on diets alone. The team caught on, and decided to blow this out of proportion.
They contacted journalist John Bohannon (we now know that he has a history of successful scientific pranks) to help get the study published and publicized as findings from Institute of Diet and Health (just a website with no association to any institute – reputed or otherwise).

With just five people as the sample size being measured on 18 different parameters (sleep quality, cholesterol, weight, and others), any number of factors could have caused one of the variables to fluctuate. But this was enough to allow the ‘researchers’ to irresponsibly, even if truthfully, report that eating chocolate while dieting led to faster weight loss.

A couple of weeks after the study was published, Bohannon came clean through an essay for a renowned website, stating that the stunt was meant to demonstrate just how easy it is to turn bad science into the big headlines behind diet fads. The study was completely underpowered as it was not designed to distinguish between a real effect and pure luck. Not one of the single reporter fact-checked the study through an outsider – standard operating procedure in good science journalism.

In a spate of interviews following his paper, Bohannon said the ‘research’ was not aimed at testing the health benefits of chocolate. It was meant to test if health reporters can distinguish a good science story from a fake one. He says, “”For far too long, the people who cover this beat have treated it like gossip, echoing whatever they find in press releases. Hopefully, our little experiment will make reporters and readers alike more skeptical.”

While Bohannon faced backlash on social media, the team was successful in exposing the pitfalls of science communication in today’s media environment. Claims with little to no scientific backing can make headlines and drive diet fads.

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