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| Volume 49, Number 1, Spring 2000 |
by Robert L. Wolke
There it was in my morning paper, reprinted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from an editorial in the December 18, 1999 San Francisco Examiner:
We found it intoxicating when the Wine Institute waged a relentless campaign to add its bottled products to the list of government-approved health foods. But even a splash of vintage cabernet couldn't prepare us for the announcement that respectable scientists are suggesting modest health benefits for, yes, the classic martini.
Canadian researchers declared in
the British Medical Journal that James Bond, the fictional
counterspy, was on to something. When shaken, not stirred-as 007
demanded-the gin-and-vermouth cocktail produces more antioxidants
and thus, according to modern science, it becomes a secret agent
against unhealthy [sic] free radicals in the bloodstream . . .
As a professor of nuclear chemistry with a reasonable amount of scientific intuition developed over a 30-year research career, I simply didn't believe that shaking a martini could increase its antioxidant content. Moreover, I am firmly against shaking martinis, even in a laboratory, for what I think are sound chemical principles.
For these reasons, the reported research results impressed me about as much as a warm, two-to-one martini, which I later discovered to my horror was what the researchers used in their studies. But more about that later.
I decided to find out exactly how these guys arrived at their sensational conclusions. I was soon to learn that Reuters and several newspapers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, for whom I write a biweekly column, reported the martini-shaking story with apparent glee.
I quickly found the British Medical Journal's Web site (www.bmj.com), searched it for "martini, shake, stir," found the original paper (December 18-25, 1999), and printed it out. I detected suspicious circumstances.
First of all, of the six authors, the first four listed were identified as research assistants; the other two, professors in the Department of Biochemistry of the University of Western Ontario. Listing undergraduate assistants as the first-named authors of a scientific research paper is very unusual. According to John Trevithick, one of the professors, however, the first-named student was his daughter Colleen, who suggested the project in the first place.
The paper's abstract sets the stage with a statement that "moderate consumption of alcoholic drinks seems to reduce the risks of developing cardiovascular disease, stroke, and cataracts, perhaps through antioxidant actions of their alcohol, flavonoid, or polyphenol contents."
The body of the paper, which is very professionally gussied up with Abstract, Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments, Footnotes, and References, describes the chemical procedures in appropriately impressive scientific lingo. After the "martini" had been either shaken or stirred, it was added to a luminol-albumin solution that can be made luminescent by the addition of hydrogen peroxide, an oxidant. The extent to which the action of the hydrogen peroxide was inhibited by the sample was taken as a measure of its antioxidant power.
A small, nagging thought was beginning to grow. Could this whole thing be a put-on? More red flags kept popping up. The so-called martinis used in the study consisted of six milliliters of gin plus three milliliters of vermouth. Two to one!
That may be what an undergraduate summer work-study student might think a martini consists of, but you'd think the professors would know better.
Be that as it may, the reported results were that shaken martinis (shaken for one minute, which any bartender will tell you is an inordinately long time) were twice as effective peroxide-killers as stirred (for an unspecified time, and without ice!) martinis.
Although the authors state with mock modesty that "the reason for this is not clear,"they do go on to propose theories that can only be described as wild-ass speculation.
I couldn't wait to get back to the BMJ's Web site to check out the other articles in this issue. Sure enough, I found papers on the frequency of swearing and cursing by surgeons during operations, the effects of excessive saxophone playing ("too much sax") on the longevity of jazz musicians, the mysterious migration of linens from one hospital to another, whether or not young women named Sharon are more likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases, and a magnetic resonance imaging study of the geometries of the male and female genitals during coitus.
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Q.E.D. The whole Christmas Issue was indeed the British version of an American April Fool issue.
My quest was now over but not my discomfort at having seen a prank disseminated so widely by the American press. Reuters Health apparently started the ball rolling by sending out a story datelined New York, December 17. It was headed "Shaken, not stirred may be healthy choice," and was based upon an interview with Professor Trevithick. The Reuters story was written in a straightforward style with quotations from Dr. Trevithick, but with winking references to Agent 007's health and wisdom.
The Examiner, the Post-Gazette, and probably other newspapers across the country can be commended for handling the story at arm's length, so to speak-running it as an editorial item, rather than as news. But the Post, in its "Science Notebook" feature, and probably other newspapers as well, treated it as legitimate health news.
The ever-restrained and cautious New York Times reported the story in its "Health & Fitness" feature with but a single oblique reference to "a certain British secret agent." Moreover, it noted pointedly that the Canadian report was published in "The British Medical Journal's Christmas issue, which traditionally devotes space to offbeat topics."
No need to moralize here. Journalists will always handle stories with varying degrees of conscientiousness, and writers can't be expected continually to suspect the motives of an esteemed medical journal. But when a supposedly serious journal article talks repeatedly about James Bond, one's antennae of suspicion should certainly be raised and some serious checking should be done before rushing into print with yet another "researchers say . . ." story. Let's just chalk the whole thing up as a cautionary tale for science writers.
Robert L. Wolke is professor emeritus of chemistry at the
University of Pittsburgh and writes the soon-to-be-syndicated
Food 101 column in the Washington Post. His latest book
is What Einstein Didn't Know-Scientific Answers to Everyday
Questions.