Suppose a new study reports cardiac benefits associated with moderate consumption of red wine. This is not a new fact to be engraved in our canon of knowledge. Rather, it represents yet one additional contribution to an oft-studied question, marginally shifting our beliefs in the direction of the hypothesis “red wine has cardiac benefits.” A single study doesn’t tell you much about what the world is like. It has little value at all unless you know the rest of the literature and have a sense about how to integrate these findings with previous ones.
Practicing scientists understand this. Researchers don’t make up their minds about a complex question based on an individual research report, but rather, weigh the evidence across multiple studies and strive to understand why multiple studies often produce seemingly inconsistent results. But the popular press almost never reports the story in this way. It’s boring.
