Bad News On Booze: “Full Measure” Reveals Tax-funded Drinking Study Was Pre-planned To Reflect Alcohol As Beneficial

By B.N. Frank

On December 10, Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson reported a huge buzz-kill for moderate drinkers, the Alcohol Industry, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and certain scientists from Harvard and Yale, and of course U.S. taxpayers:

It’s a sad comment on the quality of “science” being conducted by supposedly reputable scientists.

Our cover story this week looks at promises made to the alcohol industry by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. According to documents, NIH promised positive results in advance of a major study on the benefits of moderate drinking. Once the researchers got caught, the study was cancelled but not before millions of our tax dollars were spent. We look at the internal emails.

Coincidentally, CBS 60 Minutes just reported on Sunday about a $300M federal study being conducted by NIH researchers on how kids’ brains are being affected by screens.  Also included was a 60 Minutes “Extra” segment about how “Toddlers Need Laps Not Apps.”

Research about kids and screens doesn’t seem to have ever mattered to Silicon Valley parents though.  They have always limited their own kids’ use and exposure to screens.  More recently, reports indicate that they are now going to extreme measures to keep their own kids away from screens (i.e. spying on their nannies).

It’s unfortunate that all of this is happening and, of course, at taxpayers’ expense.  Perhaps we should all consider relying more on common sense and “erring on the side of caution” instead of relying only on scientists, so-called researchers, elected officials, and government agencies to determine what is safe and what isn’t.  They have been wrong so many times before about so many different things…

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. – Carl Sagan