Remember the study claiming that the Transport for London ban on 'junk food' advertising had let to London households consuming 1,000 fewer calories per week? It was execrable rubbish and now a study based on it is claiming that nearly 100,000 cases of obesity have been prevented by the ban.
Regardless of what you think of this particular policy, it is worrying that public health policy-making has become so divorced from observable reality. Policies are proposed on the basis of modelling, evaluated on the basis of modelling, and the modelling is carried out by advocates of the policy. At no point are facts allowed to intrude. A rise in chocolate consumption becomes a fall in chocolate consumption. A rise in obesity becomes a fall in obesity. Activist-academics have created a world of pure imagination and are exploiting the broken peer-review process to drag us all into their land of make believe.
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