Overselling the microbiome: University Bern press release uses slight of hand to make mouse study seem to be about people

Interesting new paper came out recently on "Sex Differences in the Gut Microbiome Drive Hormone-Dependent Regulation of Autoimmunity."  It is alas in Science so it is not available openly. Anyway there are some news stories about the article where you can get the gist of it.  Best one is probably the blog post by Christine Gorman: Transplanted Bacteria Turn Up Testosterone to Protect Mice against Diabetes.  The story is pretty interesting. For those who do not know I have been a bit obsessed about the connection between diabetes and the microbiome for a while.  See my Ted talk for example where I discuss my own personal connection to this issue. But the science is not what I want to talk about here.  What I want to talk about is how science press releases can just be awful.  The one for this paper is like some sort of con artist's scheme.  Here it is on Science Daily: Good bacteria in the intestine prevent diabetes, study suggests.  First, they lure you in with a headline that, well, fails to mention that the study was in mice.  And then they keep trying to lure you with some lines about humans and their microbes.  In fact, the first two and half paragraphs I think are pretty deceptive. All humans have enormous numbers of bacteria and other micro-organisms in the lower intestine. In fact our bodies contain about ten times more bacteria than the number of our own cells and these tiny passengers are extremely i...
Source: The Tree of Life - Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Source Type: blogs