Truth-o-meter: Coffee leads to a longer life

More Coffee More Life?

For this assignment I found an article that includes studies that say drinking more coffee can lead to a longer life. I found this article by googling “recent study” and scrolling through the results. I decided to choose this article because it was something I found interesting since I drink coffee and I am curious to know if it does or does not lead to a longer life. Unlike some articles this article isn’t obviously true or false by looking at it. It requires some research to come to a conclusion on whether it is fake news or not. So I decided to use the techniques I’ve learned from reading “Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers” by Michael A. Caulfield such as going upstream, reading laterally, and checking for previous work.

The article is located on CNN’s website and was written by Daniella Emanuel on Wednesday July 12, 2017. I went upstream by clicking on the links the article offers that direct me to two different case studies. The studies were done by Annals of Internal Medicine and are titled “Association of Coffee Consumption With Total and Cause-Specific Mortality Among Nonwhite Populations” and “Coffee Drinking and Mortality in 10 European Countries: A Multinational Cohort Study”. Both of which claim that drinking more coffee can lead to a longer life.

The first study was written on July 11, 2017 and published by Annal.org. The study had information taken from ten European countries and involved 521,330 participants all of European backgrounds. Although I had a hard time trying to figure out the results of the study due to the language used the conclusion to the study clearly states “Coffee drinking was associated with reduced risk for death from various causes. This relationship did not vary by country.”. The second study was also written on July 11, 2017 and published by Annals.org. This study took place in Hawaii and Los Angeles, California. Unlike the previous study this study included participants from different cultural backgrounds. There were 185,855 participants ranging from African American, Japanese American, Latinos, Native Hawaiians, and whites. The ages of the participants for this study were ranged from 45-75 years old. The conclusion of the second study states “Higher consumption of coffee was associated with lower risk for death in African Americans, Japanese Americans, Latinos, and whites.”.

I decided to go upstream by looking to see if the websites I found this information on were reliable. I googled CNN and an information box came up on the right side of the screen, which is a good sign according to Caulfield.

I then searched “CNN impact factor”, but I couldn’t find one. I decided to use these same techniques to research the Annals of Internal Medicine since that is where the studies are from. When I googled Annals of Internal Medicine an information box didn’t pop up in the right corner, but a Wikipedia information box did pop up.

According to Wikipedia the Annals of Internal Medicine is an academic journal published by the American College of Physicians. Amongst the information on Wikipedia was the impact factor, which is said to be 17.202 as of 2016. According to this research the sources which contain the article and studies seem to be reliable.

I then decided to see if this study had been fact checked previously. I went onto Snopes and typed in Coffee leads to longer life study. There were a lot of results that came up, 16 pages worth to be exact, but none of which related to the study I am focusing on. My next step was to research the author of the CNN article. When I googled Daniella Emanuel I came across things such as a LinkedIn account, Twitter, and CNN articles. I then came across Daniella Emanuel’s website and looked on her page specifically in the about me section. She is currently an intern for CNN’s Health Unit.

 

My next move in order to go upstream was to use Google Scholar. I decided to search the author of the article, Daniella Emanuel, to see what results I would get. I got 1,840 results for this search, but when I skimmed through them I did not see any that related to her or this article. While still on Google Scholar I decided to search “Coffee study” to see if any other studies have been done that relate to this article. I came across a study that does in fact have a similar conclusion as the two studies in the article.

            This similar study is found on The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition website and is entitled “Consumption of coffee is associated with reduced risk of death attributed to inflammatory and cardiovascular diseases in the Iowa Women’s Health Study”. The study had 41, 836 participants and the conclusion states “Consumption of coffee, a major source of dietary antioxidants, may inhibit inflammation and thereby reduce the risk of cardiovascular and other inflammatory diseases in postmenopausal women.”. I feel as though this supports the Annals of Internal Medicine studies conclusions that coffee lowers the risk for death.

My fact-checking has lead me to the conclusion so far that this article is true. I believe this because the website the article is found on as well as the website the studies are found on seem to be reliable. Both CNN and The Annals of Internal Medicine had information boxes pop up when I searched then on google and The Annals of Internal Medicine has a high impact factor, which is a good sign. There is more than one study done on the topic and when I read laterally there was another study that came to a similar conclusion. The author of the article is a real person and can be found on multiple social medias, had her own website, and is in fact an intern for CNN. So, based upon these reasons I would assume that this article is true. To know for certain, I would have to continue my research and search for more studies on this topic as well as read laterally more in depth.

 

 

(DRAFT) Coffee leads to longer life (DRAFT)

For this assignment I found is a study that says drinking more coffee can lead to a longer life. I found this article by googling “recent study”. The article is located on CNN’s website and was written by Daniella Emanuel on Wednesday July 12, 2017. I would go upstream by clicking on the links the article offers that direct me to two case studies. The studies were done by Annals of Internal Medicine and are titled “Association of Coffee Consumption With Total and Cause-Specific Mortality Among Nonwhite Populations” and “Coffee Drinking and Mortality in 10 European Countries: A Multinational Cohort Study”.

The first study was written on July 11, 2017 and published by Annal.org. The study had information taken from ten European countries and involved 521,330 participants all of European backgrounds. Although I had a hard time trying to figure out the results of the study due to the language used the conclusion to the study clearly states “Coffee drinking was associated with reduced risk for death from various causes. This relationship did not vary by country.”. The second study was also written on July 11, 2017 and published by Annals.org. This study took place in Hawaii and Los Angeles, California. Unlike the previous study this study included participants from different cultural backgrounds. There were 185,855 participants ranging from African American, Japanese American, Latinos, Native Hawaiians, and whites. The ages of the participants for this study were ranged from 45-75 years old. The conclusion of the second study states “Higher consumption of coffee was associated with lower risk for death in African Americans, Japanese Americans, Latinos, and whites.”.

I decided to go upstream by looking to see if the websites I found this information on were reliable. I googled CNN and an information box came up on the right side of the screen, which is a good sign according to Caulfield. I then searched “CNN impact factor”, but I couldn’t find one. I decided to use these same techniques to research the Annals of Internal Medicine since that is where the studies are from. When I googled Annals of Internal Medicine an information box didn’t pop up in the right corner, but a Wikipedia information box did pop up. According to Wikipedia the Annals of Internal Medicine is an academic journal published by the American College of Physicians. Amongst the information on Wikipedia was the impact factor, which is said to be 17.202 as of 2016. According to this research the sources which contain the article and studies seem to be reliable.

I then decided to see if this study had been fact checked previously. I went onto Snopes and typed in Coffee leads to longer life study. There were a lot of results that came up, 16 pages worth to be exact, but none of which related to the study I am focusing on. My next step was to research the author of the CNN article. When I googled Daniella Emanuel I came across things such as a LinkedIn account, Twitter, and CNN articles. I then came across Daniella Emanuel’s website and looked on her page specifically in the about me section. She is currently an intern for CNN’s Health Unit.

Blog #6: Truth-o-meter Topics

1. The first possible topic I found is a study that says drinking more coffee can lead to a longer life. I found this article by googling “recent study”. The article is located on CNN’s website and was written by  Daniella Emanuel on Wednesday July 12, 2017. I would go upstream by clicking on the links the article offers that direct me to two case studies. The studies were done by Annals of Internal Medicine and are titled “Association of Coffee Consumption With Total and Cause-Specific Mortality Among Nonwhite Populations” and “Coffee Drinking and Mortality in 10 European Countries: A Multinational Cohort Study”. I can easily research if coffee leads to a longer life and see what other sources say to compare as well as visiting the fact checking websites to see if this study has been fact checked previously. 
2. The second possible topic for my truth-o-meter post could be a post by The Courier entitled “You can detect infidelity in a person’s voice”. It was posted 22 hours ago by Washington Post. As i continued to read it said they conducted a study which was published in Evolutionary Psychology. To investigate further on this topic I could go upstream by searching for the study in the Evolutionary Psychology. I can also search if there has been any other studies about this specific topic. I would take pictures into account and could search for Evolutionary Psychology’s impact factor to see how reliable it is. I could also fact check the website, The Courier, that the article is on.
3. The last possible topic I could focus on is a study that states “The latest brain study examined 111 former NFL players. Only one didn’t have CTE.”. I found this on The Washington Post, they discuss the relationship between football players and CTE. CTE stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which I could research further if i choose this article. I could fact check The Washington Post to see how reliable it is. I can also go upstream by clicking the link and reading the study done by the Journal of the American Medical Association. Another step I could take is to read laterally about what other says about this study. I can research on my own to see if there are records of football players having CTE.

Blog #5: Recent Study

For this blog post I used google and typed in “recent studies” and then clicked on the “News” tab. I decided to focus on an article that is entitled “New Studies Conclude That E-Cigarettes Are Not Healthy” which includes information said to be found from the European Respiratory Society. They argue that e-cigarettes are damaging to a person health and in fact do not assist them in quitting smoking. I decided to use Caulfield’s technique by searching for the impact factor. I typed European Respiratory Society into google and an information card from Wikipedia showed up in the right hand corner. I then searched European Respiratory Society impact factor into google and found an information card from The European Respiratory Journal. The current impact factor for the Journal that correlate with the society is 10.569. As I research further on the European Respiratory website I found out that they just had a meeting about it. The study was actually on Eurak Alert: the global source for science news. I googled the impact factor and and information card did not pop up. the study was said to be lead by Dr Lundbäck. The states that he is ” who is a research leader and clinical registrar at the Danderyd University Hospital, Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm, Sweden, “. I decided to go ahead and google his name on google scholar to see what other information I could find and I got 19,100 results. This included a history of fishing, European Study Group, and smoking/asthma articles to name a few.

Blog Post 4

In my opinion the conservative, liberal, and mainstream groups are all somewhat biased. The mainstream group is the least biased because most of the information is from a reliable source and is more factual compared to the others. They have a lot of topics happening in news today, which they can’t really be biased about because they just state facts about what is happening, for example natural disasters. A lot of the topics in the mainstream bubble have information about them from more than one of the sources listed. For example the topic of Hurricane Maria had links to information on  NY Times, ABC News,  Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Having multiple sources that have the same information makes the posts more reliable. Headings and stories that are present in multiple bubbles are topics such as Trump, Jimmy Kimmel, and Hilary Clinton. Without looking into the political aspects in the liberal and conservative bubbles I can assume that they will biased just by reading the headings/titles. The “John McCain Health Care Bill” is unique to the liberal bubble, while “The Left news is biased or misleading” is unique to the conservative bubble and the “North Korea Sanction unique  is to the mainstream bubble. However some topics in the bubbles should and could be fact checked, especially the politic topics because they tend to be biased.