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by Eric Helms

MASS subscribers are skeptical when they hear flashy, controversial, or too-good-to-be-true pop science claims about health, fitness, or nutrition, because they’ve learned they almost always turn out to be false (or not entirely true). What if I told you this applied to all pop science? 

Key Points

• As a MASS subscriber, you are already skeptical of flashy health and fitness claims because they often turn out to be false. This article applies that same critical lens to the broader world of popular science 
• I present five popular science claims: that judges give harsher sentences when hungry, that stress causes stomach ulcers, that Stockholm Syndrome exists, that we all learn best when instruction is tailored to our individualized “learning styles,” and that kids who eat candy get sugar rushes. Believe it or not, each sits somewhere along a spectrum from completely false to partially accurate at best.
• Cognitive biases, academic career incentives, and media sensationalism keep myths alive, providing a valuable lesson in critical thinking. The goal is to encourage you to apply skepticism to all pop science claims you encounter, not just those in health, nutrition, and fitness.

If you are a MASS subscriber who has been around for a while: first, thank you! But second, I apologize, because you have surely had at least one experience where something you thought was true was turned on its head in the annals of MASS. Since 2017, we have been putting “pop-science” claims in the lifting, health, fitness, and nutrition worlds to the test, and you have watched many of them turn out to be blatantly false, missing key context, or at the very least overstated in almost every single instance.

In my own personal history, I began as a young, attempting-to-be evidence-based personal trainer in 2005. For the next seven years, I got better and better as a consumer of research. I fell victim to far fewer myths and became much more skeptical of the claims from my brothers and sisters in iron who were perhaps a little less discerning about where they got their information. However, despite being a reasonably skeptical person, in retrospect, I still fell for an embarrassing number of false pop-science claims outside of my area of interest and growing expertise. Truly, it wasn’t until I began conducting research myself in 2012 and started to regularly interact with researchers in other academic disciplines that I realized every field has its version of “bro-science,” “pseudoscience,” or “wellness quackery.” In fact, almost every pop-science claim I was exposed to was, at the very least, not quite right.

In this article, I am going to cover five popular science claims (as shown in Table 1), explaining where each claim originated and what the truth of the matter actually is. My hope is that this article will help you expand your critical thinking skills more broadly, outside the realm of health and fitness, so you can increase the sensitivity of your “BS detector” even more than you already have as a MASS subscriber.

1. The Hungry Judge Effect

To ease you in and prevent any immediate panic attacks or existential crises that might keep you from finishing this article, I want to start with a myth you have likely seen us discuss before. Dr. Eric Trexler has done a fantastic job covering this exact topic in two prior articles (one, two). So, consider this a gentle warm-up for your “BS detector” before we get into debunking the claims that in some cases you may have believed your entire life.

The Origin 

The claim is that a judge’s parole decisions are highly dictated by their hunger and blood sugar levels. Specifically, the narrative suggests that immediately after a food break, judges grant parole at a high rate, but as they get hungry and mentally depleted leading up to their next meal, their favorable rulings drop to nearly zero.

This myth originated from a highly publicized 2011 paper (1) which analyzed over 1,000 rulings from parole boards. This is a perfect example of how many false beliefs and much of the “bro-science” we encounter actually begin as published, peer-reviewed science. When people first get exposed to the “evidence-based fitness scene,” it is incredibly common for them to simply replace the old, dogmatic gurus with “Science,” viewing published research as the definitive, immutable Truth. However, as you will see below, science is an evolving process of self-correction. Published studies can be too far-reaching in their conclusions, suffer from methodological errors, or be completely overturned by subsequent analyses.

The Reality 

As Dr. Trexler has noted in his past writing, the “hungry judge” study became a darling of pop-psychology books and podcasts, often being cited to prove that human decision-making is hopelessly irrational. Curiously, in the public consciousness, this research is frequently described as having been conducted on the US justice system, even though the data actually came from Israeli parole boards.

More importantly, the sensationalized conclusion completely falls apart when you look at how the study and the proceedings actually operated. First, it is critical to point out that the researchers did not measure a single objective psychological or physiological metric. They did not administer hunger or mental fatigue scales, nor did they assess blood sugar, hormones, or any related biomarkers to verify the judges’ actual states. They simply inferred that the judges were “mentally depleted” based entirely on the amount of time that had passed since their last meal.

Furthermore, a subsequent letter to the editor (2) revealed that the ordering of the cases was not random at all. After interviewing attorneys, judges, and prison personnel, they found that the parole board actively tried to complete all cases from a specific prison before taking a meal break. Within each session, prisoners without attorney representation usually went last, right before the break, and unrepresented prisoners are inherently much less likely to be granted parole. Later statistical simulations (3) demonstrated that the observed drop in favorable rulings was essentially a statistical artifact driven by this non-random case ordering and the fact that favorable rulings simply took longer to process, naturally pushing them to the start of sessions. In short: it wasn’t the blood sugar; it was the schedule. So, the bad news is that this has become a “zombie concept” that simply won’t die, popping up repeatedly in pop psychology books and podcasts (something called the “bullshit asymmetry principle” I’ll discuss further). The good news is that judges haven’t been systematically ruining lives on a daily basis based purely on poor scheduling practices and a rumbling tummy.

2. Stress Causes Stomach Ulcers

The Origin 

The claim is that psychological stress will “burn” holes in your stomach lining and directly cause ulcers. This myth stems from early 20th-century psychosomatic theory, which firmly established in medical teaching and practice that stress and lifestyle factors were the primary drivers of peptic ulcer disease. This dogma became so deeply entrenched in the clinical community that it was viewed as an unquestionable medical fact for decades.

The Reality 

The dogmatic belief that stress was the solitary or primary cause was upended when two Australian researchers, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, discovered in 1982 that the Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) bacterium was actually responsible for most ulcers (4). Because the stress paradigm was so heavily favored, they faced immense skepticism from the medical establishment, leading Marshall to deliberately infect himself with the bacteria in 1984 to conclusively prove it caused acute gastric illness (5), an act of dedication published the following year that eventually earned them the Nobel Prize in 2005 (6).

We now know that H. pylori is responsible for roughly 80 to 95% of all peptic ulcers. However, in this case, the myth is actually partially right. While over half the global population is infected with H. pylori, only about 10% of infected individuals ever actually develop peptic ulcer disease (7). This indicates that having the bacteria alone does not guarantee an ulcer. Instead, chronic stress and poor lifestyle habits can act as moderators that weaken the immune system and exacerbate the gastric environment, allowing the bacteria to thrive and ulcers to develop. But without the presence of the bacteria, developing chronic ulcers from stress alone is highly unlikely. 

The incredible stickiness of the stress narrative is a perfect example of Brandolini’s law (also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle), which is a tongue-in-cheek “law” that states the amount of energy required to refute a false or misleading claim is an order of magnitude larger than the energy needed to produce it. The pervasiveness of this myth was inadvertently aided by science communicators. For example, neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky published the first edition of his book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers in 1994. Although Sapolsky acknowledged the bacterial cause of ulcers in the text, the book arrived 12 years after Marshall and Warren’s discovery, and its popularity and catchy title kept the focus heavily on human psychological stress in the public consciousness.

Ironically, even the core premise of that title, that wild animals only experience acute stress and are completely spared from human-like chronic stress, has been challenged by recent research on zebra(fish) (8). These fish use cognitive appraisal to assess threats, and those with “pessimistic” cognitive biases exhibit enhanced responses to chronic stress, leading to higher disease susceptibility and tumorigenesis. This suggests that theoretically, any psychologically stressed animal could also get ulcers. Ultimately, while chronic stress is not the solitary pathogen burning a hole in your stomach, it undoubtedly plays a moderating role in ulcer development and remains a major factor in numerous other health problems across species.

3. Stockholm Syndrome

The Origin 

The concept of Stockholm Syndrome originated from a six-day hostage standoff in August 1973 at the Sveriges Kreditbank in Stockholm, Sweden. A parolee named Jan-Erik Olsson attempted to rob the bank and took four employees hostage inside a vault, demanding that authorities bring him his former cellmate, notorious criminal Clark Olofsson, along with money and weapons. Following their eventual release, the hostages appeared to defend their captors and heavily criticized the police. Nils Bejerot, a Swedish criminologist and psychiatrist consulting for the police, coined the term “Stockholm Syndrome” during a news broadcast to explain the hostages’ seemingly irrational reactions. Bejerot publicly diagnosed one of the hostages, a 23-year-old woman named Kristin Enmark, claiming she had been brainwashed and had formed an emotional, and implicitly romantic, bond with the bank robber. The term quickly took hold in popular culture and the media as a seemingly common psychological phenomenon to explain why kidnapping victims, hostages, and survivors of abuse develop a psychological bond or romantic affection for their captors. However, this narrative is actually a disturbing distortion of what really happened in Stockholm and how victims typically respond to trauma (9).

The Reality 

The sensationalized idea of hostages falling in love with their captors ignores the reality of the Stockholm incident. The hostages were not brainwashed; rather, their negative sentiment towards the police was justified by the authorities’ dangerous incompetence. During the siege, the police misidentified the robber and, unannounced, sent in a 16-year-old boy who they mistakenly believed was his brother, hoping that the boy would convince the robber to release the hostages and give himself up. Instead, this prompted the robber to fire two rounds at the boy, who quickly realized the robber was not his brother and fled, thankfully unharmed. Police also drilled holes in the roof to flood the vault with tear gas, despite the hostages’ fears that this would trigger their captor to kill them. Enmark, the hostage, even called the Swedish Prime Minister, speaking to him for 42 minutes, begging him to stop the police from escalating the situation.

When the police eventually did spray the gas, the robber surrendered instead of following through on his threats to execute the hostages. He later admitted that living in such close quarters and building a rapport with the captives made it too difficult for him to kill them. It’s quite ironic – the more legitimate claim is that the robber developed an emotional connection to the captors, not the other way around. Modern analysis reveals the public “diagnosis” (without ever meeting Enmark) made by the police psychiatrist was a silencing strategy used to pathologize her criticisms of the police and deflect blame (9).

Despite common use in media, Stockholm Syndrome has never been recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and a 2008 systematic review of the literature found no validated diagnostic criteria or empirical evidence to support its existence as a psychiatric diagnosis (10). Furthermore, behavioral data indicate the behavior associated with this “syndrome” is exceptionally rare. A 1999 report (11) analyzing the FBI’s Hostage/Barricade System database, which included over 1,200 hostage incidents, found that 92% of hostages showed no signs of the behavior whatsoever. When excluding victims whose only “symptom” was frustration with law enforcement, that number rose to 95%.

Today, modern trauma researchers propose replacing the flawed concept of Stockholm Syndrome with the biological concept of “appeasement” (12). Appearing calm, compliant, and cooperative with a captor is an unconscious, highly adaptive survival strategy. By using social engagement to keep the aggressor calm and de-escalate the tension, victims can minimize their risk of injury or death. This is not a “trauma bond” or genuine affection, but a powerful, instinctual biological drive to survive an extreme power imbalance and a life-threatening situation.

4. Learning Styles

The Origin 

The claim is that we learn best when instructional content matches our preferred sensory style, such as Visual, Auditory, or Kinaesthetic (VAK). This was expanded into the VARK model (adding Read/Write) in 1987 by Neil Fleming, a New Zealand school inspector who observed thousands of classes and sought to explain why certain teachers reached certain students (13). The concept of identifying a student’s learning style and tailoring instruction to match it, known as the “matching hypothesis,” became a cornerstone of educational dogma. Surveys demonstrate that, as of 2012 (25 years after the VAK/VARK model was introduced), over 90% of teachers in various countries believed this concept to be a proven fact (14).

The Reality 

Despite its popularity, the matching hypothesis underlying the VAK/VARK model is recognized by cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists as a “neuromyth” (14). A 2008 invited review found virtually no evidence supporting the idea that instruction is best provided in a format matching a learner’s specific sensory preference (15). Since then, numerous experimental studies have failed to find enhanced learning outcomes when aligning instruction with VAK learning styles, contradicting the core assumptions of the model (16).

While it is true that visual, auditory, and kinesthetic sensory data are processed in different, dominant parts of the brain (14), that does not mean learning is not an integrated process. In fact, functional MRI and neuroimaging demonstrates the brain does not process information in isolated sensory channels; instead, learning relies on multi-sensory inputs across the brain (16, 17). Labeling a student as a “visual” or ”auditory” learner is not only inaccurate but potentially harmful. It can lead to “pigeonholing,” where students lose self-efficacy in certain subjects and avoid them because they believe the material does not suit their style and/or develop a false sense of confidence in others, which ultimately diverts educational resources away from truly evidence-based teaching practices (18).

At the very least, common sense will tell you that the VARK model does not apply in many circumstances. Imagine trying to teach someone to ride a bicycle by reading an instruction manual, or teaching someone to paint a picture with only verbal instruction. Similarly, trying to explain the information in a simple x-y axis bar graph without a visual representation would be unnecessarily difficult. Simply put, some things are obviously delivered better in specific formats, regardless of a supposed learning style preference.

With decades of research demonstrating the VAK/VARK model as invalid, you might wonder if things have changed since 2012, now almost 50 years since VAK/VARK was introduced. Unfortunately, recent data indicates its prevalence remains high. Systematic reviews of survey data published in 2024 show that roughly 89% of educators globally still believe in VAK learning styles (16). Furthermore, a 2025 study of pre-service teachers (i.e., student teachers) found a similar ~89% prevalence of belief (19). This is another classic illustration of the bullshit asymmetry principle. Once an intuitive concept like learning styles is entrenched and codified in systems and training, the energy required to dispel it is much larger than what was needed to create it.

5. Sugar Causes Hyperactivity

The Origin 

If you ask a parent or teacher, many will tell you that giving a child sugar leads to behavioral issues. The concept that sugar causes hyperactivity, often colloquially referred to as a “sugar rush,” first gained traction in the medical literature in the 1920s and was later popularized in the 1940s as tension-fatigue syndrome (20). The belief solidified in the 1970s and 1980s when early correlational studies, such as a 1980 paper by Prinz and colleagues, reported that hyperactive children who consumed more sugar exhibited more restless and destructive-aggressive behaviors, and even suggested sugar might possibly play some role in the development of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (21).

The Reality 

Despite the anecdotal consensus among parents, the sugar rush lacks empirical support. When researchers ran double-blind, placebo-controlled studies to see if the “sugar rush” was real, the effect vanished. A 1995 meta-analysis aggregated the data from 23 of these experiments (20), where children were given either sucrose or a disguised artificial sweetener such as aspartame or saccharin, and reported that sugar does not negatively affect the behavior or the cognitive performance of children. More recently, a 2019 study tracking children from age 6 to 11 found no association between high sugar consumption and the incidence of ADHD (22). While children with ADHD may consume more sugar, the researchers note this is likely a consequence of the disorder, specifically related to impulsivity and reward-seeking behavior, rather than the cause.

If sugar does not cause hyperactivity, why are parents so confident it does? For two possible reasons: the context in which sugar is consumed and expectancy bias. First, consider that children typically consume sugar at birthday parties, and holidays. These are exciting, often unstructured environments. Children are likely more active because they are at a party with their friends, not because of the sugary food (20). Second, parents are not immune to expectancy bias. In a 1994 study (23), researchers recruited mothers who believed their sons were “sugar sensitive.” All of the boys were given a placebo drink sweetened with aspartame, but half of the mothers were told their sons were given a large dose of sugar. When the mothers and sons were subsequently observed interacting, the mothers who were told their children consumed sugar rated them as significantly more hyperactive. Further, these mothers changed their own behavior, becoming more controlling, critical, and restrictive toward their sons.

Thus, observing a “sugar rush” is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When parents expect sugar to cause bad behavior, they fixate and look for any degree of hyperactivity (even if it is the child’s normal amount), altering their parenting in ways that might actually provoke conflict and behavioral problems they are trying to avoid. While you probably should limit your children’s intake of candy and soda for several health reasons, preventing hyperactivity is not one of them.

Application and Takeaways

If you survived this complete shattering of your worldview to read this section, first, my apologies. But second, congratulations, because you are better for it. You are now probably a much more skeptical person, who is hopefully more likely to apply the critical lens you’ve developed as a MASS subscriber beyond the confines of health, fitness, and nutrition. If not, at the very least, you can lord your intellectual superiority over your friends and family at social gatherings. Just wait for them to casually bring up one of these myths, and then pounce like a tiger with a perfectly placed, “Well, actually…” 

No, but seriously. It’s important to understand how and why these flawed ideas proliferate, as it continues to bolster our internal “BS detector.” Cognitive biases make us extremely willing to accept intuitive ideas (or even “excitingly counterintuitive ideas”) in the face of flimsy or underwhelming evidence. Academics are implicitly incentivized to boost interest in their research, which nudges them toward framing results in a manner that reinforces impact and generates interest or intrigue. Media outlets are more directly incentivized to capture the attention of the general public, which further pushes public understanding of a concept toward maximally flashy and captivating framing. Finally, once these concepts become embedded in the public consciousness and codified into the operations or shared perspectives of institutions, reversal becomes a major uphill battle. By observing how cognitive biases, media sensationalism, and institutional dogma keep these deeply entrenched myths alive, I hope this review serves as a sobering lesson in critical thinking. The ultimate goal is to encourage skepticism in all pop science claims you encounter, not just in health, nutrition, and fitness. So what should we look out for? Pseudoscientific claims are typically black and white and/or fear-based, while legitimate evidence-based messages are nuanced, transparent, and context-specific. More specifically, here are three red flags of potential pseudoscience:

1. A focus on mechanisms over outcomes. If a claim relies on complex-sounding isolated physiological pathways or animal data but lacks long-term human trials.
2. Unjustifiable confidence. Scientific consensus speaks in probabilities, caveats, and nuance. Be wary of hyper-specific, black and white solutions to complex problems.
3. The anti-establishment narrative. Many institutions have real issues, but charlatans often identify as lone truth-tellers fighting the system, using this narrative to deflect criticism.

Now, once you spot pseudoscience, the trick is, can you tactfully approach these topics at the next birthday party or sports event you attend for your child? Good luck avoiding getting yelled at by other parents who “have done their research.”

References

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2. Weinshall-Margel K, Shapard J. Overlooked factors in the analysis of parole decisions. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011;108(42):E833-E834.
3. Glöckner A. The irrational hungry judge effect revisited: Simulations reveal that the magnitude of the effect is overestimated. Judgment and Decision Making. 2016;11(6):601-610.
4. Marshall BJ, Warren JR. Unidentified curved bacilli in the stomach of patients with gastritis and peptic ulceration. Lancet. 1984;1(8390):1311-1315.
5. Kyle RA, Steensma DP, Shampo MA. Barry James Marshall-Discovery of Helicobacter pylori as a Cause of Peptic Ulcer. Mayo Clin Proc. 2016;91(5):e67-e68.
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