As a wonderful demonstration how media outlets will report the ridiculous as long as ‘neuroscience’ is mentioned, I present the ‘Oreos May Be As Addictive As Cocaine’ nonsense.
According to Google News, it has so far been reported by 209 media outlets, including some of the world’s biggest publications.
That’s not bad for some non-peer reviewed, non-published research described entirely in a single press release from a Connecticut college and done in rats.
Rug rats? 
But they are damned good....
The experiment, described in five lines of the press release, is this:
On one side of a maze, they would give hungry rats Oreos and on the other, they would give them a control – in this case, rice cakes. (“Just like humans, rats don’t seem to get much pleasure out of eating them,” Schroeder said.) Then, they would give the rats the option of spending time on either side of the maze and measure how long they would spend on the side where they were typically fed Oreos…Needless to say, South American drug lords are probably not shutting up shop just yet.
They compared the results of the Oreo and rice cake test with results from rats that were given an injection of cocaine or morphine, known addictive substances, on one side of the maze and a shot of saline on the other. Professor Schroeder is licensed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to purchase and use controlled substances for research.
The research showed the rats conditioned with Oreos spent as much time on the “drug” side of the maze as the rats conditioned with cocaine or morphine.
I can quit anytime I want; honest! It's been almost a week.
I'm sure I've posted that video before; and it's likely I'll do it again.
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