There is another phenomena as well. The odds of a piece of research going viral are directly tied to how surprising it is. Water is wet does not go viral. Bu

There is another phenomena as well. The odds of a piece of research going viral are directly tied to how surprising it is. Water is wet does not go viral. But it does go viral that trying to exercise self-control tires your brain and makes an impulse buy of a candy more likely. Therefore the science we encounter goes through a selection bias that picks out the most surprising results. But far too often, "surprising" translates into "unlikely to be true". And so we get a constant stream of intellectual junk food wrapped up in the language of science. Take this result. It is surprising that low sodium would not help with cardiovascular problems. Why is it surprising? It is because we know two facts: 1. High sodium intake increases blood pressure: https://www.cdc.gov/salt/research_reviews/sodium_potassium_blood_pressure.htm https://www.cdc.gov/salt/research_reviews/sodium_potassium_b... 2. High blood pressure is bad for your cardiovascular system: https://www.cdc.gov/bloodpressure/about.htm https://www.cdc.gov/bloodpressure/about.htm And therefore we EXPECT that high sodium intake is bad for your cardiovascular system. Which is why we constantly tell people to reduce salt. Now we see this research that has a variety of limitations in what it could detect, saying that it found no correlations. We're surprised because we expect a correlation. But now people will walk around saying that science says that salt doesn't matter, ignore salt, and they're probably causing a problem for themselves. And this brings us to another problem with the research. The known mechanism by which salt is bad for you involves blood pressure. However if you've had a heart attack, your blood pressure is going to be monitored and medications adjusted until your blood pressure is under control. The benefit of less salt will be that you need less medication and will have less side effects. It won't be lower blood pressure and a reduced risk of heart attack! So the primary outcome that should be measured isn't adverse events, it is how much medicine was required!