well this time it is official we like the idea to finally have the opportunity to show that we are among the best. it wasn't only about a competition but rather an initiative together people from all of producing regions from around the world to encourage friendship and cooperation. all right you're watching news from berlin and more coming at the top of the hour and don't forget you can get all the latest news and information around the clock on our website thanks for joining us. when cities are in gulf by the sea. all the dams wallace and costly protective measures will have been. nothing.

what's. the future starting november ninth on t.w. . spinach child there's a lot of iron in it. passengers are kindly requested to switch off their phones. a glass of red wine a day is healthy according to one study and isn't this just we're all gullible when it comes to science we all want to know how we can live longer happier healthier lives how we can stay trimmed if someone in a white lab coat says something we believe in right away. however we often follow rules and don't know who came up with them or more importantly why.

to mention how many people just need something they can believe in and that's how myths are created myths are neutrally responses to problems people haven't found a solution to and seem to offer a simple solution. can science destroy old myths or does it inadvertently constantly create new owners. in this luxury hotel near garmisch patton kitchen in the foothills of the bavarian alps the guests are looking for more than just relaxation and wellness. they're hoping dr christina moola can help them a general practitioner she offers a detox treatment supporters of the detox idea believe that toxins from their food and the environment build up in their bodies by detoxing they believe they can

remove these toxins from their bodies the warm wildflower compresses are only the beginning. we're going to get to work now the detox organs have to get to work we deposit toxins the same way we deposit your rods in the waste repository you think radioactivity isn't nice i don't want it outside my front door it's fine there for now so i won't think about it too much that's how you can think about it within the context of your body too. however it's only detox fans who share this view the majority of medical experts believe detox ing is superfluous. lilian christie is a doctor at the charity hospital in berlin like most other medics she believes your

liver and kidneys can remove waste products perfectly well if your healthy. i might have as a couple the body is generally very capable of removing such toxins in addition detox procedures can be dangerous sometimes people don't eat anything at all or they drink too much water and that means salts in the body are over diluted doctors shouldn't recommend a detox to their patients. kind of detox. and. and yet detoxing is on trend. in garmisch part imputation the alkaline salt bath is part of the five day detox package which costs four hundred euros nobody knows for sure how much the huge detox market is worth. next up there's the healing earth against the toxins in the body. but the majority of doctors

say there's no such buildup of toxins in the body certainly they can't be measured using scientific methods. many detox programs resemble therapeutic fasting the patients say they feel free a mentally and physically afterwards it's the hormones associated with happiness that are responsible the body releases them as you fast. if there were toxins in the body before a detox there should be demonstrably fewer toxins are after the detox right the mess and measuring detoxification is a tricky matter we don't pursue any scientific research on this but there's nothing better than seeing the faces of our guests at the end of the program when they say

i'm feeling much better i can feel myself again i feel motivated to exercise there's no. i think better so in that sense i don't need scientific research when i hear these sentiments all the time maybe i should conduct the studies myself. but there's no shortage of studies looking into health and nutrition says lilian crist from the charité in berlin. barely a week goes by without new medical recommendations. but often they're based on research that isn't scientifically rigorous they have too few participants or there's no control group lilian christe studies all the major diseases of modern civilization such as cancer dementia and heart attacks. looking at what might protectors and what might increase the risks the

epidemiologist is hoping to counter scientific myths such as detoxing with facts davison shaft mr. science wants to bring the truth to light and he wants to dispel myths rushed into it once to explain links and determine whether treatments help or not. the aim is to find out more about the human body for example. million crist works for the nationwide narco health study narco is the german national cohort and has been running since two thousand and fourteen the scientists want to examine two hundred thousand people at regular intervals over a period of twenty to thirty years. the scientists have set the bar high for their study all the tests are strictly

standardized from the questionnaire to the smell identification test. despite great progress in many areas science often cannot find simple solutions to complicated problems and clemens i should mention our of course people cling to results that sound like they can be put into practice easily. if the study says he just have to do x. and y. and you'll live ten years longer then that's reported on by the media because people want to hear. these medical myths are akin to a religion. that. at. we believe quite a lot of things such as vitamin c.

helps against colds this idea dates back to the seventy's new studies have shown it to be a myth once a cold is there vitamin c. has no effect on. reading in dimly lighted harms the eyes. fortunately not it's just tiring it could lead to headaches if the eyes can relax overnight they're fit again the next morning. cherries and water together cause tummy ache that may have been correct in the past microbes in on clean drinking water coupled with the fruit could have triggered unpleasant fermentation process is in the stomach and guts but improvements in water quality mean that this isn't generally a problem any more. so what about the miraculous power of spinach the green leafy vegetable became famous thanks to popeye. several generations of

children were made to consume large quantities of the stuff it would make them a strong as the comic strips ala writes. the rule university in boca is welcoming young guests today you're right students from a nearby high school. they want to examine spinach more closely they're testing the iron content of the vege in the lab. the spinach project was dreamed up by katherine sama professor of chemistry didactics. and. she's interested in how chemistry can be taught in an engaging manner. maybe these students will go on to become

scientists themselves one day. katherine zama is convinced that examples from people's everyday lives are helpful like popeye. i used to love what's in popeye and my parents made me eat spinach before i was allowed to watch the show. and when he ate the spinach he got huge muscles he was a role model whenever i ate spinach i imagine becoming strong. but the notion that there's a lot of iron in spinach is just a myth. scientists themselves created this myth because sometimes they to make mistakes and for mood it it probably came about due to a transcription error in the lab a scientist forgot a decimal point as

a result three point five milligrams became thirty five nutritionists really picked up on that the recommendation was eat a lot of spinach it'll make you strong. but there wasn't just one mistake quite by chance a chemist in basel found thirty five milligrams of iron in dried spinach powder. after the transcription error an error of logic because the fresh hydrated vegetable only has a tenth of this sign content the myth was born. to commit him. but the misunderstanding was cleared up decades ago and yet we're still left with the feeling that spinach is a miracle vege. indium fire in this case

we've taken the myth that spillage makes you strong so we can sensitize the student to the idea you don't have to just accept such assertions you can question them. and there are even methods by which you can question it. as part of this student lab project we're doing scientific testing to dispel myths. the students have incinerated the spinach and dissolved it in hydrochloric acid the coloration reveals how much iron the solution contains. the result spinach is merely average when it comes to iron content. wheat bran and pumpkin seeds for example contain far more. but myths weren't just created in the past the present is also able to generate new

myths. can mobile phones cause planes to crash. enders and his colleagues at the german aerospace center in braunschweig are investigating this potentially life or death question. the aircraft's electronic heartbeats in the fuselage. test engineer thomas heineken performs a final check before today's experiment can begin. the test plane is an airbus a three twenty one of the best selling aircraft for short and medium haul flight. can cellphones really cause their tried and tested technology to seize up. this question has

preoccupied us since the first mobile phones came out in the eighty's. fears of electromagnetic radiation were and still are considerable. shelling on me so but i remember having an electronic alarm clock that my phone interfere with on this possibility was transferred to the context of flying where safety is the top priority and it was a sensible idea to be really restrictive about phones at first for fear it could be dangerous but today we can say that we've gone too far is a child good for. that's why our him end is wants to test the aircraft's ability to withstand electromagnetic radiation. so how much phone radiation can the on board system cope with. the systems for navigation and communication are

particularly sensitive. to not sufficient vision and a special antenna is going to measure the electromagnetic waves. this plane can take more than one hundred fifty passengers for this experiment the scientists have only invited a few test subjects but the data can be extrapolated from a fully occupied plane. mobile telephony and aviation technology have adapted to each other cell phone radiation is lower than it was thirty years ago and aircraft are better protected. you always have to bear in mind that lightning bolts strike airplanes directly so that planes fly through radar waves sometimes very close to the source and the

airplane has to withstand that and this test of the test compared to those threat levels the radiation coming from a phone is ridiculously low. what about hospitals why are there still signs banning the use of mobile phones. and often the radios in the nurse's office cause much more interference than the modern phones visitors have. nowadays almost all medical devices have shielding to protect them from electromagnetic interference so phones don't cause a problem at all. that. this has been the official position since two thousand and fourteen for planes to the european aviation safety agency decided that passengers don't have to put their phones into flight mode anymore but each individual airline has the last word.

on movies. of unknowns. one phone can't interfere with the technology on board an aircraft but in reality there are hundreds of passengers on a plane and many of them are carrying several electronic devices such as laptops smartphones and the. it is. him enders can measure this combined radiation but it's very very weak. we ask again can a lot of electronic devices a lot of active mobile phones collectively endanger the safety of an aircraft.

definitive the answer is definitely no it's not even so much about phones which deliberately send out strong signals mobile phones also contain microprocessors tiny computers that can emit electromagnetic radiation interference including in the frequencies used by planes. but these signals are so weak they're insignificant. during takeoff and landing phones should nevertheless remain switched off in the event of an emergency passenger's shouldn't be distracted and the devices can cause crackling in the line between the pilot in the tower but that's all. myths often arise from fear parents are particularly at risk. mozart's music makes children more intelligent even before they're born. that was

the claim of u.s. scientists twenty five years ago. follow up studies weren't able to corroborate the effect listening to music has many positive effects but becoming more intelligent isn't one of them. reading to children is also said to improve children's intelligence studies have shown that frequent reading to children particularly in early childhood makes them somewhat more successful in school but scientists are convinced that intelligence originates more from d.n.a. than from the parents behavior. it's different with this myth just let babies cry it out that's not harmful that strengthens their lungs it is said. but in truth infants can't see themselves they need their parents care. scientific myths aren't just created through mistakes or uncertainty the media are

involved to. xenia past works at the institute of mass communication and media research in zurich she researches how scientific insights are presented in the media climate change for example to this day certain groups continue to deny manmade climate change they describe it as a lie a hoax a myth in this way self-proclaimed climate experts managed to bring well founded scientific insights into disrepute reports about the so-called myth of climate change are particularly popular in the united states paradoxically one reason for the distorted portrayal of facts is the professional ethos of those in the media.

in the west. especially on journalists in the united states tries so hard to be objective that when they give air time to an opinion or position they also give a voice to the counter position that means that french positions are given a much stronger or disproportionate weight in the debate. and archivist in the common. view is mightn't realize that an overwhelming ninety seven percent of all climate scientists are agreed global warming is down to human activity. in. xenia past has been analyzing the relationship between climate scientists in the media for years. one of her findings is that the scientists are scared that the

study results could be hijacked and misrepresented in public. controversy in the us to claim we were able to see that climate scientists had greater objections to publications when the finding suggested that climate change was progressing more slowly. they were worried that this finding could be instrumental ised by interest groups to say that man made climate change was a myth and it was all a lie and new to us constantly and gotten gonna skipped. posts advice communicate science openly and objectively without exception. there's nothing more scientists can do to prevent new myths everything else is in the hands of the media their readers and viewers.

march two thousand and fifteen people who eat chocolate lose weight more quickly this headline in germany's mass circulation builds newspaper created as. publications and broadcasters around the world reported on the new miracle diet from germany. in the chocolate museum in cologne we learn what's really behind this incredible study. or rather who. d'anna lovable. x. the filmmaker seen here with museum confectioner i go moolah deliberately engaged in some pseudo science she just invented the chocolate diet.

deanna lobel is a television journalist her idea was to test the gullibility of her colleagues to do that she needed a headline nobody could resist slim through chocolate. together with her co-author peter on a can she managed to expose a sick system. our intention was to take a close look at what's happening on the nutrition and diet market we found that the argument very often goes like this off a scientific study says if this or that makes us healthy or sick this one and that we should consume more or less of it and if you take a closer look at these studies they're not scientifically repute over most of the time after that's what we wanted to document in our film something. all you need is a white lab coat and ordinary people immediately become deceptively real scientists

. diet studies tend to follow a similar pattern of various groups a set up and have to adhere to different rules afterwards the scientists compare how much weight each group lost. in the case of the chocolate diet it went like this. group a was put on a diet and was given chocolate group b. was only put on a diet group c. continued to eat as before. the on a level and peter on a can started their experiment with sixteen test subjects they were only told afterwards that there's no such thing as a chuckle. diet for three weeks every candidate was weighed daily all changes were recorded. unfortunately many disreputable studies are conducted this way the desired result is cherry

picked from a large mass of different data. i mean we were a data leech we wanted to get as much information from the test subjects as possible they even had to measure their urine every day which is a completely pointless piece of data but we thought would generate as much data as possible so that we could put everything together in such a way that we could spin it and market our findings as best we could and it worked out ok. the two journalists didn't completely make up the chocolate diet idea but they twisted the data of the test subjects to fit their purpose. the bad thing is that many nutrition studies follow this formula they don't deserve the label scientific the diet industry creates its own myths in this way.

the journalist's final step was to release the fake study to the public they wrote a press release and even invented a research institute that had a reputable sounding name. they created surprised even the on a little. especially when it was crazy we had a made up institute with the address of the production company that produced our film nobody called and it was just a little press release these stories about food and about what we should eat and what we shouldn't run really well we all want to know what the perfect diet is. deanna lobel managed to create

a myth with the help of pseudo scientific methods and her professional knowledge of what makes for good headlines. particularly when it comes to food and drink we like to put facts aside we only listen to those things we want to hear. for example strong liquor aids digestion in truth alcohol relaxes the stomach muscles we feel less full but it's a false message alcohol actually slows down the rate at which we process food it makes it harder for us to digest. but we shouldn't reheat mushroom dishes and outdated rule today

mushroom dishes can be kept in the fridge for a maximum of two days and then we should heat them to more than seventy degrees that way mold and bacteria won't spoil our appetite. is glutamates responsible for nausea headaches and rashes the chinese restaurant syndrome is probably triggered by allergens such as peanuts shrimps and herbes glutamate isn't to blame it occurs naturally in almost all food stuffs and is completely harmless. myths about alcohol aiding digestion for example and the fake chocolate diet awaken false hope. patients in the arthritis clinic in finger near freiburg are hoping for one thing in particular to walk without pain one day.

the orthopedic specialist spend allston maya is an expert in nice surgery and arthritis osteoarthritis is a common complaint in germany more than one in four women and almost one in five men suffer from it their joints wear out too early and too quickly. spend most of my as patient today also has arthritis in the right knee. the specialist is performing an arthroscopy the cartilage is smoothed out and the joint is flush to clean it out. the problem is that statutory health insurance companies in germany don't pay for this surgery anymore. one of the companies commissioned a study and concluded that arthroscopy were ineffective.

flushing out the joint was pointless its benefits a myth. how do orthopedic specialists feel about this decision the islands are some say it's an outrage others say so what i've always done things differently anyway quick count shoes as freely as we could in the ponds as i wish for. as a result of patients with statutory health insurance are barred from the possibility of a useful thought. i now how to tell people. it was here in cologne that the institute for quality and efficiency in health care that knee arthroscopy is were declared a myth. the

assessor stephan's our land spend eighteen months reading and analyzing everything written by scientists about arthroscopy as. a trained medical expert he concluded that knee arthroscopy is one of the commonest operations in germany were ineffective they had a placebo effect but nothing more. tests showed that a faked arthroscopy was as effective as the actual procedure. the party of over all it's not less cboe effect is all the stronger the more authentic invasive than risky and intervention appears on surgery has a much greater placebo impact than just taking a pill. stephens our lines team of assessors research ne arthroscopy is with the help of

a matter analysis. believe that nice we're benefiting from this patients were happy doctors were happy the industry was happy with us it was lovely and then it had the magic taken out of it that's what's exciting is that you need a very precise scientific methods here to debunk the myth it isn't me just twenty one. and some orthopedic specialists like stan austin meyer are still convinced by knee arthroscopy is and so the myth lives on. how can we get rid of myths from our minds once and for all. the cognition psychologist eka explains that the brain doesn't have a delete button once we've stored a myth it's difficult to overwrite it with new information.

basically what he's discovered is that we're mentally lazy. feeling is that with many of the things we hear we don't have the interest or the motivation to investigate them fully our convictions often play a role too but if i want to believe in something and i'm convinced of it and it fulfills a certain function for me as if it's important to my identity and i won't want to see the counter evidence i prefer to hold onto the most. people like to stick with the familiar prefer him to block out things that are new. is visiting the university of the zeile and he did his doctorate here years ago he conducts neurophysiological experiments to learn about the brains of test subjects

. he discovered that attempts to debug myths rarely work sometimes it even has the opposite effect. such refutations often courses the myth to be repeated and that just makes this false information seem more familiar if i want to tell you that vaccinations don't cause autism i'm just repeating the association between vaccinations and autism the more i do that the more familiar this idea becomes at some point when you think back on your recall this association and that's what it comes to mind. in his experiments the psychologist present stories containing different pieces of information some of that information is later retracted or invalidated. his finding our brain prefers to store false information rather than leave

a gap in the story. the only chance is this. you need an alternative explanation and if you don't yet know the truth then it's important to find out the truth and then it's equally important to present these findings to people that you have to explain them in a way they can understand that ordeal for. it's a case of keep it simple stupid keep it simple stupid and for. these insights from psychological research provide a recipe for dispelling myths it's crucial not to repeat the myth. an alternative simple explanation is needed instead. but even this method can't combat one of our most popular myths.

one glass of red wine a day is healthy. no doubt there are very few people in the wine growing town of eating and in south west germany who don't believe this. submarine about from the local tourism office even found an old guidebook in her book shelf entitled the wine dr it dated back to seven hundred fifty three. you know. hildegard stigler helps decipher the old fashioned german writing she discovers recipes to treat colds and improve memory. of course all the cures contain one thing wine.

this. this is. it contains alcohol and carbon dioxide there are lots of things in wine that we like and that stimulate us. that's why we have such good conversations when we've had some wine. women i'm not kidding because if you get a cold or you notice you're coming down with one before you've developed a temperature you can preempt it with red wine you have a glass of red wine in the evening you wrap it nice and warm and then you go straight to bed that way you won't get sick but you have to catch it at the right moment to moment. with the people of iran going take these tips with a sense of humor. but what do doctors recommend. the healthiest thing is to consume no alcohol this single glass of red wine is more of a kind of risk limitation that's not the recommendation basically if you're going

to drink wine then don't drink more than this amount. the wine festival in your indian is attended by eighty thousand visitors every year. it's said that the antioxidants in the wine have a positive effect on the hearts and circulation. yet. the earliest studies that declared a moderate amount of wine to be healthy suffer from serious methodological flaws. scientists compared moderate alcohol consumers and strict teetotallers with yeah that they forgot to filter out those who didn't consume alcohol because they were recovering alcoholics or because they were very sick and didn't consume alcohol for that reason so a healthy group was compared to a sick a group the error is that you weren't comparing the alcohol consumption but the

preexisting health of the patients and having studied and i quote confirmations and i didn't post and it's a big national here and. so why isn't a medicine after all. nevertheless belief in this idea is firmly lodged in our collective consciousness. because we like it that way. and that all too human. myths will always have their place in our society and scientific myths in particular. we always say scientists have found and we like doing everything scientists tell us to we're all gullible when it comes to science. but not every study is really

scientific and the current state of research is always changing anyway. and it's important to teach children to think critically we have to tell them when they're young that there's a lot of information in the world and much of it is not correct if used to french timpanist. that doesn't mean we shouldn't believe anything anymore but we have to check how plausible information is and the reliability of its source. people who need myths need this feeling of security but scientists want to find out what really helps ok shift.

this man is a card carrying son and stepson who did. he came to russia from germany as an intent today he's one of the country's most powerful agri business lending. his tempi and independence from here to infinity and poets and been rewarded with russian citizenship to sing summit stefan did and his russian empire thirty minutes to double just. tells us stirring stories so. it makes us laugh. and cry play tremble and smile. magical images and emotions come out guys. thanks

geno the magazine every weekend on d w. when history books are brought to life. maybe the stories there it will get a rewrite. the story of the russian revolution. from the perspective of writers thinkers and avant garde ist what did it feel like to live in times over the revolution of the people. nineteen seventeen the real october starting october twenty fifth to double.

this to give you news live from berlin coming a snap election appears to have paid off big for shinzo. exit polls are projecting a landslide victory for the japanese prime minister's ruling conservatives this follows a short campaign that focused on the a car.