The Spinage Supermyth Positively Affirmed as a Problem in Science in the British Medical Journal

 I am delighted to see the importance of the Spinach Supermyth, which I (Dr Mike Sutton) discovered in 2009, is now positively affirmed as a problem in the British medical Journal in 2023. The free PDF of that important article is available to download HERE

The BMJ page on it is HERE (archived HERE)

On Rekdal, Citations and Poison Irony

On the downside of bad research. Source here

Rekdal's Poison irony Hypothesis

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Dr Mike Sutton is the author of 'Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret'.

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Dysology and Criminology: The Blog of Mike Sutton. All my opinions are my own and may not reflect those of any employer or organisation

Posted in Science / Social Sciences / Psychology

Did Popeye Really Increase Spinach Consumption and Production by 33 percent in 1936?

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Apr. 24, 2011 6:24 pm

ARCHIVED AT http://archive.is/9O8Bc

Categories: Counterknowledge, Dysology, Politics

Keywords: spinach, Popeye, Crystal City, spinach production, Texas

How can we be sure that we are seeing real patterns in data and not merely seizing upon that which meets our biased prior expectations?

Can We Crack the Popeye Statistical Challenge?

There is a widely accepted story    that spinach growers in Crystal City Texas erected a statue of Popeye in 1937 in recognition of the comic character’s creator E. Segar increasing spinach consumption in the USA by 33 per cent at a time when farmers were hard pressed. The statue still stands in Crystal City but can the story stand up to statistical analysis?

It has long been noted that humans see patterns in data and attribute them to causes. Hence people see a man in the moon, or Kate Middleton's face on a jelly bean, and concoct conspiracies from random data.

It is hypothesised that we are pattern seeking animals and that this pattern seeking was essential for human progress and survival (Shermer, 2007 p. xxiv). Seeing patterns in random data is compounded by the fact that people have a tendency to try to prove their current hypothesis is correct by picking out only examples that confirm it, while ignoring all that do not (Sutherland, 2007. p. 99). Availability error (Sutherland 2007) may lead us to focus upon only spinach production data for 1936 – the year when Popeye was a box office smash in the cinema. Then there is the problem of Mertonian self-fulfilling prophecies, which have a general tendency to convert little effects into big effects (Gilovich 1991. p.6) which means we need to consider also whether spinach farmers might have planted and harvested more spinach in anticipation of increased spinach demand driven by Popeye.

To gather data with an aim to check out the Crystal City Popeye statue story, in 2010 I wrote to every single United States Department of Agriculture station in the USA asking for any historical data they had for annual spinach production.

The data are presented below in Table 1. As my simple annual per cent change analysis reveals, it turns out that Texas did indeed have a 33 per cent increase in production (not consumption) in 1936.

Was Popeye’s spinach eating the cause of that increase? Only the right statistical analysis can tell.

Can we tell from examining all the historical data whether this is likely?

Set out below is the data I collected form the USDA and briefly analysed by way of simple percentage change analysis.

What statistical method is best suited for helping us decide whether this data is random or whether there is a pattern related to Popeye? Knowledge in this area might help to inform what we currently know about effective media use in bringing about nutritional attitude change.

I will of course publish an attribute to whoever helps to crack the Popeye Challenge and will include it in a book I am writing on Dysology.

Additional possibly relevant information:

· 1930 - 36 the dustbowl years focused on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. The Winter Garden area where spinach was grown would have been relatively safe.1930 Texas and Oklahoma, and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.

· 1930 something unusual happened in 1930 to significantly reduce spinach production in Texas - but it continued to rise in other states.

· 1931 Popeye strip cartoon reveals for the first time that spinach is the secret of Popeye’s super powers.

. 1932 (December) Popeye delivers a political message in comic strip "If ya don't give the farmers relief, I'll knock ya all out from in between yer ears and lay ya among the swee' peataters like nobody's business!

· 1936 FDR’s New Deal introduced. Soil Conservation Act encourages farming other then wheat, rice, cattle in favour of non soil eroding crops. This may have had some impact. USA also introduced Agricultural Adjustment Act to control supply of 7 basic crops (not including spinach) - may have led to more supply of spinach as farmers encouraged togrow more diverse crops.

· 1936 - First two reel colour movie Popeye the Sailor V Sinbad the Sailor. Either posted alongside or above as the main feature at cinemas.

· 1936 Last year of the dustbowl that began in 1930

· 1936 Largest spinach crop for all states.

· In Texas for the 5 YEARS BEFORE Popeye even ate spinach (which was first published in a newspaper strip in 1931) (1926-1930), production increased 135 % on the previous 5 year mean (1921 -1925) acreage. Average acres production increased 51 % over the next 5 years.

Table 1

THE POPEYE EFFECT ON USA SPINACH PRODUCTION
50 years of acreage of Spinach Harvested 1928 - 1978 by Dr Mike Sutton (2010)
Year	Texas	California	Washington.	Colorado	Total	Texas p.a. % change
1928	25600	1,000	620	300	29448
1929	28650	1,400	750	400	31200	12
1930	25060	1,550	709	450	27769	-12
1931	27850	1,700	990	500	31040	11
1932	30800	1,830	920	700	34250	11
1933	44000	1,690	850	770	47310	43
1934	35500	2,220	850	730	39300	-19
1935	36000	2,300	720	840	39860	1
1936	48000	2,170	830	1260	52260	33
1937	46000	2,400	1120	1320	50840	-4
1938	40000	2,800	1290	1450	45540	-13
1939	35400	3,000	1130	1200	40730	-12
1940	34400	3,200	1210	1500	40310	-3
1941	35400	3,000	1210	1700	41310	3
1942	41000	3,000	1150	2000	47150	16
1943	38500	3,800	1500	2800	46600	-6
1944	38600	3,400	1700	3000	46700	> 1
1945	36000	2,800	1650	3200	43650	-7
1946	38000	3,000	1850	2300	45150	6
1947	34400	3,100	1530	1900	40930	-9
1948	27,000	3,100	1720	1700	33,520	-22
1949	28000	3,000	600	1500	33100	4
1950	22000	2,800	350	1500	26650	-21
1951	14500	2,800	350	1200	18850	-34
1952	15500	2,500	350	700	19050	7
1953	11000	2,500	330	800	14630	-29
1954	11500	2,000	290	700	14490	4
1955	10000	1,900	290	900	13090	-13
1956	10500	1,900	290	1100	13790	5
1957	9300	1,800	no data	1300	12400	-11
1958	9800	1,800	no data	1600	13200	5
1959	9300	1,800	no data	1800	12900	-5
1960	8500	1,600	no data	1900	12000	-9
1961	7600	1,400	no data	1900	10900	-11
1962	6900	1,500	no data	2100	10500	-9
1963	5800	1,600	no data	1700	9100	-16
1964	6800	1,700	no data	1500	10000	17
1965	6900	1,700	no data	1100	9700	1
1966	6500	1,600	no data	1300	9400	-6
1967	6000	1,600	no data	1200	8800	-8
1968	4500	1,400	no data	1100	7000	-25
1969	6000	1,360	no data	1100	8460	33
1970	5800	1,450	no data	750	8000	-3
1971	6200	1,520	no data	910	8630	7
1972	5100	1,650	no data	900	7650	-18
1973	5600	1,700	no data	1100	8400	10
1974	4500	1,900	no data	1000	7400	-20
1975	4100	1,900	no data	650	6650	-9
1976	3300	2,150	no data	860	6310	-19
1977	3400	2,800	no data

 

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Daniel Williams

January 4, 2012 at 10:41 pm

Applying Granger causality to the Popeye Challenge

Hi Mike, I experimented with Granger causality for the "Popeye Challenge":

http://badassdatascience.com/2012/01/03/spinach-superpowers-and-granger-causality/   

Hope you like it!

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Mike Sutton

January 7, 2012 at 6:08 am

Dear Daniel

Very many thanks indeed.

I'm not statistical expert (obviously), but I think your analysis at least shows that the apparent pattern is not random fluctuation (something caused it). Am I right in interpreting your results this way? Or is there some knowable and measurable probability that it could still be random?

Mike

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My Spinach Mythbust is in the Guardian Newspaper Today

I'm very pleased to see my Spinach mythbust is cited with a link to it in the Guardian today https://t.co/SKuHFTQYWX pic.twitter.com/JNlJIn1x1c

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Dysology) June 10, 2016

The Sunday Times Explains the Spinach Supermyth

In his popular column "The God of Small Things", Matt Rudd (Senior Writer for the Sunday Times) writes on page 5 of the Sunday Times Magazine of May 10th 2015):

'Child A announces he no longer has to eat spinach. His teacher told him a 19th-century scientist got the decimal point wrong when they recorded its iron content, inadvertently exaggerating it tenfold.

Popeye's superpowers were founded on a myth he claims.

The Sunday Times Magazine May 10th 2015Attribution

Article by Matt Rudd, Senior Writer for The Sunday Times.

Wait there while I check, I say. Four days later, I have an answer. It is possibly the most convoluted answer in the history of this column, but I'll give you the short version.

The decimal point error was first mentioned in an article by Professor Bender in 1971. it has since been used as an example of the importance of accuracy in science.Which is ironic, because there never was a decimal point error in the first place.

Dr Mike Sutton of Nottingham Trent University spent many, many weeks getting to the bottom of the myth. The confusion comes from the fact that dried spinach conatains a lot more iron (44.5 mg per 100g) than fresh spinach (2.7mg per 100g). It was this, rather than an errant decimal point, that caused the initial muddle. There was another muddle involving iron oxide.

And then Professor Bender came along with his decimal point story, and now we have a myth about a myth.

Or a SUPERMYTH, as Dr Sutton calls it.

Popeye, by the way, got his superpowers from the beta-carotene in his spinach. Iron had nothing to do with it. To confuse matters much further, spinach still has a relatively high iron content, even without moving any decimal points. But it's still no good. As Sutton points out: "Spinach contains oxalic acid and oxalic acid is an iron blocker."

So Child A's teacher was right for the wrong reason. And Child A is now trying to find a reason to avoid broccoli.

Official Quackery

The Vitamin C and Iron Myth: Death by Quackery?

Research across the board shows that the evidence is at best inconclusive regarding whether or not vitamin C can help us to better absorb iron from non heme iron sources such as spinach and other plants (see Sutton 2011).

Official advice that vitamin C is known to enhance the iron absorption from plant and other non heme sources is wrong. This advice is wrong because the overall evidence, from the results of many properly conducted trials is that we have a mixed bag of disconfirming and confirming research findings. In sum, evidence of the iron absorbing benefits of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in our diet is at best inconclusive.

Unfortunately, the websites promoting vitamin c in this way ignore all the disconfirming evidence.

In light of the facts revealed in a paper published by Best Thinking (Sutton 2011), I am grateful to the USDA for deleting their misleading spreadsheet from the Internet, which claimed that drinking Florida grapefruit juice would help humans to absorb two to four times as much iron from spinach as would otherwise be possible.

Unfortunately the US Government Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) continues to claim that vitamin C will increase the iron absorption form non heme iron sources, such as spinach, as (ironically) does the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) and prevention: http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/vitamins/iron.html. Unsurprisingly Wikipedia makes the same erroneous claims.

Many other websites - including one run by MIT (http://web.mit.edu/athletics/sportsmedicine/wcrminerals.html) also continue to boldly claim that vitamin C helps with iron absorption.

Since low iron levels - linked to poor diet - kill people in large numbers (see http://www.bestthinking.com/thinkers/science/social_sciences/sociology/mike-sutton?tab=blog&blogpostid=9942,9942 ) there should be more care taken to get the facts right.
Here are just few of the very many web sites that still promote the fallacy (or at least to promote vitamin C in this role when the evidence is inconclusive) some are giving advice on cancer - other are for children's diets.. Just Google ‘iron vitamin c’ and the list seems endless:

• 
  http://www.parentingscience.com/iron-absorption.html
  http://www.ehow.com/list_7165582_foods-block-iron.html
  http://coloncancer.about.com/od/nutritionanddiet/a/irondefanemia.htm

If poor nutrition directly kills, and in other cases takes years from life spans, it seems reasonable to speculate that erroneous nutrition advice, if relied upon, might do likewise.

We can only hope that not a single one of the tens of millions of lost years of life globally - and the many hundreds sometimes thousands of deaths that happen as a direct result of iron deficiency each year in the USA - are due to that earlier bad science promoted by the USDA. And we can only hope that the hundreds of thousands of deaths occurring each year on Earth (Stoltzfus 2003) from iron deficiency are not due to current US Government and private sector bad science promotion of vitamin C as a miracle way for humans to better absorb iron non heme iron sources, such as spinach. Because,surely, that should be 'criminal' quackery.

References

Stoltzfus RJ . (2003) Iron deficiency: global prevalence and consequences. Food Nutr Bull. 2003 Dec;24(4 Suppl):S99-103

Sutton, M. (2011) SPIN@GE USA Beware of the Bull: The United States Department of Agriculture is Spreading Bull about Spinach, Iron and Vitamin C on the Internet: http://www.bestthinking.com/articles/science/chemistry/biochemistry/spin-ge-usa-beware-of-the-bull-the-united-states-department-of-agriculture-is-spreading-bull-about-spinach-iron-and-vitamin-c-on-the-internet