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When you write an impressive term paper, maybe a couple of people will know about it.  Your parents might read it, but you wouldn’t dream that it would make you famous.  Frank Kachanoff, a U3 psychology student at McGill, probably didn’t either, but his undergraduate thesis has inadvertently gone global.  

A few weeks ago, Kachanoff presented his research on the relationship between meat and aggression at an undergraduate science symposium. Taking a cue from previous studies on the subject, he began with the hypothesis that the sight of meat would make men more aggressive.

After conducting a psychological test of aggression with 82 male subjects, however, he found that the opposite held true. Instead of making men more aggressive, the sight of meat calmed them down.

The real story, though, was just beginning. Soon after, the article “Caveman behavioural traits might kick in at dinner table” appeared in the McGill Reporter.  The article presented Kachanoff as a “researcher,” obscuring the fact that it was a non-peer-reviewed, undergraduate study. On the same day, wire services picked the story up, which put it in most major Canadian dailies.  

But it didn’t stop there.  Over the last three weeks, wire services and news outlets all over the world have published accounts of Kachanoff’s research. Stories have been translated into Russian, Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, Hungarian, Norwegian, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Romanian, and Turkish.  

In its journey through the global press, the story of Kachanoff’s research  has undergone some interesting mutations.  TopNews Arab Emirates headlined the story “Meat sight make men calm down.”  The Daily Mirror, a British tabloid, summed up Kachanoff’s work in two concise sentences: “The best way to calm a man down after a stressful day is to serve up a big steak. Scientists found rather than red meat causing aggression, it has a calming effect.”

In many publications, the coverage was portrayed as a unanimous conclusion by the entire scientific world.

“It’s important to note that this is just one study and it hasn’t been replicated,” Kachanoff said.  

Even though the distortions of Kachanoff’s work have been relatively benign, the coverage shows the kind of liberties that the media is willing to take with new scientific research. There has always been a tension between fast-moving, story-seeking journalists and the conservative scientific establishment. In the Internet era, news outlets are under more pressure than ever to distinguish themselves from the pack with catchy stories, even at the expense of getting the facts right.  

“Science is incremental and overhyping results does a disservice to the public and the science,” said Kathryn O’Hara, the president of the Canadian Science Writers’ Association, in an email to the Tribune.

“Reporting accurately on research news requires time and trustworthy sources,” she added.

Joe Schwarcz, the director of the McGill Office for Science and Society, agreed.

“The main problem with scientific writing is that true science is in the details,” said Schwarcz, in an email to the Tribune. “[It’s] not possible to capture in a headline.”

Kachanoff, however, was less concerned about the media’s response to his work, even though he had some reservations about the coverage.

“I just try to do my research, and whether [the media runs] away with something or not is hard for me to say,” he said. “I don’t read the Internet that much. What I read are peer-reviewed journals, so I can’t comment intelligently on what the media does or doesn’t do.”