First, they came for the marijuana. Then they came for the cigarettes. Then it was the alcohol and "trans fats," whatever they are. And what about third-hand smoke? Now it looks like caffeine is next on the hit list for the Health Police. Live Science reports on new research at Durham University that claims caffeine causes hallucinations.
You read that correctly. The study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, says people who consume the equivalent of three cups of brewed coffee a day have a far higher rate of "seeing things that are not there," of "hearing voices and sensing the presence of dead people."
Yes, too much coffee will turn you into Haley Joel Osment. Scary. Soon, some advocacy group will claim that coffee causes a huge number of deaths per year and recommend caffeine be taxed to discourage abuse. Then the FDA will ban coffee, tea, chocolate and Red Bull. To keep us all safe.
Okay, maybe the Health Police aren't bashing down doors to confiscate espresso machines just yet. But the "Caffeine Causes Hallucinations" story does point up how the academic/ government/media triumvirate keeps us all in a tizzy with health scares. Government research grants go to academics whose findings, inevitably, confirm what the grant-makers want to see. Those findings, in turn, get the academics more money for research. All of this is amplified by a media constantly searching for stories about silent killers and secret poisons in our daily lives.
The problem with the caffeine study is an old one; establishing a link between correlation and causality. That is, just because people who drink coffee hallucinate, that doesn't necessarily mean coffee causes those hallucinations. In fact, it may be the other way around.
Durham psychologist Charles Fernyhough explains, "It is possible that the association between caffeine intake and hallucinations was due to the fact that people who are prone to associations tend to use caffeine to help them cope with their experiences."
In English, he can't tell if caffeine causes hallucinations or people who hallucinate like caffeine. It's the same problem with half the research that makes headlines. Think of those studies that try to make a connection between video games and violence. You can want to know if playing violent video games makes kids more prone to real violence, but only discover that kids prone to violence like violent video games. That's a conclusion that would fall under the category of "Duh."
In the meantime, says the Durham researchers, "more work is needed" to establish the caffeine and hallucinations connection.
More work, you say? But who could we possibly get to do it?
