CBD Oil – Inappropriate Science Journalism
- Admin
- Mar 18, 2023
- 8 min read
Updated: Jan 29, 2024
I’ll start by saying there are PLENTY of qualifying statements and caveats in this piece, which make it technically true to people familiar with science language. However, this article is inappropriate in that it offers credence to the CBD oil hype train, when most of the online users to this page (IFL Science) are general public.
The reporting is ‘factual’ as far as what it says happened, but the implications are quite misleading, and fail to mention the established science. The problem is that some of the language is too ambiguous and isn’t explained clearly enough. This means the reader has to be on their best critical thinking game to spot the necessary cautions, and frankly, as a science page communicating to a general audience, this is not enough. It shouldn’t be expected of the readers to infer the correct way to think about it, or to dig deeper.
A much needed aspect of science communication is a precise way of properly contextualising these matters and thinking a step ahead to what people will take from it. Of course, that is a long winded option from a journalistic point of view.
The News Article
This CBD oil article elevates a non-story, non-result case study of a self-administered, self-reported and anecdotal incident. In a one-off case where a tumour shrank instead of continued to grow, this story is weak in the sense that it offers only that one piece of weak correlation, and nothing else. Yet the tone of it implies it would be seriously worth considering CBD’s effects on cancer – which it is not.
Unfortunately, they don’t dispel that notion outright – which is irresponsible of a public-facing science page. Interestingly enough, the article actually links nearly immediately to a more fact based article which is very clear about this, by Dr. David Robert Grimes, who is a cancer researcher. This article is well worth a read as it’s short, to the point and debunks any links of cannabis with shrinking tumours, with necessary citations to back it up. This ‘further research’ has actually been done. But people are reading this article – how many will actually click through to the far better one?
The bottom line is that sometimes, tumours shrink. There’s not always a particular reason, or no one reason, but it happens to some people. The same thing may have happened to this woman even if no one suggested she tried CBD oil – and there’s very good reason to discount the oil, because as noted in the above article, this is already studied.
The damage is already done though, if you fail to be clear on the science with these issues – as a massively followed public communicator of science, you just can’t play with fire like that when the CBD hype train is at full speed already. As a communicator with perceived authority by the public, the last thing you want is to add to their confirmation biases, and help to propagate long debunked myths that CBD cures anything. I mean, once something cures the big C, it must be a miracle cure all, right?
Poor Quality Phrasing
Here are a few things I take issue with in the wording of the article. Immediately, the first sentence is heaving with sensationalism:
“A new case study has suggested that cannabidiol (CBD) as an alternative cancer therapy may warrant further research, after an 80-year-old smoker’s lung tumor shrank despite declining medical treatment.”
This reads as an intriguing and promising, fair statement. But there are 5 red flags right here:
Case studies are one of the weakest forms of study, the lowest bar of what you can call a study – especially only one case such as this.
One anomalous and uncontrolled case study does NOT ‘suggest’ CBD ‘may warrant further research’. As explained here, lots of research has been done, and it suggests that CBD does not warrant further research or have an effect on tumours.
‘Alternative cancer therapy’ is a very loaded term and points to all kinds of demonstrably dangerous nonsense – lots of which is pervasive and easy to come across.
Self-reporting is an extremely unreliable method at the best of times. This lady is 80.
‘Shrank despite declining medical treatment’ – this is another loaded phrase. It can sound as though tumours usually decline only through medical treatment (false) and it is strange for that to happen without it (false). It also alludes to the ‘treatment’ (CBD oil) as a possible cause; as though “if it isn’t the medical treatment, then it must be this!”. It ignores the fact tumours can and do just shrink for many other reasons, even despite continued smoking. This correlation, not causation.
Below: a guide to scientific study quality. You will find case reports are of the weakest evidence:
Further on it says:
“it’s worth investigating alternatives that could provide hope for a less gruelling treatment plan.”
Which to scientists means studying it may be worthwhile to be more definitive one way or the other, but to the public effectively gives a green light to all the ‘alternative’ scams out there to explore in place of real diagnostics and help. Also to the public, this would seem to imply that the studying of CBD oil specifically, had not already been done sufficiently – and this is untrue. Very poor slip of communication.
Balancing the scales unfairly:
“the existing body of research isn’t terribly definitive one way or the other.”
Perhaps counterintuitively to readers, this means that all current evidence does not suggest that CBD oil works. It seems to unfairly suggest that the current body of evidence overall is weak – which is incorrect. What’s weak about it, is the notion that the evidence shows a positive outcome for cancer – which it does not.
Let’s be charitable for a second and assume that the body of current evidence is weak. All this does is demonstrate that even the most positive-leaning studies are not strong enough to take as promising (like this case study); so there is still absolutely no justification for further research or second guessing what we already know in this case.
But again, the public already sold on the CBD hype will easily interpret this perceived ‘balance’ in the language of “isn’t terribly definitive one way or the other” - raising their hope in it working, while thinking the fact that it’s not been ‘disproven’ (it has) lends strength to it working (it doesn’t).
You don’t take something which is unproven to work as ‘true until disproven’; you take it as ‘unproven until proven’. Since CBD oil is unproven to treat anything, it is more dangerous to lead people down rabbit holes of pseudoscience, or anti-science marketing agendas. It quite simply shouldn’t be sold in marketable products under all the varied and vague claims for its 'effectiveness'.
Caveats Undermined by Positivity Bias
As said in the introduction, there are actually plenty of caveats. But these are usually weakly received when the opposing hopeful or positive implications are at the forefront, to a public audience. This is positivity bias at play.
What will the hopeful public in the comments likely not listen to? What are they likely to ignore? What are they less likely to remember, days or weeks later?
First sentence in the caption under the picture: “…the case study alone is not evidence for CBD oil as an effective cancer treatment” - ‘study’ tells us nothing except a likely coincidence – IF it happened like she said.
“…it can’t be concluded that this patient’s improvement was down to CBD oil use” – in fact it can be concluded that it most likely was not down to CBD oil use, based on previous studies to date.
“Researchers were unable to confirm the full ingredients” – we don’t even know what was potentially being taken or not!
“…patient also reported taking inconsistent dosages, making the exact “treatment regime” difficult to replicate.” – again, anecdotal – not even on the scale of what is classed as evidence. It could be completely fabricated for all we know.
“…would be inaccurate and unwise to draw any sweeping conclusions from individual case reports such as this one”
It’s important to acknowledge that they knew about no other life changes as the patient was not being studied, and she self-reported the only change as being CBD oil – the one she’d probably remember. For example, she may have had dietary changes (loss of appetite), or less cigarettes due to the CBD oil taking the place of some of them.
“research is needed to identify the actual mechanism of action, administration pathways, safe dosages, its effects on different types of cancer and any potential adverse side effects when using cannabinoids.” – This should add ‘whether there are any’ actual mechanisms, not ‘identify the actual mechanism’ as though to assume there is one. However, again there is research already showing that CBD has no effect on cancer.
When summarised, all the above points very clearly state that this case report is useless. It tells us there is still no promising link whatsoever to CBD oil treating cancer and is really an example of how persuasive those who try to spin that old narrative can be.
Why would people try to convince you CBD oil or cannabinoids are helpful for cancer? Well, money. Lots of money (projected US sales alone of $1.6 billion in 2021).
Take a look around you, see the thousands of unregulated cannabis based products out there today. Other reasons include being anti-science, fear of institutions, anti-establishment, Big Pharma conspiracies, anti-government etc. Genuine belief in woo and quackery for others. They’ve been sold a story in one way or another. The naturalistic fallacy. Many, many more.
One other powerful bias is called cognitive ease. It plays a massive part of the perception the public has of CBD in general, as the more repetition of it you hear, day to day, the more positively it is perceived, no matter what the information about it is. This quick video gives a great explanation of the well studied phenomenon.
This link is a brilliant unpacking of the pseudoscience that is the marketing of CBD products, by Skeptoid.
Conclusions
This article leaves implications for the reader to interpret as promising, when to a scientific perspective they don’t warrant excitement or hope – or in this case, even further research is not justified. I think sometimes communicators forget the bigger picture – just how ingrained and already marketed things like CBD oil are in society – for every ailment you can think of. In people’s heads this gives it legitimacy and solidifies all manner of claims and biases around it.
The piece is written in a manner which to some people suggests something that the article does not suggest at all. Whether this is merely clumsy of the author or an enticing take on a slow news day, I don’t know. The assumption readers could take from this is that CBD oil shows promise for cancer, plain and simple. This is conclusively wrong and irresponsible not to debunk on the spot.
The only thing CBD can be accepted to plausibly affect is the perception of chronic pain (unexplained pain exacerbated by lots of mental factors) – and even this is not a mechanism specific to CBD oil. Many things have this effect by way of placebo biases, albeit based on misinformation about the efficacy of placebos.
In other words, you could give someone regularly using CBD oil a placebo version with no CBD in it, and they would probably still feel it helped them. There isn’t anything special about CBD – hence why it specifically won’t work for pain, or for everyone. Again, those who say it helps them may well be altering their perception of their pain, and several placebo biases are at play.
By contrast, painkillers actually have a studied and targeted physical mechanism shown to work, and block pain signals – these will work for everybody, no matter the cause of pain or whether they think it will help or not (if it is indeed a physical mechanism causing the pain, and not mental factors).
This article is more aligned with clickbait and literally misrepresents real science on several levels, as they link to an article giving the real picture in their own post. They don’t take the responsibility of being clear in their own article though, and they deliberately put a sensational spin on the science to make it sound more ambiguous and appealing. Disappointing work for a purported science journalism site.
The bottom line: CBD oil is not an effective treatment for anything, and especially not cancer. To suggest anything other at this stage continually fuels popular belief in pseudoscience and undermines real science. The popular belief and consumption of CBD oil in almost any form, is pseudoscience at its marketed best.
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