Natto Diet Fraud

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri: KTV used doctored natto data - Show hailing beans for diets made up findings, may be terminated
A TV program that aired on Jan. 7 and claimed that natto fermented soybeans can help people lose weight--and sparked a run on natto at stores around the country--was based on incorrect information, the show's producer said Saturday. Speaking at a press conference, Kansai Telecasting Corp. (KTV) President Soichiro Chigusa apologized and said the program would be taken off the air indefinitely. The show "Hakkutsu! Aru Aru Daijiten II" (Encyclopedia of Living) is produced by Osaka-based KTV and broadcast nationwide on the Fuji TV network. Many stores across the nation sold out of natto after the program, which claimed that some people could lose weight by eating a serving of natto for breakfast and dinner everyday for two weeks, had been aired.

According to KTV, the Jan. 7 show showcased an experiment, involving eight people, based on research on dieting conducted by an American researcher in the United States. However, three pictures shown to indicate the effect of natto on dieting were not of the subjects taking part in the experiment. On the show, comments attributed to the American researcher were later found to have been fictitious. No data on the eight people's cholesterol, neutral fat and blood sugar levels was collected in the experiment. Figures for levels of isoflavone in their blood, which the show claimed to have collected after the subjects began to eat natto regularly, and blood tests conducted on the eight also were fabricated. Most of the findings on the show were made up, KTV said. KTV admitted these wrongdoings when a weekly magazine inquired on Jan. 12 and confirmed after a series of interviews with subcontractor Japan Television Workshop Co., a Tokyo-based firm that helped make the show. KTV said the subcontracted firm resorted to embellishing the data because an interview with the American researcher had not gone as well as had been expected...more...

[gomichild]

Wasn't that the same program which also talked about bean seeds and gave a faulty recipe for preparation which lead to sickness?

[Mulboyne]

Wasn't that the same program which also talked about bean seeds and gave a faulty recipe for preparation which lead to sickness?

That was TBS and white kidney beans.

[gomichild]

Ah! So many programs are so alike it gets confusing....

[canman]

That this show is canceled. I watched it a few times with my wife, and it was nothing but scare mongering. If you watched the show for more than a month you would be sure that you were going to die of every disease known to mankind. I wonder if it was being sponsored by some of the major drug companies here in Japan.

[IkemenTommy]

Cool. They are apologizing on tv for fucking up and releasing false info.

[Greji]

Cool. They are apologizing on tv for fucking up and releasing false info.

My old lady is hot! She has been buying natto by the truck load and wolfing it down. She didn't know until I told her and couldn't believe to a linked the the Yomiuri article in J-go. Now she wants blood and at a minimum, a couple of scalps!

I love it! This means I'll be off her shit list for a couple of days until this blows over.

[IkemenTommy]

It's so funny to hear that it's almost like as if this tv show created such an impact on the economy that we got out of the recession. Right....

[Ninja Shinichi]

Many peoples hear word 'diet' and become like animal of farm - example cow. They following diet but not thinking. Natto of course good things but diet of only natto or watermelon or proteins or Japan schoolgirl privacy region in panty have not effect on chubby shape stomachs.

[Mulboyne]

Kyodo: 2 professors say Kansai Telecasting faked 1998 TV program

Kansai Telecasting Corp., under fire for airing a weekly program with fabricated data on a diet product earlier this month, used deceptive information in a 1998 program, two university professors who appeared in the program said Sunday. In the program aired on TV show "Hakkutsu! Aruaru Daijiten" on May 25, 1998, pointing to the possible sleep-inducing effects of lettuce, its producer used test data comments by the professors dishonestly, said Yoichi Nagamura, a professor at Chiba Institute of Science, and Makoto Tajima, a professor at Jissen Women's University...more...

[Taro Toporific]

[color="Sienna"][SIZE="7"]FULL OF BEANS[/SIZE][/color]

Bogus TV show accused off falsifying benefits of eating red beans
Mainichi Daily News, Japan - 2007Jan 29 5:50pm
Investigations into the "Aru Aru Daijiten II" television program over allegations of fabricated data in a recent broadcast on "natto diets" have cast doubt on an earlier broadcast that trumpeted the mental benefits of eating red beans.
The program on red adzuki beans was broadcast on March 11, 2001. In the program three people who held certificates in abacus calculation were given tests before and after eating different types of food. Without announcing the results of the tests, the program then concluded that eating adzuki beans increased brain activity....
....Experts including officials from the Japan abacus federation, which is operated as an extra-departmental body of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry,...

[Captain Japan]

KTV show 'faked' data on wasabi, lemon
Gomiuri Shimbun

Osaka-based Kansai Telecasting Corp.'s "Hakkutsu! Aru Aru Daijiten II" (Encyclopedia of Living) distorted experiment results and expert commentary concerning the rejuvenating effects of wasabi and the dieting benefits of lemon, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Monday.

The program was dropped last week after it was found to have fabricated data on the weight-loss benefits of natto fermented soybeans.

The benefits of Japanese horseradish were featured in the program's March 26 broadcast. Ten people took part in the program's experiment to prove the benefits of wasabi under the supervision of Prof. Tatehiro Toyoshima of Reitaku University. The participants were tested on how fast they could react and catch a falling ruler.

He demanded that two types of groups--those who took the wasabi and those who did not--be prepared for the experiment. However, the program only compared the response times of the same participants before and after they ate the wasabi.

In addition, the participants were allowed to practice the move before the experiments were taped to make it appear as if eating the wasabi had dramatically improved their reflexes....more...

About the lemons...

The program aired Jan. 15 last year encouraged people to drink lemon juice to help them avoid gaining weight even if they ate late-night snacks. As an experiment to prove the benefits of the fruit juice, six participants drank juice extracted from one lemon after eating ramen noodles and then had the levels of neutral fat in their blood measured.

The levels of neutral fat of those who drank the juice were lower than those who did not by about 30 percent, according to the results.

Yoshiaki Miyake, lecturer at Tokai Gakuen University, commented during the program that lemon inhibits the absorption of fats. However, he said "I only provided my academic paper to the program's production team and talked about it a little. I was not involved in the experiment at all."

[Captain Japan]

An FG has been dragged into it...
Scandal-hit TV show accused of fabricating info in program on 'miso diet'
Mainichi

Producers of the scandal-hit "Aru Aru Daijiten 2" television program have come under suspicion of fabricating a researcher's comments on a broadcast that promoted miso soup as a diet food.

The Feb. 19, 2006, broadcast quoted an assistant professor from a university in Texas as saying that miso soup was highly effective for people on diets. However, when interviewed by the Mainichi, the assistant professor said he didn't say anything like that or write any papers on the subject.

In the broadcast the assistant professor's voice was dubbed over in Japanese, quoting him as saying, "Out of all the soybean products, you can expect that best results for diets from miso." Subtitles in Japanese were displayed along with the dubbed comments....more...

Place your bets. What will be the next domino to fall? Ocha? Goma?

[Captain Japan]

Former staffer details process of fabrication for 'natto' show
Japan Times

The director of a Kansai Telecasting Corp. program accused of presenting fabricated data asked his staff to find "convenient" data on the Internet for use on TV and fabricated the Japanese subtitles for comments by a U.S. professor, according to a former staff member.

It is the first time someone directly involved in the production of "Hakkutsu! Aruaru Daijiten II" has given an account of the fabrication process behind the Jan. 7 episode that contained false information about a diet based on "natto" fermented soy beans.

The data fabrication shocked people across the country because the program had prompted a rush on natto, leading to shortages at stores.

Because that episode was to go up against what appeared to be weak competition, the director told his staff it was a chance to gain high viewer ratings and he set a target of topping a 20 percent share, the former staffer said on condition of anonymity....more...

[Captain Japan]

TBS apologizes for exaggerating theory on hypersonic sounds, memory
Asahi

Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc. (TBS) apologized for exaggerating a theory on a TV program that said high-frequency hypersonic sounds enhance people's memories.

The broadcaster also apologized for failing to obtain approval from researchers to broadcast the contents of their study.

The show, "Ningen! Korede Iinoda" (Humans! This is how it goes), was broadcast Feb. 3.

"Although it was a variety show, the expression in the program was exaggerated," an official of TBS's public relations department said.

"But the contents were not fabricated since we did not change what the research paper itself said or a researcher's comments. Although the study was conducted by more than the one researcher, we set up a hypothesis as a TV program. We do not think there was any problem in our approach."...more...

I realize that this is Japan and all that but there comes a point where these stations ought to have their broadcasting licenses revoked. The simple apology is just as much a piece of bullshit as the program.

[Mulboyne]

"Musing" from the Yomiuri.

It was around the end of the Showa era (1926-1989), I remember. After making a speech at the Japan National Press Club, veteran actor Hisaya Morishige signed the club's autograph book with a poem:

Cormorants submerge
and surface as the cormorant fisherman
manipulates them aboard the boat.

The seasoned actor could have been likening a thespian to a cormorant and a TV program producer to a cormorant fisherman. As the times have changed, today's thespians do not always act at the will of producers, but it seems the relationship between "cormorants" and "those aboard the boat" is still alive. In connection with its program that fabricated the weight-loss benefits of natto fermented soybeans, Kansai Telecasting Corp. (KTV) submitted its in-house investigation report to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, claiming that a sub-subcontracted production company was blamed for the fabrication and it was difficult to detect the fabrication of the program's technical data.

Maybe, KTV wants to say it is impossible to see from aboard its boat what is going on in the water. If so, KTV should have its employees stand by on production fronts to keep a watch on what was going on. There can be no such easy job in which hauls or profits are always left "on board" and "responsibility" kept "in the water." The program in question "Hakkutsu! Aru Aru Daijiten II" (Encyclopedia of Living), one of KTV's programs broadcast nationwide through the Tokyo-based Fuji TV network, reportedly earned an estimated 3 billion yen in advertising revenue in the first half of its 2006 business year. The cost to be incurred for "underwater monitoring" would be minimal when compared to this figure. Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Yoshihide Suga severely criticized KTV's report for passing the buck to the sub-subcontractor and ordered KTV to submit a new report.
It is natural for the minister not to take the word of "one aboard the boat" as it is.

Perhaps a bit more oblique than strictly necessary.

[Captain Japan]

Since politicians are now dutifully paying into the pension plan, the internal skeletons of buildings are all up to snuff, and construction firms are submitting independent tenders for public projects, we'll continue hammering this, the latest fad in fraud, until people get bored...
Fuji TV under fire for false portrayal in popular trivia program
Mainichi

Fuji Television Network has come under fire for falsely portraying a company president who appeared in a popular television show as the owner of a dog that belonged to someone else.

The misrepresentation in Fuji TV's show, "Fountain of Trivia," was uncovered by the Japan Anti-Vivisection Association (JAVA), an organization that opposes animal testing.

The episode in question was broadcast on Sept. 14, 2005. In a section of the broadcast, an experiment was carried out to see how 100 mixed-breed dogs would respond if their owner suddenly collapsed and started rolling about in pain.

One of the dogs in the experiment belonged to a woman, but the show introduced the president of an animal show production agency as the owner. Because members of the show's production crew had trouble filming the dog when it was on top of the company president, they reportedly put dog food inside his clothes before they shot footage for the program.

"We decided that the company president could be treated as an owner," a public relations representative from Fuji TV said. "We consider this to be something completely different from staging or fabrication, but we think there are some points we should reflect on and we want to do this."

A JAVA official, however, remained critical of the broadcaster.

"Making a company president appear as the owner of a dog he doesn't own is nothing less than staging," the official said.

[Greji]

"We decided that the company president could be treated as an owner," a public relations representative from Fuji TV said. "We consider this to be something completely different from staging or fabrication, but we think there are some points we should reflect on and we want to do this."

Yes, I think they might wish to consider whether Identifying him as the owner of the dog, when they knew he wasn't, should be considered a fabrication, or class it as a bald faced lie, for the purposes of deceiving the viewers.

Obviously, stuffing his pockets with dog food should not be considered as staging because most people normally carry an adequate supply of dog biscuits in their pockets and clothing at all times anyway!

And people have challenged me in other threads on why I always seem to distrust the MSM and why I always think they have an agenda, like improving ratings at any cost!

Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story!

[Mulboyne]

Variety: Org to fact-check Japan programs

TOKYO -- The Broadcasting Ethics & Program Improvement Organization, an industry self-regulatory org established by pubcaster NHK and the commercial webs, announced on Thursday the formation of the Broadcasting Ethics Verification Committee in Tokyo. Committee will investigate suspected cases of fabricated info on supposedly factual TV programs. Faked diet data broadcast on Kansai Telecasting's popular "Encyclopedia of Living II" show last January stirred up a media storm over the truthfulness of Japanese television, particularly infotainment variety shows. The scandal led the webs and NHK to found the org in a bid to head off government attempts to tighten controls over programming. The 10-person committee, headed by lawyer Kazuharu Kawabata, includes critic Takashi Tachibana, scriptwriter Shinichi Ichikawa and Rikkyo U. professor Takaaki Hattori.

The committee will investigate suspected cases of factual finagling and, if they discover problems, will inform the offending broadcaster and propose measures to prevent repetitions. In addition to broadcasters themselves, the committee will gather information from viewers, producers, program subjects and others involved in the production process. The committee will have the power to hold hearings, calling on lawyers and special investigators to gather information and gathering testimony from those involved. To handle especially complex cases, it will set up independent subcommittees. The Japanese broadcasting biz has long had problems with program fakery, with the culprits often production companies subcontracted by the webs -- who in turn often sub-subcontract work to other companies. Under intense pressure to produce ratings winners, while laboring under razor-tight schedules and rock-bottom budgets, subcontractors have frequently resorted to cutting corners and faking facts. Whether a single committee can change this deep-rooted system remains to be seen.