There seems to be a relentless flow of studies that show that vitamin C supplementation is of little or no value. Tara Parker-Pope writes for the Health section of the Wall Street Journal. Her recent article on the value of supplementation took front-page honors. She dismisses vitamin supplementation altogether as unnecessary. How could all this research be wrong and just a few of us be right about the value of vitamin C? It would seem to defy common sense. The answer is very simple and entirely consistent with the reported studies. The answer is dose.

The vast majority of vitamin studies use doses that are inadequate to produce positive results. It is my opinion that whenever a study concerning vitamin C uses a daily dose of less than 1000 milligrams, that study is worthless (or even worse than worthless since the results are so misleading). If the purpose of the study is to determine vitamin C’s potential for curing anything, then the minimum dose needs to be many times higher. To emphasize this, I now report on a fictitious study:

Money Doesn’t Ease Poverty, Study Shows

This is the finding of the Institute for Eliminating Poverty that has just released the results of their five-year, peer-reviewed, study of money and poverty. The study and its results, while provocative, pass scientific muster and must, therefore, be considered definitive. Here are the details of the study process.

A randomized double-blind controlled study of 1000 families at or below the poverty line were each given $100. After a closely-followed five-year period no more of these families had bettered their financial circumstances than 500 matched control families. This study, while controversial in its bold conclusions, demonstrates that a lack of money is not at the root of poverty. The designers admit that the results surprised them, but stand by their rigorous scientific method. When asked what, if not more money, was the key to raising people out of poverty, the lead researcher responded “beats me!”