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N=40. No idea why one would release such bullshit.

The worst part will be the idiotic news outlets publishing the stupid headline followed by the pseudoscience peddlers pushing peppermint oil supplements onto an ever-increasing boomer population by AI-generated Instagram ads. Lovely times we live in.

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Even worse, the placebo group drank peppermint cordial. The researchers are arguing there is no peppermint oil in it because it's not a listed ingredient, but the listed ingredients have "flavorings". Which, I'd be shocked if it weren't peppermint oil.

This is the "placebo" they used [1]

[1] https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/products/254854798

Publish or perish mentality + difficulty funding a larger study is why this gets published. There's nothing particularly wrong with it as an exploratory study, the big problem is the lack of incentive to try to reproduce the results and publish the inevitable null result.

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