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Sunday January 28, 2:39 PM2 professors say Kansai Telecasting faked 1998 TV program(Kyodo) _ 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. The 1998 show was the predecessor of "Hakkutsu! Aruaru Daijiten II," which drew public flak earlier this month for airing deceptive content in a Jan. 7 program on the presumed weight-losing effects of a diet using "natto" fermented soybeans. The TV broadcaster on Jan. 20 acknowledged having fabricated experimental data in the show and terminated the show earlier this week. The Osaka-based broadcaster and the Tokyo-based Japan Television Workshop Co. which jointly produced the program announced summary punishment for their managers and the staff involved, including demotions or pay cuts for top managers and removing staff from various posts. As for the new allegation regarding the 1998 program, Nagamura said the show's producer had contacted him earlier in the year, asking him to "conduct an experiment that could prove that if animals eat lettuce frequently, it would help induce sleep." Nagamura conducted the experiment using two groups of 20 mice. He gave one group lettuce juice and gave the other group an equal amount of water. He found almost no difference in the reactions of the two groups. He quoted the broadcaster's crew as saying the results "were disappointing." But when the broadcaster later aired the edited footage of the mice for the show, it beamed the footage of the mice showing subdued behavior, while displaying a caption saying, "They have fallen sleep!" Tajima who did not play a part in the experiment said the broadcaster edited his comments to give the impression that lettuce has sleep-inducing effects. "Before the program was aired, I was asked what substances could induce sleep." "I replied that, generally speaking, certain substances in lettuce are effective in inducing sleep," he said, adding that the broadcaster "used only the part of my comments that would be beneficial" for the show's intended assertion. A Kansai Telecasting spokesman said Sunday, "We are conducting an in-house investigation into programs we have aired in addition to the one aired on Jan. 7." "We cannot comment on the specific program at this stage," the spokesman said. |
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