In the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine in 2012, Dr. Franz Messerli wrote a short article about chocolate consumption vs. Nobel prizes. Messerli wrote in his article that he had found a strong link between the average amount of chocolate eaten in a country and the number of Nobel laureates it has produced compared to the size of its population. He concluded that people in every country should eat much more chocolate to help them think more clearly.
This “study,” on the other hand, was just meant to be a funny story and a friendly reminder to colleagues that taking correlations too far can lead to wrong claims. At the same time, other scientists were furious. Why would the New England Journal of Medicine spread something like that? Several researchers quickly shot down the idea that eating a lot of chocolate would make more Nobel laureates. They showed how silly the claim was by showing a very high correlation between the number of IKEA stores and the number of Nobel Prize winners. By the way, you can find all the Nobel prize winners here.
