I began Fact Check #3 by searching “recent study shows” on Google News. Out of the many articles that popped up, I decided to use a Forbes article titled “Upbeat Music Boosts the Benefit of Exercise, New Study Shows”. Published on February 4, 2020, the article claimed “a new study finds that simply listening to high-tempo music during a workout could also produce added health benefits”. The research for this study was conducted on several female volunteers in Croatia in Italy, who preformed exercises on a treadmill or used a leg press. The article then claimed, “the effect was more pronounced for the volunteers using the treadmill versus the higher-intensity exercise involved in using a leg press”.
Before digging any further, I was already skeptical about the study’s results since the headline claimed “upbeat music boosts the benefits of exercise” yet after sifting through the article it turned out this was not the case for all types of exercise. I then followed the link to the Frontiers in Psychology website where I found an in-depth report of the study. The article gave specific names of researchers involved in the study from Croatia and Italy, as well as Luca P. Ardigo, an Italian professor at University of Verona who was quoted in the Forbes article. According to Google Scholar, Ardigo is affiliated with the “School of Exercise and Sport Science, Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences”. Frontierin.org Ardigo has a total of 98 publications and 61 editorial contributions.
Returning back to the Frontier’s article, the “Conclusion” statement showed how upbeat music could boost energy levels mostly during endurance training. I also noticed how biased this study was since it was only conducted on female participants between ages 18 and 35 who had “at least one year of experience in fitness training”. So how exactly can upbeat music be “beneficial for exercise” if the study is only based on women who are already gym buffs and are young. What about health factors? Men? Older women? There are way to many glitches in this study for the article to have the headline “Upbeat Music Boosts the Benefit of Exercise, New Study Shows”.
I then decided to look into Frontier’s impact factor. To do this, I searched “Frontiers in Psychology impact factor: – Frontiers.org”. This search lead me to a link to accademic-accelerator.com. This website stated Frontier’s impact factor dropped from 2.463 in 2015 to 2.089 in 2017 before going slightly back up to 2.129 between 2018 and 2019. There was also an impact factor link on Frontier’s website claiming their article had 11,238 views and had 94% more views than any other article they published. I then returned back to the Forbes article where there was an embedded link to “prior research” on the topic. This led me to an article titled “The Effect of Music on the Psychophysiological Measures of Stress” by Brianna Brownlow. This study was based on African-American females. A DuckDuckGo search of Brianna Brownlow led me to her LinkedIn profile. Her profile states she has a PhD from Ohio University, is a student researcher, worked on a psychophysiological project and has won several honors and awards including one for Women of Excellence Leadership Series (WEL).
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