Not that you are incorrect or that this is not an interesting aside, but I find these conclusions a bit dreadful. "American dies after eating 400 hotdogs in eating competition" = "unhealthy fastfood is pretty entrenched in American culture".
The article uses another hyperbole. "But [about Baidu cheating] artificial intelligence researchers have a more basic concern: that their work will once again fall short of expectations, leading to yet another fallow period for their field.". There are now Machine Learning PhD. thesis on the frontpage of HackerNews. This field is not going anywhere barren soon. Researchers are not worried about their own work in response to Baidu being caught out for cheating. The Rosenblatt quote was after a question by the NYT journalist, he did not give that forecast in a paper. I also think he did not specify a timeline of less than a year. Most if not all forecasts have come true by now. His claims got vindicated.
> "American dies after eating 400 hotdogs in eating competition" = "unhealthy fastfood is pretty entrenched in American culture".
Not for nothing, but I'd actually agree with that conclusion, based on your example.
If a culture promotes fast food to the point where competitions related to the rapid consumption of the fast food causes a death, I'd consider it a symptom of the larger "fast food culture" problem for that society.
Competitive eating (including stuffing 110 hot dogs down your throat[1]) is popular in Japan. Is "unhealthy fastfood pretty entrenched in Japanese culture"?
