Last year, the health media around the world was awash with news of a major study suggesting hearing aid use was linked to a dramatically reduced dementia risk in adults.

Published in The Lancet Public Health, the paper claimed that up to 8% of dementia cases could be prevented with appropriate hearing aid management.

Among the co-authors were researchers from the University of Sydney and University of Melbourne.

But there had been a bungle — and the paper’s dramatic conclusions had no evidence to support them.