Posts Tagged ‘bias’

When the subject of equitable access to GLP-1s arises, contrasting perspectives of what is equitable become apparent. Last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, an analysis of prescription data for GLP-1 agonists made two facts about their use very clear. First, their use for obesity is growing much faster than the use for type […]

It simply feels good to find people who think like we do. We can give voice to strong feelings, we can find validation, and we can join in an amen chorus of affirmation. But unfortunately, we can also get stuck in a dead end – committed to ideas that don’t find acceptance in the real […]

This week in JAMA, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) published an evidence review and recommendation for youth with obesity. In a word, it is disappointing. The task force seems to have completely lost touch with advances in obesity care in young persons. They recommend only that youth with a BMI in the […]

The Obesity and Energetics Offerings from the Indiana University School of Public Health and the University of Alabama at Birmingham NORC certainly got our attention this week with an entry titled “Cherished Hypotheses Meet Hard Facts.” That entry links us to two new systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials to assess prevention of obesity in […]

In a world that systematically denies people access to obesity medicines, the rush of reports that people frequently stop taking them makes us wonder. How does this qualify as news? Why do reporters repeatedly paint a misleading picture of non-compliant patients? Yet, health reporters keep offering up this narrative. The latest prompt for this is […]

Sometime in the 1960s, economist Ronald Coase, a Nobel laureate, advised colleagues that torturing a set of data can always yield a confession to serve the purpose at hand. As if to prove this adage, a new publication in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology shows us 1,208 ways to analyze NHANES data on all-cause mortality […]

On the subject of nutrition and health, we commonly encounter strong statements presented as scientific truths that must be honored. Headlines scream that “ultra-processed food is killing us,” using studies of correlation to justify sounding an alarm. “Cows are just an environmental disaster,” says Hannah Ritchie in the New York Times. But with equally great […]

Healthy eating and active living. For decades now, programs to prevent obesity have followed the conventional wisdom that pursuing these two ideals will solve the problem. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation pledged a billion dollars to prevent childhood obesity by following this template: “By 2025, we want to ensure that children in America grow up […]

In The Conversation this week, Emma Beckett tells us that drugs for treating obesity won’t cure it, “but they might make us more fat-phobic.” Her rationale is simple enough. All the buzz “plays into ideas of fat stigma and fat phobia.” No matter that doctors, scientists, and the FDA all say otherwise, she says these […]

If we didn’t know better, we might think Anahad O’Connor and the Washington Post are deliciously clever satirists. They have a new contribution to the catalog of conspiracy theories. In short, O’Connor explains that the reach of HAES (Health at Every Size) messaging comes from a Big Food conspiracy. This plot involves registered dietitians aiding […]