Posts Tagged ‘scientific integrity’

Don’t trust research funded by industry. Two publications advocated for that idea in JAMA Internal Medicine last week. Advancing a more objective view, Andrew Brown wrote yesterday in Slate that bias comes into nutrition research from many sources: Nutrition is uniquely suited to more personal attachments. After all, everyone eats. And then, as with any other […]

We live in an age of big data. That big data brings the possibility of big new insights in nutrition, obesity, and health. It also brings the possibility of big mistakes as people try to translate associations they find into cause and effect relationships. Especially with big data sets, the possibility of confounding errors looms large. Confounding […]

Nothing in nutrition arouses so much passion right now as concerns about sugar science. The runner up would likely be dietary fat. Put them together – as JAMA Internal Medicine did yesterday – and you have fuel for some really juicy headlines. William Randolph Hearst would be pleased. Researchers from the University of California at […]

The American Heart Association is promoting an analysis from its journal that suggests regular exercise can save money. In fact, the authors of this study find that medical expenses are about $2,500 lower annually for people who meet current guidelines for regular exercise. That’s at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise five times a week. The […]

For many years, the Trust for America’s Health has been cranking out obesity scorecards. In concert with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, they’ve just rolled out the 2016 edition of The State of Obesity. More a media tool than an objective analysis, this report generates an impressive volume of headlines: Do You Live in One […]

Every day, research finds new links to obesity in behaviors, nutrition, the environment, and an array of other factors. And every day, headlines falsely suggest a cause and effect relationship in those links. A recent example is a widely reported link between late bedtimes for preschoolers and obesity in teenagers. The headlines tell parents to tuck their […]

Sigh. A previously published study – which lacks a control group – is cropping up in a new form to beat the drum of claims that sugar is toxic. Based on a dataset published last year in Obesity, a new publication has just appeared in Atherosclerosis. The first publication from this dataset advanced a claim that holding calories […]

A new systematic review of clinical studies tells us that it’s time to stop dumping on potatoes. Daniel Borch and colleagues systematically reviewed both intervention and observational studies. They concluded: The identified studies do not provide convincing evidence to suggest an association between intake of potatoes and risks of obesity, T2D, or CVD. French fries […]

Is objectivity possible in the study of intuitive eating? A new study by Janell Mensinger and colleagues published in Appetite might make you wonder. This study randomized 80 women to a controlled trial of a weight-neutral (the HUGS Program for Better Health) versus a weight-loss intervention (the LEARN Program for Weight Management). At the end of a six-month […]

UPDATE: Sometime after we published this report at 6am on June 7, the journal editor retracted the original publication in question below. Good decision. Click here for the retraction notice. Flaxseed, if you believe health reporting, is pretty much a health food miracle. The Food Revolution Network is serving up “70 Health Reasons to Eat […]