Posts Tagged ‘scientific integrity’

We have mixed feelings about the comeuppance dished out to the National Obesity Forum in part 2 of an ongoing UK food fight. Their controversial report – Eat Fat, Cut Carbs, and Avoid Snacking to Reverse Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes – has left the organization in a bit of disarray. Four board members have resigned […]

Scientific integrity results from a process of critical thinking and peer review. And every day we see that process unfold, often in ways that inspire confidence. Sometimes events leave us scratching our heads. Such is the case of an analysis published in the Journal of Hypertension more than two years ago. Based upon a meta-analysis, Cesare Cuspidi and […]

Bias hits people who live with the chronic disease of obesity, and the professionals who devote their careers to overcoming it, with a double dose – obesity bias squared. Intellectual bias that favors personal convictions in obesity and nutrition has a profound effect on research and the scientific literature in obesity. Writing in Clinical Obesity, Krista […]

Mistakes happen. Every scientific study has weaknesses. Research on obesity, nutrition, and physical activity is hardly exempt. Sometimes errors and flaws are only discovered after publication. Usually the errors are handled gracefully. An erratum is published and sometimes a paper is withdrawn. But even smart scientists are susceptible to the human impulse for self-justification. The impulse is aptly described by […]

Methods matter. A new study published today in Obesity shows that the prevalence of severe early childhood obesity may be twice as high as previously thought. This is because of limits for what are considered to be impossibly high BMI values in standard methods for estimating obesity prevalence. Those limits are no longer working right because […]

If you poke around in the scientific literature trying to understand the evidence behind policies related to cutting the salt in food, you might feel like you are wandering between parallel universes. Some systematic reviews find little empiric evidence for trying to reduce salt intake. Others find the evidence compelling. A new analysis published in the International […]

It’s inevitable. Mistakes get published in scientific journals. But the real test is whether scientific journals can correct these mistakes. Writing in Nature today, David Allison and colleagues report that many journals may be failing this test. They identify and provide evidence of an urgent need for fixing the process for post publication review. The issue is […]

In the past week, headlines have been full of claims that flavonoids in fruit such as strawberries and blueberries are “the secret to losing weight.” They stop just short of announcing the discovery of magic weight loss fruit. The root of this nonsense is a Harvard study that proves no such thing. In fact, what […]

Cascades of headlines this week claim that water fountains offer a simple solution to childhood obesity. These excessive claims are part of a larger pattern that has us wondering. What is it about childhood obesity that leads otherwise sensible people to spout puffery? The paper that’s causing this week’s nonsense was published in JAMA Pediatrics, and the […]

An unfolding story about the University of Maryland hyping chocolate milk for concussions might easily be dismissed as an anomaly. Doing so would be a serious mistake. Shortly before Christmas, the university issued a press release that claimed: Fifth Quarter Fresh, a new, high-protein chocolate milk, helped high school football players improve their cognitive and […]