Posts Tagged ‘scientific integrity’

It would be hard to find something more trendy right now than yoga. There are more flavors than you can count: doga yoga, cat yoga, laughter yoga, and the list goes on. Check into a boutique hotel and you’ll find a yoga mat in the room. It seems to offer important health benefits. For the scientifically inclined, you can […]

Almost eight years ago, the New York Times reported on intense fighting about menu labeling in restaurants. They quoted NYC Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden as comparing questions about the effectiveness of menu labeling to “an argument that the world is flat.” Yesterday, the New York Times headline on the subject was: The Surprising Failure of Calorie Counts […]

What should we make of a stream of retractions from peer-reviewed publications in nutrition and obesity? Weekly Obesity and Energetics Offerings include a section on scientific rigor and scholarly dialogue where noteworthy retractions may be found. The one that grabbed our attention this week, of course, was the retraction of a viewpoint co-authored by Joaquin Barnoya and Marion Nestle criticizing […]

Looking under the hood is a messy business, whether you’re doing it literally with you car or figuratively with nutrition and obesity research. It’s much easier to take glib assurances at face value. But ignoring deeper problems in either case can be costly. In a thoughtful commentary published by the New York Times, Aaron Carroll observes: […]

Today we are going to resolve a question that seems to be rising to the top of the list every time someone evaluates a new study. Has money had any effect on these findings? The answer is always yes. Money influences all research. We know it’s shocking, but it is true. Research doesn’t get done […]

As we’re coming down the home stretch toward finalizing 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the British Medical Journal is again mixing sensation with science by publishing a journalist’s analysis of the recommended guidelines. Unfortunately, it’s looking like BMJ followed neither scientific standards for peer review nor journalistic standards for error checking. The journalist who authored the […]

Remember the sensational headlines a year ago about “A Grizzly Answer for Obesity” in the New York Times and elsewhere? Well, all that buzz was created by a study of grizzly bears with doctored data. And the story about how a Big Pharma company, Amgen, rooted out the corrupted data didn’t make the New York […]

Is scientific spin spinning out of control? Shall we blame reporters, journal editors, university press officers, researchers, or an old favorite, industry? The most recent case in point emanates from the New England Journal of Medicine. That venerable publication assiduously cultivates an image of stodgy, conservative, academic credibility. But they also have a YouTube channel to prove […]

Have you wondered why or even noticed that journals like Science and Nature are sometimes called tabloid science journals? A great illustration is playing out from a manuscript just published online in Cell Metabolism. It’s generating some sensational headlines like: Fasting May Reboot the Body and Reduce Cancer Risk Diet That Mimics Fasting May Slow Aging Periodic Fasting […]

Lapses in peer review, scientific integrity, and reporting on scientific studies have been getting extraordinary attention lately. Is this a sign of rigorous attention to an important matter or a sign of a system that isn’t working quite right? Two incidents have garnered particular attention. First was the recent retraction of research on changing attitudes […]