Posts Tagged ‘scientific integrity’

Fruit juice, soda, cigarettes, and vapes. They’re all killing us, but we keep consuming them. Tobacco and sugar are close neighbors on the slippery slope to poor health and premature death. Right? Well, not really. News and journal articles might give you an impression that sugar and tobacco are very similar bad actors. We hear […]

This is a pretty neat trick. Conflicts of interest are now officially dead. Lobbying for high fructose corn syrup isn’t a conflict of interest for drafting dietary guidelines. It’s a qualification. Evidence of expertise. USDA has put a high fructose corn syrup lobbyist in charge of overseeing new Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This would have […]

The World Health Organization is doing some great work on obesity in the European Region. For instance, they just published an outstanding new report at ECO2019 on the prevalence of severe childhood obesity in 21 countries. Unfortunately, though, they buried it in a press release that falsely promotes breastfeeding as a proven effective strategy to […]

How do smart people hold onto some stupid ideas? Motivated reasoning is one very important way. People start with a belief that’s very important to them. Then, they collect information to support it. Also, they arrange their information into a rationale that supports their belief. The result is a fortress of conviction. But one thing […]

Really? We’re going to do this again? In JAMA, a new pooled analysis of six observational studies found an association between eating more eggs and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and death. This finding comes just four years after scientific experts reached a consensus that “cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.” […]

Last year, the New England Journal of Medicine retracted and then published a revised analysis of the landmark PREDIMED study. With that action, it shook the world of nutrition science. Even now, there’s still a whole lot of shakin going on. What About 267 Secondary Publications? Just last week in the BMJ, Arnav Agarwal and John […]

The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Friday revoked all of the honorary titles of James Watson, a scientist who won the Nobel Prize in 1962 for describing the structure of DNA. Why? Because in a new PBS documentary, he restated abhorrent views on ethnicity and genetics. Racism can lead people to shun you. Weight bias […]

As we’ve noted, 2018 was a year of toxic misinformation. Scholars from the Rand Corporation warned us about Truth Decay, because misinformation is creeping into every corner of our lives. So let’s take a minute to review some of the biggest whoppers of 2018. One by one, maybe they seemed trivial. But add them all […]

2018 is quickly fading into history. All in all, it’s been a year of some remarkable progress in obesity and health. Much of it is steady and encouraging. More healthcare providers building skill in obesity care. Less explicit weight bias. More options and a little less misinformation about obesity. Those are some of the good […]

Never underestimate the power of rationalization. Because sounds good, very often, is good enough. Just ask folks selling “natural” foods and drinks. A good story about natural purity fetches premium prices. Also, you should look at new research on white hat bias. Even for researchers, it seems the ends can justify the means. It’s a […]