I poke through YouTube quite a lot. Cat videos, never. But a couple of days ago, I was listening to Dr. Michael Greger. He went through a whole list of studies, mostly about how vegetarians don’t have any advantage in mortality with the most common diseases among us and actually have a higher mortality rate with neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s. Yikes.
He rattles off details very authoritatively. He waves papers around implying actual studies.
But when I get on the internet actually looking for said studies, I seem to come up way short. I find plenty of “articles” that seem to summarize what they think this study or that study says, but I also find that they often don’t give enough information to actually go find and look at the data they used to come to said conclusions.
When I specifically went looking for Dr. Greger’s mentioned studies, I couldn’t find any of them. It’s entirely possible I didn’t look in the right place.
Unfortunately, it seems like people manipulate “data” to make studies say whatever they want them to say. And so, I wondered whether a person can actually go look at these “studies” up close and personal, look at the actual data, and draw conclusions based upon that, rather than what someone -wants- the data to say.
Honestly, I don’t care whether vegetarians live longer than meat eaters or not. But one group says they do and mentions a study or two, and the other group says they do not and mentions a study or two. I get a little irritated at people who cite an article somewhere and wear it on their shirt sleeve as though they’re better than anyone else. I ran into such a person a few days ago and when I suggested that maybe things aren’t as they’ve always heard, they immediately wanted to know what study I drew my conclusions from. And so far, I can’t find the actual study. AARRGGHH!!! It always seems to turn into a “he said, she said”. I’d sure like to do better.
Anybody?
