Nutritional epidemiology - be suspect... be very suspect

(Joey) #1

Not a new topic to many folks around here, but well worth reading.
Author Ron Bailey is the science editor for Reason - one of my favorite magazines…

(Bob M) #2

I like it, just don’t read too many of the comments.

(Joey) #3

:+1:
Not reading any comments posted to an online magazine/newspaper is typically good guidance.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #4

Oh, come on! Three or four of them were spam, and most of the rest were fairly sensible. By YouTube standards, in fact, they were miracles of rationality!!

(Joey) #5

Well put. Now we’re down to assessing relative crap versus absolute $#!T.

(Alec) #6

Some of my favourite bits…

Nutritional epidemiology is, by and large, what Stanford University biostatistician John Ioannidis calls a “null field”: one where there is nothing genuine to be discovered and no genuinely effective treatments exist

It means nutritional epidemiology is a very uncertain guide for how to live your life and it certainly isn’t fit for setting public policy. [my emphasis]

As recently as July 2023, the WHO issued guidelines warning against consuming saturated fatty acids “because high levels of intake have been correlated with increased risk of CVDs [cardiovascular diseases].”

[If this isn’t cause enough to stop believing anything that the WHO have to say about anything, I don’t know what is.]

I had to read this twice before I got it:

Salt," an unknown wit once said, “is what makes things taste bad when it isn’t in them.”

Nutritional epidemiology as practiced currently is mostly bunk.

[editor: “mostly???”]

Ioannidis concludes that nutritional epidemiology as currently practiced is rife with “fervent allegiance beliefs and group-think.” Consequently, many, if not most, of the observed effects reported by nutritional epidemiologists largely reflect the magnitude of the biases prevailing among the field’s researchers.

By the way, I am making a lot of money working from home… that’s because I have given up travelling to the office :joy::joy::scream:

(Edith) #7

"There is nothing particularly “junky” about most nutrition studies: they may not be individually meaningful for your diet, but they are still scientifically useful.

As with all scientific studies, the majority are the result of p-hacking, publication bias, incompetence, or fraud on the part of researchers. This isn’t unique to nutrition studies, it’s just how science is. Results need to be reproduced dozens of times over many years before you can believe them.

> Drawing firm conclusions from weak data is the original sin of nutritional epidemiology. Legendary American physiologist Ancel Keys more or less launched the suspicion that eating steaks and hamburgers caused heart disease during the 1950s.

The problem with Keys wasn’t bad nutrition studies, it was his misapplication and fraudulent use of the results of studies and measurements that were, per se, perfectly fine. That is, like many politically activist scientists, he had reached a conclusion and then made the (otherwise valid) data fit his conclusion."emphasized text

Well, your comment about not reading the comments made me want to read the comments. :laughing:

I think this was a very valid point made by the poster of the comment. That was something I noticed in the cases the Ron Bailey was using in his article. How many of them said there was weak correlation but firmly stated you shouldn’t eat the food anyway?

(Joey) #8

Yeah, this was a clever construct. I read it to my wife, who also got a good chuckle after a moment’s pause.