Posts Tagged ‘correlations’

Eugenics: The Dark Side of Flawed Ideas About Fitness

November 2, 2020 — Lately, we’ve seen two scientific journals promoting idea that people with obesity are intellectually and morally inferior. This is not OK. Smart people come in all sizes. So do honest and dishonest people. These papers might seem innocent on the surface. But they are nothing but exercises in fishing for correlations. Humans have a history […]

The Ethics of Promoting a Stereotype in a Research Journal

October 31, 2020 — Lifestyle Medicine is a new open access journal from John Wiley & Sons. The journal claims to set a high standard, with rigorous peer review. But we are not so sure about its ethical standards. Because the journal is promoting a stereotype about people with obesity. A low IQ is a risk factor for obesity, […]

Fishing for Associations, Promoting Weight Stigma

October 21, 2020 — The human impulse for bigotry is strong. Lifestyle Medicine, an open access journal, offered up a potent illustration of this yesterday. The journal published a dubious study of a weak association between a poor measure of intelligence and obesity. It’s hard to know why, but scientific merit doesn’t explain it. Nor can any excuse justify […]