April 9, 2021 — Nostrums for overcoming obesity litter the landscape of health policy. “Obesity is preventable,” says the World Health Organization. We like the can-do spirit this reflects. Yet the how-to details are missing – or at least details with evidence to support them. Instead we have glittering generalities and beautiful metaphors. WHO recommends making healthy choices the […]
April 4, 2021 — Prevailing bias envelopes us invisibly. Objectivity is something we have a passion for pursuing. But the challenge of that pursuit is great. In fact, objectivity is rare, if not mythical. Humans are subjective creatures, so objectivity is unnatural for us. If we care about a subject, we bring a bias to it. When we hear […]
March 31, 2021 — Public enthusiasm for vitamin D during the COVID pandemic has been impressive. An ardent fan base follows every twist and turn in this saga. Observational studies find lower risk in people who have higher vitamin D level. Then an RCT comes along to muddy the water by finding no benefit. Two new studies provide new […]
March 28, 2021 — Are we entering a new golden age for obscurantism? Truth seems elusive at times in public discourse. But the pursuit of it is receiving a great deal of attention. So we have social media enterprises exploring ways they can slow the spread of misinformation. In response, folks who persist in spreading it are becoming more […]
March 1, 2021 — This is a classic headline versus study problem. Except the problem goes beyond the headline. It starts with a preprint of a study. The study has not yet gone through peer review. It goes deep into the weeds of the immune response to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. But the Guardian doesn’t want to lose its readers […]
February 23, 2021 — SF Eater tells us that 13 bakeries in San Francisco have “killer croissants.” The Atlanta Journal Constitution tells us that croissants, along with white bread, tie us to an early death. Their source for this epidemiological wisdom is the BMJ. That treasure trove of epidemiology – the PURE study – has yielded another publication. This […]
February 17, 2021 — Misinformation about COVID-19 spreads so fast that real information has a hard time keeping up. But what we face now is extra hard, because two other difficult subjects are in the mix – obesity and vaccines. So naturally, we’re seeing a mess in messaging about COVID-19 vaccines and obesity. As a matter of fact, the […]
February 12, 2021 — Once again, we see the impulse rise to catastrophize obesity. A new study in BMC Public Health offers up a comparison of deaths due to smoking and adiposity. So naturally, this sparks splashy headlines. Obesity kills more than smoking! Scary stuff. But not terribly helpful. Because the subtext of this sort of hype is finger […]
January 31, 2021 — Let’s face it. At the moment, COVID vaccination is a mess. Anti-vaxxers briefly shut down a vaccination site at Dodgers Stadium yesterday. “Save your soul, turn back now,” said their placards. Nonetheless, millions are desperate to get the vaccine. But demand vastly outstrips supply for now. So disparities are popping up as people with power, […]
January 29, 2021 — Writing for the New York Times, Gretchen Reynolds purports to tell us the best time of day for exercise. Except that she doesn’t. Instead, she describes a study that is too small and too flawed to support the claims its authors make in Physiological Reports. And finally, buried at the end of her article, she […]
