July 21, 2023 — The President of Stanford University, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, announced his resignation this week, following a review of his research that concluded some of it “fell below customary standards of scientific rigor and process.” If you entertain any doubt about the importance of attention to scientific rigor and integrity, this should resolve it. Retractions and Corrections After […]
February 11, 2023 — “Calorie restriction slows pace of aging in healthy adults.” This headline for a press release from Columbia University sounds pretty impressive. Until you stop and read the paper – which comes to no such conclusion. It appears that the headline writers were referring not to the pace of aging, but to P.A.C.E. – the Pace […]
January 11, 2023 — Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and supper like a pauper. These immortal words date back almost 70 years to a pop nutrition icon of the early and mid 20th century – Adelle Davis. Unfortunately, the health benefits of this advice are more presumption than fact. But the legends persist. This week, […]
December 3, 2022 — You can’t outrun a bad diet. It’s a clever turn of phrase that resonates. But like many things that resonate about diet, exercise, and obesity, it might be a little too clever. In a very gentle way, David Allison, Dennis Bier, and Julie Locher point this out in a brief commentary appearing this week in […]
October 7, 2022 — Publishing research and academic journals is a business that is both important and highly profitable. The business model for this industry could be a whole post of its own, but it’s worth noting that just four companies publish more than half of the world’s academic papers. Elsevier alone published more than half a million peer-reviewed […]
September 25, 2022 — An impressive amount of thought and effort goes into messaging about health. Honorable people work diligently to move the population toward healthier lives. They craft messages for leading people to stop smoking, get their vaccinations, eat healthy, stay active and fit. The creativity and strategic skill are impressive. But one dimension of effective and sustainable […]
August 18, 2022 — The tension between science and policy at CDC is inevitable. But that tension has never been in plain view more than during the COVID-19 pandemic. And so, citing a “botched” response to the pandemic, CDC director Rochelle Walensky says that she will launch a sweeping reorganization of the agency. Her announcement was thin on specifics. […]
July 7, 2022 — “Time-restricted feeding could be key to combat obesity,” says the headline. The press release from the University of California at San Diego is a little more restrained, though. “A rhythmic small intestinal microbiome prevents obesity and type 2 diabetes,” it says. Then finally we get down to reality in the paper. There we find that […]
January 31, 2022 — Across four millenia, alchemists sought to purify common materials and transform them into gold. In a possibly similar quest, Zachary Ward and Steven Gortmaker wish to assure us they have a reliable method for correcting the errors in data on self-reported height and weight. In other words, it’s no big deal if we don’t have […]
January 30, 2022 — You may have noticed. Evidence of skepticism, disagreement, and polarization is all around us. These phenomena are notably – sometimes disturbingly – present in dialogue about public health. We suppose that a pandemic puts stresses on people that explain some of this behavior. Healthy skepticism indeed is a good thing. Its roots lie in objectivity […]
