Posts Tagged ‘scientific credibility’

Seven Points of Misinformation on American Dietary Guidelines

April 15, 2024 — “Trust no one.” This classic line sets up thrillers, mysteries, and the moment we seem to be living. Trust in institutions is low and misinformation proliferates through electronic and social media. Because we are in the middle of a very careful, transparent, and public process for developing a new edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans, […]

Why Are We So Ready to Put Faith in Celebrity Health Guidance?

December 24, 2023 — Oprah Winfrey says “Obesity is a disease. It’s not about willpower – it’s about the brain.” This tidbit from a recent interview with People magazine is great. It’s accurate and it corrects a common misconception. No doubt, it will bring a shift away from flawed thinking about this condition that many people have been hanging […]

Oops: A Retraction on UK Soft Drink Taxes

December 12, 2023 — An amicable discussion about evidence for the effectiveness of soft drink taxes can be, well, somewhat taxing. Scientists with genuine curiosity about this subject often seem harder to find than true believers. But disappointment has come for those true believers. Because some of the evidence to back their firm beliefs in soft drink taxes recently […]

Opaque Transparency in the Promise to Share Data

August 12, 2023 — Research integrity is a hot topic these days. People want to know that they can rely upon scientific publications to be accurate reflections of an honest inquiry to find the answer to a research question. Toward this end, data sharing is an important commitment. Increasingly, researchers pledge to share their data in the interest of […]

Exuberant Claims for Exercise and Brain Health

March 31, 2023 — “Exercise with a buddy, your brain will thank you,” says the Washington Post. “Improve Your Memory, Problem-Solving, and Mental Processing Speeds in Just 6 Minutes,” promises Inc. This is just a small sample of the exuberant claims about exercise and brain health coming at us from news media. There’s only one problem. Some of it […]

Retractions Can’t Travel at the Speed of Hype

October 2, 2022 — From the Annals of Sad but True: “It is not only predatory journals that publish bullshit,” said Guillaume Cabanac. He was commenting of the news last year of hundreds of retractions from special issues in journals published by Springer Nature and Elsevier. This and other recent news suggests that scientific fraud is hardly negligible. But […]

Feeding Your Microbiome Dietary Pixie Dust

September 21, 2022 — According to Anahad O’Connor in the Washington Post, your microbiome can do amazing things for you. “These vast communities of microbes are the gateway to your health and well-being – and one of the simplest and most powerful ways to shape and nurture them is through your diet.” Because research sez so. So maybe feeding […]

Fanciful Reasoning About Health in an Age of Low Trust

June 22, 2022 — Americans this year will spend about $35 billion on dietary supplements. All over the world, spending will add up to more than $150 billion. What will it do for us? Not much, says the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force in a new report released yesterday about the value of these supplements for preventing heart disease and […]

TMI About Health with Too Little Trust

January 23, 2022 — Increasingly, we find ourselves burdened by TMI about health, much of which we cannot trust. Such an overload of dubious information makes it hard to make good decisions. Evidence of this is everywhere we turn. People are dying needlessly from COVID after choosing to refuse vaccination. And to be sure, the subject of obesity, weight, […]

Are We Set to Emerge from a Dark Age in 2022?

January 2, 2022 — Perhaps this is a familiar pattern – a mixture of good news and bad news. The bad news is likely not really news. Many people are comparing our difficult circumstances of this past year to the so-called dark ages. But the good news is that it isn’t hard to see signs we are set to […]