February 14, 2019 — Last year, the New England Journal of Medicine retracted and then published a revised analysis of the landmark PREDIMED study. With that action, it shook the world of nutrition science. Even now, there’s still a whole lot of shakin going on. What About 267 Secondary Publications? Just last week in the BMJ, Arnav Agarwal and John […]
January 15, 2019 — The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Friday revoked all of the honorary titles of James Watson, a scientist who won the Nobel Prize in 1962 for describing the structure of DNA. Why? Because in a new PBS documentary, he restated abhorrent views on ethnicity and genetics. Racism can lead people to shun you. Weight bias […]
December 21, 2018 — As we’ve noted, 2018 was a year of toxic misinformation. Scholars from the Rand Corporation warned us about Truth Decay, because misinformation is creeping into every corner of our lives. So let’s take a minute to review some of the biggest whoppers of 2018. One by one, maybe they seemed trivial. But add them all […]
December 17, 2018 — 2018 is quickly fading into history. All in all, it’s been a year of some remarkable progress in obesity and health. Much of it is steady and encouraging. More healthcare providers building skill in obesity care. Less explicit weight bias. More options and a little less misinformation about obesity. Those are some of the good […]
October 15, 2018 — Never underestimate the power of rationalization. Because sounds good, very often, is good enough. Just ask folks selling “natural” foods and drinks. A good story about natural purity fetches premium prices. Also, you should look at new research on white hat bias. Even for researchers, it seems the ends can justify the means. It’s a […]
October 5, 2018 — Who are they to judge? Overcoming anthropometry through fat bodybuilding. The journal Fat Studies published and has now retracted that hoax study. But this was not a one-off hoax. It was part of a series, concocted to make a point. Academic grievance studies are corrupting scholarship, say Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay, and Peter Boghossian. Harvard lecturer Yascha Mounk […]
September 23, 2018 — Brian Wansink has a gift for conceiving research into eating behavior that has long been “catnip for the media.” Now, after a year of contesting accusations of misconduct, he’s resigned from Cornell University. Last week, JAMA retracted six of his papers in a single day. According to Retraction Watch, that makes a total of 13 […]
September 19, 2018 — Time-restricted eating is a popular concept right now. So naturally it’s great clickbait. Some journals and researchers are happy to seize the opportunity to gain attention. Newly published in the Journal of Nutritional Science, we have an especially sharp example. Jonathan Johnston is grabbing sensational headlines with his study of 13 people for ten weeks. […]
September 2, 2018 — The bigs are out to get us. Really. Big food, big government, big agriculture, big medicine, big marketing, big academia, and more. We could go on, but no need. When all these bigs align, some big, bad, and unfortunate mistakes can fall out. A self-professed angry old man – George Lundberg – outlines a case study in […]
August 10, 2018 — Five months ago, we wrote about inflated claims of effectiveness from a pilot study of obesity prevention by Scherr et al. An independent group of researchers had written to the journal with concerns about the flawed analysis of the study. The flaws effectively canceled out the claims of effectiveness for the program. But Scherr et […]
