May 29, 2023 — Expert opinion holds that ultra-processed food is not a good thing. So it’s quite natural to expect that helping people resist the convenience and taste of this ubiquitous type of food will help with dietary health outcomes. So natural that it’s quite easy to dismiss inconvenient, unexpected findings. A little ultra-processing of study results in […]
August 8, 2020 — Correcting errors is such a nuisance. People feel bad about it. Some people simply can’t admit errors, so it can get messy. But errors are inevitable. Thus it’s really important to correct errors when they are discovered. Especially in scientific research. Nonetheless, one journal seems to have a different solution. Nutrients – an open-access nutrition […]
May 1, 2020 — Sometimes human creativity simply makes our heads spin. Take this example of imagination running wild in obesity research. Last year, Frontiers in Psychiatry published a study of the possible placebo effect of an imaginary low-calorie diet. The diet was a fiction – no reduction in calories. What’s not to like about an imaginary placebo effect? […]
February 1, 2019 — We keep hoping that editors and reviewers of obesity, nutrition, and physical activity studies will use a sharper eye when a cluster randomized trial comes to them. But two new publications tell us we can’t count on it yet. In both papers, the researchers claim to have proven the effectiveness of their programs. Yet neither […]
January 29, 2019 — In obesity research, we have a bit of a cluster fuss on our hands. It’s all about a type of randomized study where the randomization is between clusters. This randomization method is important because it’s very useful for obesity prevention studies. For example, you might have children in different schools or different classrooms participating in […]
October 29, 2017 — Stuff happens. Errors creep into research papers. We gripe about it here from time to time. But today we have a great example of how scientific integrity works. Back in July, a group of researchers, led by Yulyu Yeh, published a paper about nutrition education for African-American preschoolers. Their analysis found a benefit for the […]
