Ranthropologist

Tag: research

  • Daily Read: Chocolate-Dipped “Science”

    Daily Read: Chocolate-Dipped “Science”

    Are you confused by science reporting about health and nutrition? Have you given up listening to what the media reports about our diets and what foods are good (or bad) for us? If you answered yes, I’m not surprised, and I fear that reading this article will give you even less confidence in media reporting on these important topics. But I still think you should read it. John Bohannon explains the hoax he perpetrated with the help of some German researchers in a bid to illustrate how easy it is to dupe the media into publishing bad science. In brief, Bohannon did an actual scientific study that generated real results showing that eating a bar of dark chocolate every day accelerates weight loss – but his methodology was full of holes and his conclusions were weakly supported. Nevertheless, when he got his study published in a pay-to-play “science” journal  that will take any study as long as the author pays the fee (an enormous problem itself and the topic of a future rant), and then released an accurate – but detail-scant – press release trumpeting his results, it was snapped up immediately and uncritically by media outlets throughout the globe and published with no scientific fact-checking.

    The upshot? We need more critical thinking not just in our media but in media consumers. People need to be taught how to critically evaluate how a study was conducted and ask the right questions: what was the sample size? What statistical tests were used to calculate the results? How many parameters did the study measure? I realize that learning how to do this takes education and experience, but we need it. It’s not enough to rely on media outlets to do it for us when their bottom line is driven by clicks, shares, and page-views. And this article also illustrates why it is so unbearably easy for the unscrupulous purveyors of modern snake-oil to fool their customers with sophisticated nonsense. It’s a large part of the reason the anti-vaccine movement has any traction at all, why the Food Babe has any followers, and why homeopathic remedies have yet to be banned from store shelves. We have to learn for ourselves how to spot bad science.

    I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here’s How.

  • Daily Read: Critical Medicine

    Daily Read: Critical Medicine

    In this article from Vox, Julia Belluz uses the example of medical research to highlight the problems with mainstream media reporting on science. The article points out that reporters have a different idea of what is newsworthy than scientific researchers do, and that is reflected in the way medical “breakthroughs” are reported. Scientists write their reports and articles for a very specialized audience, while reporters must present scientific findings in ways that are accessible to the public. Furthermore, reporters are looking for a hook in their reporting – something that will get eyeballs on their stories. This means that there is often a profound disconnect between the actual findings of scientific research, and the way that research is reported to the general public. The upshot, according to Belluz, is that the general public needs to take reporting on medical studies with a grain of salt because many, if not most, of the most apparently breathtaking findings turn out to be undermined or disproven by further research. This is also true of the seemingly endless stream of reports on diet, exercise, supplements, etc. I can’t stress enough that revisions and refinements of existing research are actually the biggest strengths of science; yet, when the media reports that previously promising treatments or techniques turn out not to work, the general public loses faith in the scientific community. I empathize with Velluz’s rumination on whether it’s a good idea for these studies to even be reported: “I often wonder whether there is any value in reporting very early research. Journals now publish their findings, and the public seizes on them, but this wasn’t always the case: journals were meant for peer-to-peer discussion, not mass consumption.” She is right that early reporting is harmful for the false hope it can give people and for the damage it does to people’s faith in science.

    This is why you shouldn’t believe that exciting new medical study

  • Daily Reads: No Comment

    Daily Reads: No Comment

    Today’s Daily Read isn’t the most scintillating article I’ve ever read, but the information it contains is revealing and important, so I believe it is worth the quick read. Cathleen O’Grady of Arstechnica reports on two studies that looked at the influence of online comments on the effectiveness of public service announcements (PSAs). The study created mock PSAs on the safety and efficacy of vaccines – one pro-vaccine and one anti-vaccine – and paired them with anonymous comments that supported or refuted the message of the PSAs. The researchers made sure to attribute each PSA to health organizations that were perceived as credible by the study participants. In the first study, participants were more likely to have their opinions swayed by the PSA if they thought the source was credible; however, if they found the commenters to be credible they were less likely to be swayed by the PSA. In the second study, the participants were provided with general information about the commenters – e.g. one commenter was identified within the comment as a college student, another as a health care lobbyist, and a third as a medical doctor specializing in disease and vaccines. In this study, the participants were more swayed by the commenters they perceived as credible – in this case, the self-identified doctor – than they were by the PSA. This occurred regardless of whether the doctor agreed or disagreed with the PSA. As the article notes, this research is not definitive, but it points out an important weakness in how people perceive information they receive from anonymous comments – which is, how can we know that a self-identified commenter truly is the expert he or she claims to be? I think this is hugely important, and very troubling. It’s one thing to trust the credibility of an anonymous restaurant review on Yelp; it’s quite another to trust anonymous opinions on critical health and social issues.

    Don’t read the comments—they can make you mistrust real experts

  • Daily Reads: Anybody Want A Peanut?

    Daily Reads: Anybody Want A Peanut?

    Today’s Daily Read relates to the one I posted a few days ago about hygiene, but this time it’s about food allergies – specifically, peanut allergies. Rob Stein writes for NPR’s blog The Salt that children who are fed foods containing peanuts from a young age are much less likely to develop a peanut allergy by the age of 5. This mechanism may operate by training babies’ immune systems very early to recognize peanuts and thus prevent an allergic overreaction. This is superficially similar to how vaccination works, and also how the hygiene hypothesis* works – early exposure means a stronger, more resistant immune system. The article appropriately cautions that parents who haven’t already fed their young children peanuts need to proceed carefully; but it seems that starting to give peanut-containing foods between 4-12 months may just prevent peanut allergies later. I’m loving all these new studies showing that coddling kids is not actually protecting them; instead, it seems that what we think is protecting them might be making them weaker in the long run.

    Feeding Babies Foods With Peanuts Appears to Prevent Allergies

    *And here’s a bonus article about the hygiene hypothesis that relates to allergies as well – but this one proposes that using automatic dishwashers instead of letting kids do dishes the old-fashioned way might also be contributing to the uptick in allergies. Who knew that washing dishes could be good for you?

  • Daily Reads: Measles Mania

    Daily Reads: Measles Mania

    Today’s Daily Read relates to the post I wrote a few days ago about how difficult it can be to convince people to accept ideas that go against their already strongly-held beliefs. I actually have two articles to share today. The first, from the Washington Post, made my eyeballs pulse with rage when I read it: it talks about a medical doctor in Arizona who has catapulted into the media spotlight because he supports anti-vaxxers. Jack Wolfson is a cardiologist who now practices holistic medicine. He supports his anti-vaccination stance with thoroughly unscientific and debunked ideas about “chemicals” in vaccines being harmful (forgetting or ignoring the fact that there are chemicals in everything); arguing that people should get viruses because they are natural (clearly he has never heard of the naturalistic fallacy – just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s good for you); and proposing that following a paleolithic diet provides enough immune protection to make vaccines unnecessary (not considering that paleolithic humans had infant mortality rates of over 50 percent, life spans of around 40 years, and suffered from boom and bust food cycles that could leave them malnourished, vitamin and mineral deficient, and prone to disease; not to mention that he hasn’t considered the fact that “paleo” diets were incredibly diverse depending on which population of ancient humans you are following. I, for one, wonder how many modern followers of paleo would go the Inuit route and eat almost nothing but raw fish and seal blubber). Of course, Wolfson has been embraced by anti-vaxxers as a champion, especially in light of the ongoing measles outbreak.

    The second article is from last year and comes from Chris Mooney of Mother Jones. I linked to it in my post from a few days ago too, but I want to bring it up again here because it discusses a study that shows how presenting anti-vaxxers with information that refutes their views causes them to embrace those views even more fervently. I include it because even though people like Wolfson make me want to pelt them with facts and studies, I have to remind myself that the backfire effect, as detailed in Mooney’s article, makes this approach futile. Fortunately there is some new research that is looking into how to approach these issues in a way that makes people receptive to new information, but so far, it seems that most people are still yelling past each other and not changing any minds at all.

    Amid measles outbreak, anti-vaccine doctor revels in his notoriety

    Study: You Can’t Change an Anti-Vaxxer’s Mind

  • Daily Reads: Got Water?

    Daily Reads: Got Water?

    Here’s a great idea from some folks in Oregon: use the treated wastewater produced from sewage to brew beer. Writing on the NPR blog The Salt, Cassandra Profita discusses the process by which clean, drinkable water can be produced from sewage sludge. Although Oregon does not approve this water for consumption, a new experiment is allowing small craft brewers to use this water in their beer. This is a terrific idea. People get grossed out by the idea that the water came from sewage, but as I have written about before, this is a mental and cultural block. There is no reason to fear drinking water that has been reclaimed from waste; consider the fact that most of our municipal water sits in reservoirs filled with fish and plant matter, as well as trash, fuel and oil residue from boats, and other unsavory flotsam and jetsam. That water goes through the same treatment process as wastewater. So why not use it? Drought conditions and continued water scarcity means we need to look at every option, and as far as I can tell there is no downside here.

    Why Dump Treated Wastewater When You Could Make Beer With It?