![]() ![]() Contradictory research findings that challenged the paradigm were systematically stifled and ignored, and self-interested researchers - as much as Big Food - shaped the research agenda, media reporting on diet, and public perception. Many of the health policies and personal dietary choices we made related to fat (and saturated fat in particular) were based on very flawed and biased evidence. Smith explains why studies on diet and nutrition are so unreliable, borrowing insights from Nina Teicholz's fantastic book The Big Fat Surprise to unpick the low-fat and Mediterranean Diet crazes. In this sentence, he perfectly encapsulates why we have been led astray on food: "In short, bold policies have been based on fragile science, and the long term results may be terrible." Richard Smith, the former editor of the journal, combed through five of the most popular nutrition science books of the last several years. Subscribe by email to follow the accumulating evidence and observations that shape our view of health, obesity, and policy.If you want a quick primer on everything that's wrong with how we think about food today, read " Are some diets 'mass murder'?" in the British Medical Journal.ĭr. ![]() Still Life with Fish, painting by Konstantin Korovin / WikiArt Nothing less will do.Ĭlick here for the paper by Agarwal and Ioannidis, and here for the recommendations of Kroeger et al. To trust the science of nutrition, we need high standards for rigorous, transparent, and reproducible research. ![]() In the end, the issues that PREDIMED raises are all about trust. Instead, what really matters in science is the data, the methods for producing it, and the logic for connecting it to conclusions. “Science does not look into the souls of people to determine who is a truth teller,” they write. Cynthia Kroeger and colleagues suggest that renewed focus on core principles of science is key. Of course, it’s hardly the only field facing scrutiny on this issue.Ī distinguished list of nutrition scientists recently published a roadmap for this task. We need to get serious about increased scientific rigor in nutrition research. A Constructive Way ForwardĬlearly, many people in the field agree. That a tool is often misused is usually taken as a sign of a need for reform, not abolition. However, that does not mean it cannot not be appropriately used when needed, executed well, and reported well in principle. I think it is often overused, poorly executed, and poorly conveyed. I do not share the view that nutrition epidemiology is beyond repair. Writing in Vox, Julia Belluz quotes Ioannidis dismissing nutrition epidemiology as “a field that’s grown old and died.” He says, “At some point, we need to bury the corpse and move on to a more open, transparent sharing and controlled experimental way.”ĭean and Professor David Allison offers us a more measured assessment: PREDIMED may provide useful lessons on how to reassess and correct large volumes of published literature and on what methodological safeguards are needed for pivotal multicenter trials. Multiple contradictions between data reported across PREDIMED publications suggest a more generic problem with the trial’s quality. Republication may not solve multiple problems that remain, including the inappropriateness of stopping early given the revised results and the effects on over 200 secondary publications. Thus, Agarwal and Ioannidis see a huge task ahead: On top of that, thousands of other papers have cited the study and its secondary publications. For one thing, the PREDIMED study spawned a mind-boggling array of 267 secondary publications before the retraction. It doesn’t resolve the issues of trust and transparency that this incident raises. That’s because simply retracting and republishing a single paper isn’t enough. Just last week in the BMJ, Arnav Agarwal and John Ioannidis write that we still have a mess on our hands. Even now, there’s still a whole lot of shakin going on. With that action, it shook the world of nutrition science. Last year, the New England Journal of Medicine retracted and then published a revised analysis of the landmark PREDIMED study. PREDIMED and the “Corpse” of Nutrition Science
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