Opinion: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Nutrition research must overcome pseudoscientific measures and self-interest to make progress in the fight against obesity.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/37918/title/Opinion–A-Wolf-in-Sheep-s-Clothing/
I have a strong interest in nutrition (my degree, after all, is in biochemistry and nutrition) and have written about it from time to time. It is amazing to me how certain areas of research have so little scientific method in them; nutrition research seems to be clearly one of these based on the article. I have read a few papers on this topic over the years and haven’t been terribly impressed with the rigor so my feelings are the author is spot on in his analysis. Researching anything to do with humans is problematic at any time, when you are doing research on something where people have a built-in biases (does anyone expect to get straight answers for this: “hey, you fat ass, how much have you been pigging at the trough?”) getting reliable information is damn near impossible, yet billions of dollars are moved around based on policy decisions built on such dubious foundations. As the author says, once you get a culture of dysfunction it is very difficult to change it; the mentors become the problem.
So, keep this in mind the next time you see some headline trumpeting something or other about nutrition.
