by Chris Masterjohn The know-it-all? Or this curious little fellow? One of the most pervasive human traits is perhaps one of the greatest scourges of mankind — the inability to say “I don’t know.” There are some things we know quite well about genetics. Many “molecular traits” are rooted in single genes that are passed …
Publication Bias
How a Study Can Show Something to Be True When It’s Completely False — Regression to the Mean
In a previous post, “The Great Unknown: Using the Statistics to Explore the Secret Depths of Unpublished Research,” I discussed one way a study can show something to be true when it’s false, or vice versa. If some nutrient or drug has a “true” biological effect, and we repeat many studies of the phenomenon, we …
The Great Unknown: Using Statistics to Explore the Secret Depths of Unpublished Research
I spent a large portion of the day today trying to figure out why a couple papers I have showed that EGCG, a component of green tea, increases glucose uptake into isolated skeletal muscle cells, but another shows the opposite. The methods of these papers were a little different, and it’s possible to speculate that …
Saturated Fat Is Not Associated With CVD, Evidence of Publication Bias
A recent meta-analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition pooled together data from 21 unique studies that included almost 350,000 people, about 11,000 of whom developed cardiovascular disease (CVD), tracked for an average of 14 years, and concluded that there is no relationship between the intake of saturated fat and the incidence of heart …