Junk Science!

 

By Kim Marquardt, RN MSN

This blog post is from the Nurse Kim archives of myth busting. I want to share some "alternative" or maybe just lesser known health and wellness viewpoints for you to chew on.

*These posts are not intended as official medical advice.

They ARE meant to be fun, informative, and thought provoking, hopefully sparking an interest for you to do your own research (you can start with the links I provide!) and discover the marvels of the human body, and how it can function at its optimal performance level if we understand how it works and interacts with our environment and our diet.

I have a passion for health and wellness through lifestyle and nutrition and have done thousands of hours of research in addition to being a registered nurse for 23 years. I have done A LOT of self-experimentation in and around diet, lifestyle, body care, and supplementation and have spent a lot of time looking into the science behind it all (or lack thereof!). Check back weekly for the latest post!

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For the purpose of clarity, discernment, and general serenity in today's day and age of click bait headlines I wanted to take my weekly blogging opportunity to iron out a few ways to identify if information is just pure junk… or not.

My shining star example, although there is an endless supply, is the study that came out in early 2019 in the American Heart Association Journal Circulation about diet soda shortening people’s lives. I only pick on this particular one because I had a few diet soda loving friends reach out (knowing my love for all thing nutrition science and research) fretting about what it meant for them. 

Let's get something cleared up first and foremost. I don't sell diet soda. I don't drink diet soda (no judgment if you do). Just pointing this out in the interest of being transparent about there being no self-serving bias on my part, or an attempt to alleviate my own fear/guilt for enjoying a particular beverage. With that out of the way...

Let’s talk some science basics:

• The gold standard for scientific research is the double-blind, controlled trial... where you have two groups, one with an intervention and one without, you control ALL FACTORS, and you publish the statistical outcome. 

Not all research of course can be done this way, and certainly not on humans, it just wouldn't be ethical. So sometimes, we do rely on some less rigorous methods of study like...

• Epidemiological research, which shows observable CORRELATIONS between things. 

For example, did you know that every time a Nicholas Cage movie is released, there is an increase in backyard swimming pool drownings? True story. But perhaps, as you might’ve guessed, actually not related.

If you want some entertainment, you can check out the 10 most bizarre correlations and have a few laughs.

Well then… how do we know if epidemiological research, like our friendly neighborhood diet soda study above, is ever reliable? Well… we rely on some common sense factors, sure, and also, something called the 'relative risk ratio.' Relative risk is when you take the potentially causal relationship of one thing to another, and you tie in all the other contributing factors, and calculate how likely it is that one caused the other.

The belief that smoking causes lung cancer, for example, is a result of epidemiological research. But it is a VERY STRONG correlation based on the relative risk ratio after calculating other factors.

Red meat causing cancer is another example of epidemiological research, however with an extremely poor relative risk ratio, like... not even a true correlation according to the relative risk ratio. Well, you guessed it, our diet soda study here is similar. Very low relative risk ratios, so probably not something to warrant dumping all our diet Fanta down the sink just yet.

And alas, even over and above epidemiological research, please beware of:

• Expert opinion... yes even mine. Of course, this is not science AT ALL and is only as good as your "expert," which apparently everyone is these days 😉

So… in your article reading pastimes, anytime you see: 

• "observational"
• "epidemiological" 
• "requires further confirmation" 

And especially... 

• "according to expert opinion"... 

...just remember that Nicholas Cage movies may cause backyard swimming pool drownings... or they may not. Either way… probably not something to freak out over. Have a great rest of week ONE!!!