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'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat

#141

Post by contravariant »

pca006132 wrote: post #110
contravariant wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has probably been a mistake to have so many articles that are effectively "We measured A and its value suggests the following theory" rather than "To test theory B we measured A and found it did(n't) agree" I reckon that lack of a good theory is the by far best predictor for non-replicable results.

I think there are several issues with this. In these fields, theories (not so fundamental ones) may not be very useful, in contrast with fields like Mathematics or Physics where a hypothesis may lead to a lot of other theoretical results. For example, if material A has property X, there will be a lot of applications for it, but this hypothesis cannot be used as a foundation for other theoretical research. As a result…

Not sure if properties of materials is the best example, those tend to have some theory behind them that, if not explains, at least defines the property and its consequences. If one research team measures the stiffness of a material it's easy enough to make a test that replicates their result.

Medical research in particular seems to suffer a lot from papers where something has been measured with no supporting theory whatsoever and consequently no real information other than "If you do what we did you probably get the same result". Rather unsurprisingly this is hard to replicate because there's no theory telling you what is and isn't relevant to replicate.

I'm not saying this is easy to fix, but maybe we should focus more effort on papers that expand the theory, rather than papers that at best show that something might be the case but we don't know why.

Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat

#143

Post by perrygeo »

pessimizer wrote: post #125
endisneigh wrote: post #57

more diet silliness. look, this is the ultimate diet: - Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Mostly unprocessed. Nutrition science has come up with so many contradictory conclusions in the past decades.

It's partially tautological. "Not too much" communicates no information, it might as well be "eat correctly."

But taken together (I believe the statement should be written with commas instead of periods) that sentence fully answers your question - what is eating correctly? mostly plants, minimally processed. If you do that, you'll have no trouble managing proportions.

Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat

#144

Post by jimrandomh »

jimrandomh wrote: post #142

Primary source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... .

The whole thing reads like lawyers talking about bugs in a spreasheet, without being willing to show the spreadsheet itself. And everything in the spreadsheet itself is survey data, not the results of experiments, which puts it on shaky footing to begin with. My own perspective is that this entire branch of research--trying to figure out risk factors for nutrition based on non-intervential studies--is a failed paradigm which cannot reasonably be expected to produce true conclusions, has a long history of producing false conclusions that were later overturned. It's basically pseudoscience.

Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat

#145

Post by MonkeyMalarky »

eganist wrote: post #137
drno123 wrote: post #129

Every PhD student should, in order to obtain PhD, not only do his original research but reproduce another published result. This will make PhD harder to get, so PhD’s will become more valuable (and more vetted), and we will have people verify published studies.

Wow, I can't think of anything practically wrong with this. I can think of plenty of reasons why it won't happen (notably the downward pressure on the candidate pipeline, which for a variety of reasons isn't an outcome research institutions don't want), but I'm wondering if the best place to apply the pressure would be the accreditation institutions and the Department of Education.

Might want a restriction like research from an unaffiliated institution / research group. I don't think reproducing results from someone in the same lab has much value.

Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat

#146

Post by watwut »

eganist wrote: post #137
drno123 wrote: post #129

Every PhD student should, in order to obtain PhD, not only do his original research but reproduce another published result. This will make PhD harder to get, so PhD’s will become more valuable (and more vetted), and we will have people verify published studies.

Wow, I can't think of anything practically wrong with this. I can think of plenty of reasons why it won't happen (notably the downward pressure on the candidate pipeline, which for a variety of reasons isn't an outcome research institutions don't want), but I'm wondering if the best place to apply the pressure would be the accreditation institutions and the Department of Education.

One problem is that PhDs are already overworked and effectively taken advantage of. So, something would need to be removed from stuff they already do.

Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat

#147

Post by eganist »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #145
eganist wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I can't think of anything practically wrong with this. I can think of plenty of reasons why it won't happen (notably the downward pressure on the candidate pipeline, which for a variety of reasons isn't an outcome research institutions don't want), but I'm wondering if the best place to apply the pressure would be the accreditation institutions and the Department of Education.

Might want a restriction like research from an unaffiliated institution / research group. I don't think reproducing results from someone in the same lab has much value.

Ah, that's a good idea. And it pushes a more adversarial dynamic that might motivate people to debunk eyebrow-raising conclusions from competing institutions.

Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat

#148

Post by z9znz »

surfpel wrote: post #49
z9znz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> eating meat is a common activity globally for all of human history... That's a very bold stroke, especially since most of human history is unwritten and not well understood. This topic is "red" meat. That does not include fish, insects, and other non-red meats. The human diet was historically highly dependent upon whatever was locally available until the last 100 years (or less). Also, the gut biomes of humans were…

This comment is ignorant of a lot of things. > That's a very bold stroke, especially since most of human history is unwritten and not well understood. You don’t need written records to determine the broad strokes of early human diets. That’s an archeological problem for biological anthropologist who in fact have determined that meat entered the human diet around the time our brains grew substantially in size. There’s…

I never said that meat was not available for all of human history or that prehistoric humans did not consume meat.

I'm talking about the (low quality) quantities available to almost anyone almost anywhere in the world for a relatively low price. And from looking at developing economies, it seems increased consumption of meat is an intentional sign of increasing wealth.

As far as large scale domesticated animal production, that is a "relatively" new thing. Before modern transportation, there were many parts of the world where such meat was minimal or simply not available.

Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat

#149

Post by watwut »

latchkey wrote: post #78
Enginerrrd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peronsally, IMO: you should submit methodology--including the data analysis and statistical tests you'll perform, to a journal before the study has been conducted. Then, they say yes or no and if yes you perform the study and as long as it is performed to the approved specifications, you get published.

Wouldn't that just put the journals in control of what studies get performed (as well as what gets published)? Seems weird to give all that power to the journals.

There are already pre-print servers where you can pre-register your studies. It is not mandatory, but it is a think.

Re: 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat

#150

Post by LorenPechtel »

kurthr wrote: post #135
dale_glass wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual studies shouldn't be the primary focus. It shouldn't fall to every individual researcher to be fully accurate and honest. This is just not possible because people are imperfect, and have all the wrong incentives in many cases. What we need is a system designed to deal with this better. My suggestion would be greater incentives to the publication of negative results, and incentives to reproduce research. Cr…

The problem is that for any sufficiently complex or advanced research there are enough variables to contend with that there are 1000s of ways to get "no repeatable result" and only a few to actually replicate. Knowing which variables need to be controlled is part of the expertise, training, and lore. Knowing when those variables are getting out of control and how to fix them early (knowing which knob or often combina…

If you can't replicate that means the original research didn't document the conditions adequately.
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