It is OK to eat fatty food: Another piece of commonly accepted medical advice seriously questioned
I am always somewhat doubtful about medical journal empirical studies and I haven't had a chance to look at this paper, but the findings are interesting: "We usually have only one shot at a very large-scale trial on a particular issue," [Dr. Michael Thun] said. The results, the study investigators agreed, do not justify recommending low-fat diets to the public to reduce their heart disease and cancer risk.
posted by John Lott at 1:32 PM
2 Comments:
I think there are many medical studies out there that are based on small populations or groups of people because of the difficulty and expense of studying or expanding a stuyd to a large group. This is unfortunate because as we have seen with some studies on drug side effects and again with the studies on diet and cancer a small group does not always provide a real correlation or imply a real causation. These can lead to deadly consequences (In the case of drugs) or a misinformed public.
I have lots of concerns about medical journal studies once you get away from simple controlled experiments. Take the simple case of alcohol consumption. Studies indicate that modest alcohol consumption is associated with increased life expectancy. But is it that certain people who drink modestly who live longer or is it that the drinking does it. The statistics that medical people use do not deal with this problem at all.
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