Failure of Nutritional Knowledge in Science and Practice

“The idea that the same experiment will always produce the same result, no matter who performs it, is one of the cornerstones of science’s claim to truth. However, more than 70% of the researchers (pdf), who took part in a recent study published in Nature have tried and failed to replicate another scientist’s experiment. Another study found that at least 50% of life science research cannot be replicated. The same holds for 51% of economics papers”
~Julian Kirchherr, Why we can’t trust academic journals to tell the scientific truth

“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue”
~Richard Horton, editor in chief of The Lancet, one of the leading medical journals where nutritional studies are published

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor”
~Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine

“Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”
~John Ioannidis, Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

“Possibly, the large majority of produced systematic reviews and meta‐analyses are unnecessary, misleading, and/or conflicted.”
~John Ioannidis, The Mass Production of Redundant, Misleading, and Conflicted Systematic Reviews and Meta‐analyses

“Nutritional epidemiologists valiantly work in an important, challenging frontier of science and health. However, methods used to-date (even by the best scientists with best intentions) have yielded little reliable, useful information.”
~John Ioannidis, Unreformed nutritional epidemiology: a lamp post in the dark forest

“Associations with cancer risk or benefits have been claimed for most food ingredients. Many single studies highlight implausibly large effects, even though evidence is weak. Effect sizes shrink in meta-analyses.”
~Jonathan Schoenfeld & John Ioannidis, Is everything we eat associated with cancer? A systematic cookbook review

“Some nutrition scientists and much of the public often consider epidemiologic associations of nutritional factors to represent causal effects that can inform public health policy and guidelines. However, the emerging picture of nutritional epidemiology is difficult to reconcile with good scientific principles. The field needs radical reform.”
~John Ioannidis, The Challenge of Reforming Nutritional Epidemiologic Research

“Incoming residents to a pediatric residency program appear to be deficient in basic nutritional knowledge. With the ever increasing burden of obesity and its associated co-morbidities on society, it is imperative that medical education focuses on preparing physicians to appropriately counsel all populations on proper nutrition.”
~M. Castillo, R. Feinstein, J Tsang & M. Fisher, Basic nutrition knowledge of recent medical graduates entering a pediatric residency program.

“Many US medical schools still fail to prepare future physicians for everyday nutrition challenges in clinical practice. Nutrition is a dominant contributor to most chronic diseases and a key determinant of poor treatment outcomes. It cannot be a realistic expectation for physicians to effectively address obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hospital malnutrition, and many other conditions as long as they are not taught during medical school how to recognize and treat the nutritional root causes.”
~Kelly Adams, W. Scott Butsch & Martin Kohlmeier, The State of Nutrition Education at US Medical Schools

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I’ve written about this topic before. In some of those earlier posts, I used a few of the above quotes. But I also came across some new quotes that emphasize the point. I decided to gather them all together in one place without analysis commentary, as they speak for themselves. I’ll allow myself to make a single note of significance.

A lot of medical research is done by doctors. In Rigor Mortis, Richard Harris points out that doctors aren’t generally well educated and trained in research methodology or statistical analysis. My cousin who does medical research confirmed this observation. On top of that, doctors when they were back in medical school also weren’t taught much about diet and nutrition — interns right out of medical school get about half the nutritional questions wrong, which would be a failing grade.

So, combine doctors not trained in research doing research on diet and nutrition which they never learned much about. It is not surprising that nutritional studies is one of the worst areas of replication crisis. The following are the prior posts about all of this:

Flawed Scientific Research
Scientific Failure and Self Experimentation
Clearing Away the Rubbish
Most Mainstream Doctors Would Fail Nutrition

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Bonus Video – Below is a speech given by Dr. Aseem Malhotra at the European Parliament last year and another speech by Dr. Michael Eades. Among other things, he covers some of the bad methodologies, deceptive or misleading practices, and conflicts of interest.

Sometimes research is intentionally bad because of the biases of funding and ideological agendas, an issue I’ve covered numerous times before. It can’t all be blamed on the insufficient education of doctors in their doing research. After the video, I’ll throw in the links to those other pieces as well.

 

 

 

Cold War Silencing of Science
Eliminating Dietary Dissent
Dietary Dictocrats of EAT-Lancet
Monsanto is Safe and Good, Says Monsanto