Yes, all those wine and health studies are flawed
by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On
Say the experts: “The state of nutrition research is poor”
When the first high-end dog foods came on the market, I asked one of the leading researchers in the field if there was any science that could prove that the pricey stuff was better for pets than the stuff sold in gigantic bags at the supermarket.
No, he told me, save for the stool test — and that was more practical than scientific. The stool test, I asked? Yes, he said; dogs produce more stool when they eat cheaper dog food.
We laughed, and he told me why there was no science to prove anything one way or the other. The only way to show that one food was healthier was to get two groups of dogs, feed each group one of the foods for its entire life, and then hope for the best. “And what researcher would want to spend so much of their career pursuing something that may not turn out to be prove anything at all?” he asked.
I was reminded of that story this week when two Harvard medical researchers said pretty much the same thing in discussing human health studies, including all the foolishness about drinking more than one glass of wine in a lifetime. Anupam B. Jena and Christopher M. Worsham, writing in the New York Times, found that:
“The state of nutrition research is poor, and the problems afflict much of the research into dietary and lifestyle claims around things like coffee, wine, dark chocolate, fad diets, the amount you exercise — you name it. This in part explains other recent flip-flopping around whether moderate drinking is good for you: A recent review found the research methods used in many past studies on the benefits of drinking alcohol to be flawed.”
The piece is worth reading, if a bit nuanced. The gist? That correlation does not imply causation, so that if “people who consume more sweeteners are more likely to have Type 2 diabetes, did the sweeteners cause the diabetes? Or are the people who use more sweeteners also more likely to have diabetes because of other aspects of their diet or health?”
Substitute wine for sweeteners, and you get the point.
The researchers suggest a variety of ways to overcome the flaws in these studies, including those dealing with alcohol. Best yet, they understand the pressure to publish studies, which gives us silliness like the so-called wine, cigarette, and cancer connection.
As they write: “But filling the research void with studies that do little to help us understand the cause-and-effect relationships of our real-life dietary decisions does little to advance understanding; in fact, it sows confusion.”
Because legitimate scientific research is about a lot more than the amount of a dog’s stool. Would that more researchers understood that.