Corrections to the New Review Paper on Dietary Fat and Cardiovascular Risk

By -
The meta-analysis by Chowdhury et al. raised quite a furor from certain segments of researchers and the popular media.  I find this reaction interesting.  I usually write about obesity, which is a topic of great interest to people, but my post about the review paper received more than twice my usual traffic.  People whose findings or opinions are questioned by the paper are aggressively denouncing it in the media, even calling for retraction (1).  This resembles what happens every time a high-profile review paper is published that doesn't support the conventional stance on fatty acids and health (e.g., Siri-Tarino et al. [2], which despite much gnashing of teeth is still standing*).  I'm not sure why this issue in particular arouses such excitement, but I find it amusing and disturbing at the same time.  This kind of reaction would be totally out of place in most other fields of science, where aggressive public media outbursts by researchers are usually frowned upon.

As it turns out, the critics have a point this time.  Significant errors were uncovered in the original version of the meta-analysis, which have been corrected in the current version (3).  These include the following two errors, one of which alters the conclusion somewhat:
  • The outcome of one observational study on omega-3 fatty acids was reported as slightly negative, when it was actually strongly positive.  This changes the conclusion of the meta-analysis, making it somewhat more favorable to omega-3 consumption for cardiovascular protection.
  • The authors left out two studies on omega-6 fatty acids.  These didn't change the overall conclusions on omega-6.

Read more »

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Feedback in Three Steps

By -
© 2003, Coert Visser As a manager you have just led a meeting. John brought forward a proposal to implement a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. He did this convincingly and enthusiastically but seemed to leave very little room for his colleagues Michael and Peter to respond. You want to talk to John about this...but how? Feedback is essential Giving and getting feedback is essential. The fact is, no matter how hard we try, we don’t always automatically perform excellent. We need information from others to know what is expected from us, how others perceive us, what we do well and what we should do better. Sometimes others have more expertise or skills, they look at your behavior from a different angle, and they may have access to different information. When feedback functions well in an organization, people are interested in signals about the effects of their behavior and they constructively correct each other. Fantastic! But now the less rosy daily practice.….. Feedback ca...
Read more

Esoteric Aspects of Edgar Cayce's Life

By -
Image
Gladys Davis, Hugh Lynn Cayce (right) and Harmon Hartzell Bro were among the members of this A Search for God study group meeting at A.R.E. Headquarters at Lake Holly in 1950.  This photo is from Edgar Cayce's Photographic Legacy (1978) compiled by David M. Leary. Some of Edgar Cayce's psychic (channeled) readings diagnosed and prescribed for people's physical ailments and disturbances.  These were described by Thomas Sugrue in There Is A River (1942) as presenting "cases, hundreds and hundreds of them, wherein the treatments have been faithfully followed, and the predicted results have been achieved." When information that was sought wasn't successfully forthcoming (such as locations for lost treasure or oil wells), Cayce and his associates were baffled.  These circumstances are chronicled in the book The Outer Limits of Edgar Cayce's Power (1971) by Edgar's sons Edgar Evans Cayce and Hugh Lynn Cayce.  One chapter, "Readings for...
Read more

Case Profile: Edgar Cayce

By -
Image
Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) became known as an American mystic and "psychic diagnostician" healer following hypnotic sessions where he would go into a trance and his body would be used as a channel.   The communicating Intelligence would speak in plurality, usually beginning a 'reading' with a statement such as "We have the body . . ." and finishing upon saying "We are through for the present."  I first learned about Cayce through reading Jess Stearn's biographies Edgar Cayce — The Sleeping Prophet (1967) and A Prophet in His Own Country — The Story of the Young Edgar Cayce (1974).  The first biography to be written about Cayce is There Is a River: The Story of Edgar Cayce (1943) by Thomas Sugrue, whose book heightened public understanding about Cayce during the final years of his life.  Sidney Kirkpatrick's Edgar Cayce: An American Prophet was published in 2000. Since 2005, I've occasionally studied portions of the extant 14,306 Cayce...
Read more