Scientific reports have increasingly linked the bacteria in your gut to health and maladies, often making exaggerated claims. Did you hear about the mice who were given fecal transplants from skinny humans and totally got skinny! Well, some of the more gut-busting results might not be as solid as they seem. Epidemiologist Bill Hanage offers five critical questions to ask when confronted by the latest microbiome research:
1) Can experiments detect differences that matter? (are they specific enough?)
2) Does the study show causation or just correlation?
3) What is the mechanism?
4) How much do experiments reflect reality?
5) Could anything else explain the results?
(disclaimer: Nature is owned by Macmillan Publishers Limited Company. )
UPDATE: Corrected Nature ownership.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 22 2014, @01:32PM
Nature is owned by Macmillan [macmillan.com]. They may still have high subscription fees, but the reference to "Evilver" is misplaced and childish. Elsevier, Springer, Macmillan - all the big academic publishers live by charging high subscription fees for freely provided content.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday August 22 2014, @02:05PM
> charging high subscription fees for freely provided content.
"My name is Inigo Montayo, you killed my fa"... no wait, wrong quote... "I do not think it means what you think it means." There, that's better.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 22 2014, @03:48PM
The "content" of academic journals is provided by scientists, who are not paid. In fact, many journals charge the authors - typically $100/page and $500/figure for the privilege of publishing. The reviewers are not compensated. The associate editors are volunteers. An institutional subscription to Nature is $5,000/year.
The publisher does some formatting, sets up the print run, and hosts the web servers, but they don't provide any more content than soylent: "powered by your submissions."
(Score: 2) by carguy on Friday August 22 2014, @06:40PM
...The publisher does some formatting,...
I thought that the big publishers did another thing too -- weed through thousands of submitted papers to figure out which ones are worthy of publication. Does anyone here know how this selection process works? Is it done by volunteers? Can this process be bought or otherwise subverted?
(Score: 2) by martyb on Friday August 22 2014, @03:56PM
Thanks for pointing that out! The reference was in the original submission and we failed to detect the mistake. Story has been updated and should appear soon on the main page.
For those interested in more details on the ownership, According to Nature's Company information [nature.com] page:
That said, I'm off to study "How to Read a Story Submission Like an Editor" =)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday August 22 2014, @02:42PM
Ignore most popular science reporting, especially any popular science reporting that ends with the conclusion "Buy X and you will be healthier." Even if that conclusion is "Buy X instead of Y", there's a very good chance that both the scientific study in question and the reporting on said study was brought to you by the manufacturers of X.
When it comes to diet in particular, we know what works well enough for all practical purposes (i.e. something else will kill you before your diet does):
That's really it, and anyone who tells you differently ("More of X" or "avoid Y") is almost definitely selling something.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday August 24 2014, @12:00PM
That assumes you have the opportunity to do that. Would your employer approve you to put extended time before lunch into cooking instead of doing whatever you're paid to do? When abroad, how many hotels would let you cook at your room?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 25 2014, @01:31PM
All that takes is a little bit of advanced planning: Bring your lunch with you to work, and heat in the microwave in the break room if necessary (Added bonus: about $150 worth of savings a month).
1. Are you really abroad most of the time?
2. In a lot of places outside the US that rule doesn't apply as much, because restaurant meals that are good for you and tasty are relatively easy to come by - I'd much rather be buying dinner in a small town in Tuscany than in rural Indiana.
3. If you stay in a low-cost hostel rather than a hotel, those often have kitchen areas.
4. If you stay in an area for an extended period of time, you can befriend some of the locals and eat with them.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by goodie on Friday August 22 2014, @02:43PM
Causation and correlation? Isn't that what most studies do anyway when they resort to statistical analyses? I'm no expert but I thought that in many cases, whether on this topic or others, this was an issue.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe on Friday August 22 2014, @03:00PM
The article is actually targeted for press officers and journalists who tend to hype stories and exaggerate conclusions.
The question that comes to mind is: Are they lacking in critical thinking or is this about pageviews? I suspect that this is really about how many clicks the journalists get and how many news outlets regurgitate press releases from University PR departments.
I don't see the situation of poor science journalism changing any time soon since there is an incentive to hype stories and there doesn't seem to be any downside.
- Joe
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday August 22 2014, @04:49PM
Well from my observations, that is EXACTLY the audience this needs to be targeted at.
All too often we see the hand of the journalism major totally messing up reporting on scientific studies. EVEN after they have interviewed the scientists involved. EVEN when the scientist gets to review the paper before publishing, but some how last minute edits insert nonsense, or delete explanations and caveats in the interest of brevity or readability.
Worst offenders seem to be the journalism majors working for university PR offices. Unfortunatly a lot of research is still done in universities and a lot of hyperventilated reporting comes from those sources.
MOST of the time when you are able to track down the actual paper it didn't actually say what the journalist said it did, or the authors had specifically downplayed some conclusions or warned against some interpretations.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Friday August 22 2014, @04:55PM
The subject matter in the paper addressed directly the downsides of "not enough information" - for example stool transplants....
Anytime you have had food poisoning from a restaurant , it is likely you got an unofficial ST....
This is why it needs scientific study, clearly not any stool will do....
It is not an accident that functional domestic human sanitation leads to greatly decreased mortality...
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday August 22 2014, @04:52PM
Is it now the practice to report who owns which journals or magazines?
What was the point of the disclosure? Was there something implied rather than stated in TFS?
(sorry to be so dense).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 23 2014, @12:04AM
Some journals have ownership that bias their selection of articles like in the pharmaceutical area. Some owners is active in causing the same events that the article submitters try to solve the consequences of. Others just manage the journal carelessly. So it matters to an extent. I think it should be a matter of due diligence to pay attention to ownership and editorial functioning.
Seems I however was wrong regarding Nature, sorry for that! But the high subscription fees for knowledge that is payed by taxes and that should be shared anyway with the public for an equal playfield is still detrimental to the functioning of society at large. And Elsevier is still a shady business although they have made some improvements.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday August 23 2014, @01:04AM
Let's do a research project and just feed them fecal matter from skinny humans and see how skinny they get!
I guarantee you I would lose a significant amount of weight if that ingredient was fed to me.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]