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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday June 16 2018, @06:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the science-is-hard dept.

Errors Trigger Retraction Of Study On Mediterranean Diet's Heart Benefits

Ask just about anybody, and you'll probably hear that a healthy diet is one full of fruits and vegetables, olive oil, nuts and fish — what's called Mediterranean diet. A lot of research has suggested people who eat this way tend to be healthier, but it's been harder to prove whether that is because of the diet or some other factor. So in 2013, many took notice of a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that seemed to provide some proof. The study found that people eating the Mediterranean diet supplemented with olive oil were 30 percent less likely to experience a heart attack, stroke, or death from cardiovascular causes than people assigned to a low-fat diet. People who stuck with a Mediterranean diet supplemented with mixed nuts had a 28 percent lower risk than those asked to follow a low-fat diet.

The results got wide media attention, including from NPR. But the New England Journal of Medicine retracted the paper Wednesday because of problems in the way the study was carried out. [...] The authors of the NEJM paper are replacing the 2013 paper with a corrected version that shows people following the diet had a similarly reduced level of heart attacks and strokes. The major change is softer language about the conclusions. The revised paper says only that people eating the Mediterranean diet had fewer strokes and heart attacks, not, as the original paper claimed, that the diet was the direct cause of those health benefits.

Anesthesiologist Dr. John Carlisle published an analysis of clinical studies in 2012 that led to the retraction of over 160 papers by Dr. Yoshitaka Fujii due to improper randomization of study participants. He began applying his method to thousands of other studies, including 934 in the New England Journal of Medicine. He flagged 11 of them, including the 2013 Mediterranean diet paper. The lead author of the paper confirmed that there were problems with randomization in the study:

It turns out approximately 14 percent of the more than 7,400 study participants hadn't been assigned randomly to either the Mediterranean diet or a low-fat one. When couples joined the study together, both had been picked to follow the same diet. At one of the 11 participating study sites, the lead investigator had assigned the same diet to an entire village and didn't tell the rest of the investigators.

"This affected only a small part of the trial," says Martínez González. When the researchers reanalyzed the data excluding the nonrandomized people, the results were the same, he adds. Still, because everybody wasn't randomly assigned to different groups, the study can no longer claim the diet directly caused those health benefits. "We need to tone down the results, but it is just a little bit," he says.

Five other papers were corrected, but not retracted.

Also at Science Magazine.


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @03:23PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @03:23PM (#693971)

    Rice cakes and purified water? The diet fad now is eating steak, chicken, eggs, bacon, nuts, and salad while drinking vodka, whiskey, and spiked seltzers. Just cut out all the grains and sugar the government tries to get you to eat.

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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 16 2018, @04:13PM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 16 2018, @04:13PM (#693990) Journal

    Well, sugars anyway. Grains aren't bad in moderation. A slice of bread is good, now and then. I like fresh baked bread!

    • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 16 2018, @06:01PM

      by Gaaark (41) on Saturday June 16 2018, @06:01PM (#694014) Journal

      Try gluten free bread. You'll stop eating bread. :P
      :)

      I order my burgers lettuce wrapped and without the bun, even if they offer a gluten free bun. Hate to ruin a good burger with a GF bun.

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---