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Sadly, this is another garbage study that you should ignore. Why garbage? For 2 main reason. First reason: the methodology. They way those correlation studies
by kjksf 2y ago
Sadly, this is another garbage study that you should ignore.
Why garbage? For 2 main reason.
First reason: the methodology. They way those correlation studies work is that they study large number of people (here 130k) over long period (here "up to 43 years").
They want to study "effect of X on Y". Here X is "consumption of red meat, processed or not" and Y is "dementia".
So what they do is they periodically ask "how much of X do you do". In this case apparently "how many servings of processed red meat you eat per month", "how many servings of unprocessed red meat".
Would be able to tell a precise "how many servings of processed red meat you eat per month"? Like, what is "processed meat"? What is "serving"?
If you're not taking meticulous notes you have not hope of answering this precisely, from memory. And let's face it, those 130k people are not fastidious scientists, they just answer a periodic survey that has no importance to them.
The opposite of "precise" is garbage. And garbage data leads to garbage conclusions.
Second reason: confounding of factors. No controlling for other variables. What if dementia is affected by heavy drinking, heavy smoking, drug use, lack of muscles or excessive sugar / carb intake?
What if heavy drinking is the real causation with 54% increase in dementia and the 14% correlation is purely coincidental i.e. in this particular 130k population, heavy drinkers are also eaters of processed meat?
You should ignore all those kinds of studies. They are all garbage.
There's also a general strand of anti-meat studies.
When you study "effect of eating X on bad outcome Y", then you'll find a correlation to something at some point. It's just a matter of time. The more studies you do, the more likely you'll find a spurious correlation.
Somehow the studies of "eating meat causes bad Y" get a lot of press, including landing on HN page. When was the last time you've seen a similar study for vegan diet or drinking soda or eating candy?
- tommiegannert 2y ago> Would be able to tell a precise "how many servings of processed red meat you eat per month"? Like, what is "processed meat"? What is "serving"? If I were to do it every month for 43 years, I'd probably become pretty good at it. Your complaint is that it's a self-reporting study. Sure, not very rigorous, but the article doesn't say it was only based on self-reporting. > And let's face it, those 130k people are not fastidious scientists, they just answer a periodic survey that has no importance to them. How do you know? > Second reason: confounding of factors. No controlling for other variables. What's your source? The NYTimes page doesn't link to the paper (claiming it's not published yet,) and since they're not even mentioning who the author is, it seems strange that they would go into confounding variables. This is a terrible article, because I can't say anything about whether the study is worth following up or not, and I agree with others it shouldn't be on HN (until published). You had a much more tangible take-away, and I'm curious how.
- drewcoo 2y ago> I can't say anything about whether the study is worth following up or not To the GP's point, that would make this garbage.
- tommiegannert 2y agoI don't see how you can draw that conclusion. The article about the study is garbage for sure, but that's hardly evidence that the study itself is garbage. Maybe the article is so bad because the study is bad, or maybe it's just NYT misrepresenting it.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y agoSure, I can tell you how much meat I was eating per day 20 years ago! /s
- tzs 2y agoThat's not how these kind of studies work. They periodically over several decades ask you what your current consumption is.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y agoI see, based on the previous commented it seemed to suggest this happened only at the "end" of the 40 years
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoNo study just asks people what they were doing 40 years ago. There are set questionnaires that are filled out on some short period, weekly, monthly, etc... so there is a lot of data. Self reporting has problems. But this is more to get broad trends, such that more detailed studies can zero in on any interesting findings.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago"You should ignore all those kinds of studies. They are all garbage." Joking? So science without observation? No exploration? Sure, correlation isn't causation, how pedantic, but it can be an indicator. Yes, canaries in coal mines are not killed by evil spirits, but dying was indicating something to investigate. This sounds more like an anti-science bot.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago"Somehow the studies of "eating meat causes bad Y" get a lot of press, including landing on HN page. When was the last time you've seen a similar study for vegan diet or drinking soda or eating candy?" This study was on processed food. NOT MEAT. Junk Food Vegan studies also find problems with processed foods. There are plenty of studies posted on soda and candy. Probably so many that it isn't news anymore. Right from the article, plenty of references for your 'vegan' bias to chew on: "like soy protein isolate, high fructose corn syrup, modified starches, flavorings or color additives. Many of these foods also have high levels of sugar, fat or sodium, which have long been known to adversely affect health. sodas, flavored yogurts, instant soups and most breakfast cereals, make up a huge part of the American diet."