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> both food AND drugs are regulated more strongly than the supplement market Incorrect. Although if you DO think that, I can see why you'd think that suppleme

by Lazare 14y ago

> both food AND drugs are regulated more strongly than the supplement market Incorrect. Although if you DO think that, I can see why you'd think that supplements need more regulation. :) > When I buy red wine, I expect that it will contain alcohol and that it won't contain methanol. When I buy broccoli, I don't expect that it will be contaminated with E. coli - and when it does, I expect that it will be tracked down to the farm in Uelzei and anything else so contaminated get recalled. Yep, just like with supplements. Mislabelled or contaminated supplements are illegal, and the FDA is charged with enforcing those regulations. > When I buy pineapple juice, I don't see claims about how it make semen taste good. Yep, just like with supplements. False claims are illegal, and again, the FDA is charged with enforcing those regulations. Also - no, those studies are still crap. Observational studies simply cannot be used in the way you and the people you quote are using them, full stop. :) (Mind you, I also agree that many supplements on the market do nothing useful, and many of the people taking supplements don't need whatever useful thing the supplement they're using might actually do. I'm just waiting to hear a good reason why we need rules beyond "it has to be whatever it says on the label, it can't actually kill people, and you can't lie about what it does". Keeping in mind, of course, that these are the rules currently in effect...)

dalke 14y ago
By "are regulated" I mean that there are laws and enforcement of those laws. I don't mean only that there needs to be more regulations. (Even if we agree on that, I state it now because I see that it wasn't clear.) Yes, the FDA is charged with enforcing those laws. I think it's done a piss-poor job in doing so, as several of the links which I and others have provided show. I think there's not enough funding for its mandate, I think there's political pressure both to minimize funding for any government oversight ("let the free market fairy decide"), and I think there's political pressure specifically regarding supplements, as described in the linked-to article. You are disdainful of existing research but you don't say why. I've asked for clarification, but you only say that they are full of crap, without explanation. Observational studies are done all the time: with people, whales, forests, hurricanes, volcanoes, galaxies, cosmic particles, earthquakes, and more. Are you saying that all of those observational studies are inherently incorrect? If not, what makes these specific supplement studies full-of-crap while not the ones which don't involve people? What is the methodological error?
- Lazare 14y ago
  I would say that the message of the article is "we need more regulations". My reaction was, basically, "you haven't shown that; at best you've suggested we need better enforcement of existing regulations'. So while I disagree with the original linked article, I'm not sure you and I disagree. :) As for the studies, this is winding far afield, but there's two main ways you can do a study: Controlled and observational. Controlled is hard, but gives good data. Observational is easy, but gives unreliable data, especially when relating to people. To a first approximation, a controlled study can prove things about human health, while an observational study can suggest areas where a controlled study would be useful. It's not that these studies have methodological errors (as far as I know, they don't). It's that they're observational studies, and best case, they can't prove things in the way a controlled study would. If you want a good primer on "what are observational studies and why are they problematic for human health"...I don't actually have one handy. But there was some very good discussion floating around about the "Red Meat Consumption and Mortality" recently published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. A lot of headlines said, basically, "science proves meat will give you cancer", but again, it was an observational study, and it simply didn't show what people who didn't understand statistics thought it did. Some links discussing that: http://www.gnolls.org/2893/always-be-skeptical-of-nutrition-headlines-or-what-red-meat-consumption-and-mortality-pan-et-al-really-tells-us/ http://www.gnolls.org/2893/always-be-skeptical-of-nutrition-... http://garytaubes.com/2012/03/science-pseudoscience-nutritional-epidemiology-and-meat/ http://garytaubes.com/2012/03/science-pseudoscience-nutritio... http://www.marksdailyapple.com/will-eating-red-meat-kill-you/ http://www.marksdailyapple.com/will-eating-red-meat-kill-you... TL;DR: Observational studies are done all the time, but when it comes to humans, they are most definitely not interchangable with controlled studies.

by Lazare 14y ago

dalke 14y ago

By "are regulated" I mean that there are laws and enforcement of those laws. I don't mean only that there needs to be more regulations. (Even if we agree on that, I state it now because I see that it wasn't clear.) Yes, the FDA is charged with enforcing those laws. I think it's done a piss-poor job in doing so, as several of the links which I and others have provided show. I think there's not enough funding for its mandate, I think there's political pressure both to minimize funding for any government oversight ("let the free market fairy decide"), and I think there's political pressure specifically regarding supplements, as described in the linked-to article. You are disdainful of existing research but you don't say why. I've asked for clarification, but you only say that they are full of crap, without explanation. Observational studies are done all the time: with people, whales, forests, hurricanes, volcanoes, galaxies, cosmic particles, earthquakes, and more. Are you saying that all of those observational studies are inherently incorrect? If not, what makes these specific supplement studies full-of-crap while not the ones which don't involve people? What is the methodological error?

Lazare 14y ago
I would say that the message of the article is "we need more regulations". My reaction was, basically, "you haven't shown that; at best you've suggested we need better enforcement of existing regulations'. So while I disagree with the original linked article, I'm not sure you and I disagree. :) As for the studies, this is winding far afield, but there's two main ways you can do a study: Controlled and observational. Controlled is hard, but gives good data. Observational is easy, but gives unreliable data, especially when relating to people. To a first approximation, a controlled study can prove things about human health, while an observational study can suggest areas where a controlled study would be useful. It's not that these studies have methodological errors (as far as I know, they don't). It's that they're observational studies, and best case, they can't prove things in the way a controlled study would. If you want a good primer on "what are observational studies and why are they problematic for human health"...I don't actually have one handy. But there was some very good discussion floating around about the "Red Meat Consumption and Mortality" recently published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. A lot of headlines said, basically, "science proves meat will give you cancer", but again, it was an observational study, and it simply didn't show what people who didn't understand statistics thought it did. Some links discussing that: http://www.gnolls.org/2893/always-be-skeptical-of-nutrition-headlines-or-what-red-meat-consumption-and-mortality-pan-et-al-really-tells-us/ http://www.gnolls.org/2893/always-be-skeptical-of-nutrition-... http://garytaubes.com/2012/03/science-pseudoscience-nutritional-epidemiology-and-meat/ http://garytaubes.com/2012/03/science-pseudoscience-nutritio... http://www.marksdailyapple.com/will-eating-red-meat-kill-you/ http://www.marksdailyapple.com/will-eating-red-meat-kill-you... TL;DR: Observational studies are done all the time, but when it comes to humans, they are most definitely not interchangable with controlled studies.