Where's the rampant fact-checking and criticism of major dietary studies I usually see on HN? Could this have anything to do with bias against high-fructose cor

Where's the rampant fact-checking and criticism of major dietary studies I usually see on HN? Could this have anything to do with bias against high-fructose corn syrup, which is chemically almost identical to honey? The LA Times reported on the study in depth, and there are some serious deficiencies. > "After eight weeks, three groups of rats weighed essentially the same – the chow-only rats (462 grams on average), the 24-hour HFCS rats (470 grams) and the sugar-water rats (477 grams). But the rats that were able to drink the HFCS solution for 12 hours each day weighed in at an average of 502 grams, a difference that was deemed statistically significant." > "Complicating things further, the researchers cite a related study of female rats that found no difference in weight gain between animals that consumed HFCS or sugar over an eight-week period." >"the researchers found that rats allowed to drink the HFCS solution gained more weight over six months than rats with no access to a sweetened beverage. The difference was dramatic: rats with 24-hour access to HFCS gained 27% more weight than the rats stuck with chow only. But the researchers didn’t include a third group of rats with access to sugar, so it’s impossible to say whether HFCS was worse than regular sugar."* >"The researchers remedied this problem in a third experiment involving female rats. Over a seven-month period, rats that were able to drink sugar water for 12 hours a day gained 183% of their body weight – the exact same amountas rats who could drink HFCS solution for 12 hours a day. However, female rats with 24-hour access to HFCS boosted their body weight by 200%. It’s not clear why high-fructose corn syrup was more fattening over an eight-week period when it was available for 12 hours of the day (but not 24), yet the opposite was true when the experiment lasted for seven months." This is what happens when reporters don't understand what they're writing about. *"(Why didn’t they test the long-term effects of sugar? The researchers said it wasn’t necessary because sugar consumption didn’t affect body weight in their first experiment. True, but neither did HFCS when made available for 24 hours a day, and they did test that.)" http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/03/high-fructose-corn-syrup-hfcs-sugar-princeton-study.html http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/03/high-f...