Every single day, our news feeds are inundated with studies. We’re told that certain foods are bad for our health, only to find a new study that indicates these foods are good for us, and vice versa. There’s always some new report that claims the things we do everyday are giving us cancer, and there are just as many reports that claim to have a possible cure.
We read about them, we quote them, and we criticize them. Just about everything we believe in, is confirmed or denied by the studies that are cranked out by the scientific community on a daily basis.
But how many of them are true?
It’s difficult to quantify, but there may be more faulty studies out there than you think. I guarantee you that everyone has at least one opinion that was derived from a misleading study, myself included. None of us are above it. There are just so many, and we don’t always have the time to research the finer details of a study. And if you don’t have some kind of academic background, you might not even be able to understand those details anyway.
That’s where Dr. Malcolm Kendrick comes in. He’s recently published a new book on the subject of misleading medical studies titled Doctoring Data: How to sort out medical advice from medical nonsense. In it, he describes in detail, how the medical establishment creates these sometimes outrageous studies, and how you can spot them for yourself. He’ll show you how to properly examine the data, and identify the flaws in the research. And more importantly, he shows you how to do it quickly and easily, and in layman’s terms.
To get a better idea of what his book is about, check out his fascinating interview with Dr. Mercola. In world swamped with misleading studies, it might just save your health.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9-33PrPdoQ
And if you’d like to know more, be sure and see the full interview at mercola.com.
Joshua: “…Just about everything we believe in, is confirmed or denied by the
studies that are cranked out by the scientific community on a daily
basis…”
Joshua, if there is a change I would make in your essay it would be to put “scientific community” in quotes. Sam
Right On!!!! I absolutely agree.
…I wanted to add that for example in regard to wine being good or bad for this or that is absolute bull. If one wants to get a buzz, yeah go ahead and have couple of glasses. But that’s about it. Chances are the wine sellers pay for fake studies to be made to stimulate the sales of their products, it’s nothing more than a marketing tool that serves no one but the wines dealers.
As far as blood pressure, I exercised and minimized eating garbage for 12 weeks and my blood pressure went down by 19 points as I checked weekly while I was doing that.
Alcohol was ABOLUTELY not involved as I avoided it for its empty calories and addictive properties.
And what else?!?!? when they say for example “a glass of wine A DAY promotes a good digestion”, they do, knowing that a good %age of people if not the majority of them won’t stop AT ONE GLASS, and will go on to have the second if not the third.
They also know such habit is bound to turn one into an alcoholic making them a lifetime customer. And this is their only AIM!
Just received my 31 year medallion from my AA sponsor of 37 years (I was a “slipper”). I remember once reading from an “authority” that pregnant women should drink a glass or two of wine every day for a healthy pregnancy and a robust baby. So, being an “expert” prospective father (after all, I had kept her pg and barefoot for the better part of 20 years, and this would be #7); and her health being important to me [ 🙂 ], I brought home 2 cases of suitable wine. I had procured it at bargain-basement prices. Drunks are specialists at bargain-basement alcohol pricing.
I’ll leave you to speculate who consumed the wine. I am now a single grandpa of 25 (let’s not talk about great-grandkids — they make me look old). Their grandma owns the farm.
Thank you for your honesty. It is absolutely outrageous that they tell pregnant women to get drunk so they can have a “healthy ROBUST baby”. This is absolutely maddening. I happened to have been physical fitness NUT for the better part of my life. If I was not I’d be one of those 700 pounders because I eat a lot. So I know what good exercise and running did for me. My eating habits were not always perfect. One time I saw a jerk anchor claiming on tv that eating healthy and exercising does no good and that one has to have medication!!!!! I mean, just what kind of disguised gangster would go on National tv to make such vile claim, knowing that lazy dumb asses out there would jump right on what he spewed?!?! On a different occasion, an other one said that sugar was not harmful to kids and it did not contribute to making them hype!!!! etc. etc. I don’t blame those who don’t have a tv set at all in this country. Because, now a days it’s a worthless devise at best.
Keep up the good job. Stay off that crap, you are worth it for yourself and for your family.
As soon as I hear “Experts say” or “leading experts say” – I fight the urge to roll my eyes.
I have a degree in studies. In this one class the instructor would always start with the same question, “class, what do studies prove?”, and the class would shout in unison: “NOTHING”.
I have just lost all respect for Mozilla – Mozilla has been around for ages and there is just no excuse for that – I almost suspect it is done on purpose. Keep your Mozilla, but also start using IE.
AMEN, brother-rather than using IE, try the Opera browser. I’ve used it off and on for over 10 years whenever the latest “patch” for Firefox would create instability prob lems and have pretty much gone to it fulltime for the past year since Firefox has REALLY sucked during that stretch…