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Isn't the proportion of people who are obese and therefore go on this diet also going to be much higher? They appear to not have controlled for anything. So in
by dontreact 3y ago
Isn't the proportion of people who are obese and therefore go on this diet also going to be much higher? They appear to not have controlled for anything.
So in essence the implied cause and effect here for most people reading this headline (intermittent fasting causes cardiovascular death) is actually backwards: (people who are unhealthy are more likely to initiate an IF diet).
Reminds me of the story around diet soda. Some initial association studies found that there was an association between diet soda and several negative health outcomes but upon further investigation the evidence seems to be that it does not cause them.
- scott00 3y agoFor the benefit of readers, here's the quote from the article indicating no controls: "Factors that may also play a role in health, outside of daily duration of eating and cause of death, were not included in the analysis."
- paulpauper 3y agoThey appear to not have controlled for anything. this is 99% of health/nutrition science in a nutshell . "People who drink soda more likely to die." But they also tend to be poorer.
- switchbak 3y agoThis is such a recurring pattern that it's kind of amazing we even take these reports seriously any more. Studying nutrition is so extremely challenging that outlets ought to have a very high bar for study quality and reject ones that don't control for such obvious confounding variables. edit: fixed sentence tense