Is there technology in the works that will do away with this “studies show” crap? When are we going to be able to PROVE that something is bad or good for the human body and PROVE what effects something has on the human body? Is this ever going to happen, or will we perpetually need to rely on speculation in order to take care of our bodies?
Additionally, isn’t it true that there is no way to prove this type of thing unless you visually follow it through your body and observe it’s interactions with everything it comes into contact with? Then I ask, is there any camera technology or maybe some marking technology to “follow” the chemical or food through it’s ventures into the dark abyss of the human body? (I am aware of cameras put into the stomach to watch digesting, and this is the kind of thing I am asking about)
The reason I ask is that I am kind of sick of having to rely on the experts’ speculation and conjecture. I want to know FOR SURE how the atkins’ diet affects a healthy person and FOR SURE whether my heart palpitation was caused by my anti-inflammatory medicine… things like that.
Simplifying complex things into black and white absolutes makes them misleading at best and often outright lies. What goes on when a human metabolizes food is so complex that you can make a career of understanding it and never learn it all. Its’ not a matter of following a bit of food down your gullet, the body tears it apart and turns it into many different things and each has a different effect on you. Not everyone’s body works the same. If my pancreas isn’t calibrated like yours a diet that’s fine for you might kill me.
Because it doesn’t work that way. No two people are physiologically or anatomically identical. Variations occur between people, and even within individuals, things can change from hour to hour or minute to minute. The coffee I had this morning may very well affect how well the Advil I took works. If I don’t drink coffee, the Advil may work better or worse. The stress over a meeting at work can affect how well you digest your food. There’s just no way to tell.
You also have to be aware, as an intelligent reader and consumer, that any brief news report saying “studies show…” is at best a summarization of a consolidation of a report on a study, filtered through the perception and possibly limited resources of a reporter or group of reporters. Without knowing more about who did the study, and why, and what the rest of it shows, all such reports must be read with a healthy skepticism. This is different from ignoring them all because “they all lie.” Often a detailed study will show a particular trend in a particular group in a particular situation, yet will be reported as “Food X is good for you.”
Statistics can be misleading unless you know the whole picture. If one out of a billion people develops disease X and then the following year 2 develop it, it is factual to say that the number of cases has doubled. It’s also irrelevant. If both sufferers happened to be middle-aged black women, for example, it could be totally blown out of proportion.
If the study is done by an independent-sounding group that is really sposored by the Food X producers, then it still may or may not be true, but you must look at the data even more carefully.
Finally, in health care as in most of valid science, conclusions are constantly being refined. For example, it was quite valid at one point to be told “eating a lot of fat is bad.” Well, that’s been refined now. It’s more like, “eating this specific fat is very bad, eating moderate amounts of the other is not so bad, and consuming a fairly large amount of that one is actually good.” It’s still true that eating a large amount of fats is not a good diet. See the difference?
Similarly, an early study may show that aspirin reduced headaches. Report: “Aspirin is good!” Next report shows that some people get upset stomachs from aspirin. Report: “Aspirin is bad!” Next report shows aspirin helps after a heart attack. Report: “Aspirin will prevent death!” And so on.
These are simplistic examples; the truth is much more complex.
“Studies show” is completely related to a severe pet peeve of mine own: “clinically proven.” No! It’s not a proof; it’s “clinically demonstrated.” I’m sure the FDA or someone controls this phrase, but it’s detestable.
As has been mentioned, the nature of studies is not to prove anything, but to suggest a relationship. This is not a failing of the studies: statistics can not prove causation. The most that experiments can ever show is correlation. Models are needed to infer anything beyond that.
Biology is a fast developing science with many complexities, some pointed out here. There has been much research in the past into physics and chemsitry, which has pushed those sciences into many findings that can be considered close to absolutes, but many will always just be sound theories.
Biology is built on these base sciences, which only adds to the complexity of the situation. But another problem is that most studies/clinical trials on people do not necessarily use the same principles as physics and chemistry. These studies are basically experimenting on animals or people to see the effect of a diet or drug and then speculate as to the scientific process that is occurring. But many of these studies never work to conclude the process, just the results of the diet or drug. Without fully knowing the process, it is impossible to provide an absolute answer.
The studies are only set-up to demonstrate how many people are affected and in what way by the drug or diet. If the study is only designed to provide such a result, that’s all you’ll get. The reasons for this are simple, it’s a lot faster! The expense and time it would take to fully investigate how a drug flows through any human body and exactly the chemical effects that are taking place with everything is just not feasible. The drug companies would never be able to release anything and would go broke trying. Plus consumers want the results now in order to benefit from the drug/diet. The quick/cost effective results are best done by these clinical trials that produce the indefinitive results. As ultrafilter pointed it, it’s the design of the studies.
How many times do I hear someone say they took Substance X or Remedy Y and “voila!” their symptoms vanished. Of course if they had done nothing, the symptoms might have vanished, too. Or maybe it had more to do with the gin they washed the pill down with.
I noticed last year that during most of the Yankees night games, if I they were losing and I gave up and took a shower in preparation for going to bed, by the time I got out of a shower they had scored enough runs to retake the lead! This year I’m getting all “pruney” and it still isn’t helping!
This is why most studies are done with placebo and are double blind. This means that those receiving the medicine and those administering it do not know who is receiving the drug and who’s receiving the placebo. All drugs approved by the FDA require such efficacy studies to prove that the product actually does something that a placebo wouldn’t.
Thanks Bobby. Of course, I was referring not to clinical studies, of course, but to individuals and to less than ethical con artists. The “Take MLS brand homeopathic Cr@pola and your cold will vanish in less than 10 days!” kind of thing.
