Bad Science

Most science that you read about in the news and hear about on TV is just bad, I am convinced. First there was the big study by a group called the WHI (women's health initiative) concerning the use of estrogens and progesterone by menopausal women. That one was screwed up, I am reading by using old women well past the initial menopausal symptoms and thereby reached an erroneous conclusion regarding the risk of heart problems. More recently we have heard that those women who take calcium to protect against loss of bone density and colorectal cancer aren't protected. The problem here is many of the women in the placebo group also took supplements in the form of multi-vitamins. The latest and probably the most shaky is the study widely talked about which seemed to show that a low fat diet does not confer any lessened risk of breast cancer. The problem here was several-fold. One factor was many of the women did not adhere to the low fat diet and the resulting numbers in the group dropped too low to give the statistical interpretation enough power. I don't think they really had it set up to be low fat in the first place, but that is another matter. Also, there were women who did adhere to a very low fat diet over the course of the study and they showed a 24% drop in risk, but this was buried deep in the report and not covered by the press. The reason given was that this was a sub-group of women and thus not as relevant. One could also argue that it was the most important finding by the study in that it was most relevant to the original objective of the study.
My conclusion is that the more publicity a study gets (think global warmings causes and effects), the more likely it is to be bad science.