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Sedentary Lifestyle Study Called 'A Raging Dumpster Fire' (arstechnica.com)
Ars Technica's health reporter argues that a new study suggesting sitting will kill you "is kind of a raging dumpster fire. It's funded by Big Soda and riddled with weaknesses -- including not measuring sitting." An anonymous reader quotes this report:
Let's start with the money: It was funded in part by Coca-Cola... [I]t's hard to look past the fact that this is exactly the type of health and nutrition research Coke wants. In fact, Coca-Cola secretly spent $1.5 million to fund an entire network of academic researchers whose goal was to shift the national health conversation away from the harms of sugary beverages. Instead, their research focused on the benefits of exercise -- i.e., the health risks of sedentary and inactive lifestyles. The research network disbanded after The New York Times published an investigation on the network's funding in 2015...
It didn't actually measure sitting... In their words, "Our study has several limitations. First, the Actical accelerometer cannot distinguish between postures (such as sitting vs. standing); thus, we relied on an intensity-only definition of sedentary behavior." The "intensity-only" definition of sedentary behavior is based on metabolic equivalents, basically units defined by how much oxygen a person uses up doing various activities. But those definitions are also not cut and dried. There are no clear lines between lying down, sitting, standing in place, or light movement... Then there's the participant data: It's not representative -- like, at all... At the time of wearing the accelerometer, the most active group's mean age was 65. The mean age of the least active group: 75.
Groups were assigned based on just a week's worth of data -- or less. And the people placed in the least-active group were already more likely to be smokers, to have diabetes and hypertension, and to have a history of coronary heart disease and stroke.
It didn't actually measure sitting... In their words, "Our study has several limitations. First, the Actical accelerometer cannot distinguish between postures (such as sitting vs. standing); thus, we relied on an intensity-only definition of sedentary behavior." The "intensity-only" definition of sedentary behavior is based on metabolic equivalents, basically units defined by how much oxygen a person uses up doing various activities. But those definitions are also not cut and dried. There are no clear lines between lying down, sitting, standing in place, or light movement... Then there's the participant data: It's not representative -- like, at all... At the time of wearing the accelerometer, the most active group's mean age was 65. The mean age of the least active group: 75.
Groups were assigned based on just a week's worth of data -- or less. And the people placed in the least-active group were already more likely to be smokers, to have diabetes and hypertension, and to have a history of coronary heart disease and stroke.
not allowing any vacation time off, of course this is what we get.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
maybe everything Big is Bad now: Big Pharma, Big Government, and the Big 12
What passes for scientific research is just a game of getting grant money. Publish some results. Repeat ad nauseam. Just don't upset the powers that be.
Look at climate change - just as long as your abstract and conclusion say what the church of the left wants you to say, your research and paper will be well funded. Deviate a little and you get excommunicated.
Apparently someone has a seriously big chip on their shoulder.
Exactly how does funding a study that indicates you should do something that is healthy for you a complete and utter sham?
It is not Coca Cola's job to criticise themselves. There are plenty of people out there that will do that regardless.
Caution: Contents under pressure
Doctor: Before I start the examination, tell me a bit about your lifestyle.
Patient: Well, I have a sedimentary job.
Doctor: Do you mean sedentary?
Patient: No, I work in a sandstone quarry.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But that would've required I get up off the couch - so I calmed myself down.
#DeleteChrome
This why we invent machines. Are we supposed to back to the old days of washing our clothes by hand, and flapping our arms to fly? No thanks! Just let me die and decompose in my Naugahyde La-Z-Boy, aieet?
There should be a great big disclaimer on any medical research post that is funded by a processed foods company. What realistically does any company expect other than an outcome where it makes their product more marketable?
This story exemplifies the way that the internet has become a waste of my time. Decades ago, I would read science articles in Scientific American or Discover Magazine. Since the magazines were only published once a month, the editors had time to fact-check their stories and to ask experts for their opinions. So, when I read an article, it was much more likely to be correct than today.
But what bothers me is not just the fact that Monday's Slashdot story about sitting was incorrect. What really bothers me is the time that I wasted reading it, and archiving a copy on my hard drive.
This is a problem I repeatedly experience with almost all internet news sources. The editors are so eager to publish quickly, that I waste my time reading a lot of incomplete and misleading stories that, decades ago, never would have gotten past an editor's desk.
It's not like it's a giant tire fire or Chernobyl melting down.
er, right?
If these allegations are true, then forever shame on the Annals of Internal Medicine. The entire editorial board and reviewers should be sacked and anyone directly involved with any reviewing of the paper should be black-listed from every participating in any other academic journal. The only value that an academic journal provides is acting as a filter to prevent shoddy research from seeing the light of day.
There's an assumption in Science that when we publish papers, we're able to assume that the people reading our (specialized, idiosyncratic, jargon-laden) work understand the context and limitations of the field we're publishing in.
This is really a horrible assumption.
We could caveat the hell out of every sentence we write, but marketers, reporters, and political activists already ignore us when we do that. TFA here is essentially going back to the original work and pointing out all the caveats the press left out of their articles, but that the actual scientists included. We could double-down on jargon and try to be more like law and medicine - invent enough language to prevent understanding by non-experts. That seems pretty immoral. We could try to educate everyone better, but that's not realistic, no one has time to understand everything. We could just sit on research until we're absolutely certain it's right. That's going to require some fundamental changes to the way research is funded and careers are managed. If we stop taking money from people with ulterior motives, there will literally be no one to fund us.
What do we do? Do we just continue being pawns in these corporate and political games?
the people with the money try to shape the conversation in their favor. Coke wants to blame a sedentary lifestyle for your poor health to deflect the conversation away from the effect of high sugar drinks. Maybe people wouldn't be so sedentary if their blood sugar wasn't spiking because of the crap they are drinking.
It's the same way that insurance companies have got people thinking that insurance = health care. The so-called health care debate isn't about health care, it's about insurance and when people eventually realize that, if ever, we might manage to make some progress toward getting insurance companies out of the way of delivering health care.
It can't.
They measured METS (activity) but there is no correlation between METS and position. Sitting, standing, lying down all are low activity (low METS) so they had no idea if a person was standing at a desk or lying down on the sofa.
Activity is good for you.
Soda is bad for you.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I get it. Coca Cola is shifting the blame away from sugary drinks. This study also is loaded with junk science. But ... isn't this basically a forgone conclusion anyway?
I mean do we really need a study regardless of source of funding or quality of science to tell us that sitting on our asses isn't healthy? You don't need to study that directly when you look at all the other health science out there, and the fact that it was funded by Coca Cola doesn't change the fact either.
I frankly don't care that the funding came from a sugar drink company, it wasn't assessing the effect of sugar. I'm sad that the study was junk, but frankly I don't care much that the attention was shifted from drinks providing science is done.
It is fairly obvious that a life completely devoid of activity is less healthy than a life rich with varying physical activity. One should not need a million dollar research paper to know that, across large populations, getting exercise is good for you, and not getting any exercise at all is bad for you.
Sugary drinks are absolutely irrelevant to this fact.
It's a false premise for an argument. If you have a problem with the hypothesis, the methods, or the findings, then _conduct a new study_. Fight science with more science, not misguided opinion.
Now step away from the mirror and tell the nice person -
THAT WAS HILARIOUS ! thank you.
Very good, your mother loves you. She told me so -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjYB0c42e3E
"Sit down for this - study about sitting doesn't sit well."
and I got my ass beat for asking for a standing desk. HR sent a 6' 5" 340# guy to my desk to punish me for asking for that. He broke my jaw and nose. Plus, his kick to my knee has kept me from being able to walk from the bus stop so I had to rent a powered wheelchair for nearly nine months. I learned to not complain about not getting any vacation time. Plus, according to Washington state law, I'm not entitled to being paid-out any of my vacation time if HR decided to beat me so badly that I couldn't return to work.
I know that this is a sham study and that Soda wants to tell us that our (lack of) movement is what's killing us and not their intensely, artificially sweetened beverages forced upon us by pervasive advertising ...
BUT
I thought we all agreed that being sedentary was generally not good for our bodies?
And yes, I am just as guilty as everyone else. I'm a programmer who is loathe to move anything more than my pinky to the ESC to enter control mode in VI(M).
Will
remove nospam. to email!
This study and modelling is significantly more accurate and precise than any climate change study done to date. And it's sponsors are noticeably less biased than the climate change cultists.
It's sad to see all the exercise deniers in the slashdot population, but I suppose it was to be expected.
Actually, 1 kcal = 1 Cal, calories and Calories are different, horrifically.
The first is the base energy unit, and it defined via the gram.
The second, or Food Calorie, or Dietary Calorie, is defined by the kg, and is 1000 times larger.
You were only an upper case letter off though ;)
Yes, it is very very stupid.
Americans have been sitting motionless in front of TVs for hours each night for the past 50 years. Why would sitting in front of a computer be any more sedentary / unhealthy? And how could anyone measure the marginal difference between the two, since many of us do both at the same time?
I sit, therefore I am.
I'm pretty sure a simple accelerometer can distinguish between standing and sitting in practice, because in a standing job, you will be moving around much more. Unless you're something like a soldier on guard duty standing in attention for hours.
I'm tired of posting the same thing again and again, but I guess it's not obvious until you try it: a standing desk makes you want to move, and IMHO it can help with some attention disorders to some extent. So it's much more than simply about different postures -- or maybe it is, because you'll have lots of slightly different postures while standing.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
There are so many things wrong with this, I started by fixing the grammar, just so I could see the sky.
Sky, this is Horizon. Horizon, this is Sky.
Sun, this is Moon. Moon, this is Sun.
Saskatchewan, this is Easter Island. Easter Island, this is Saskatchewan.
_____
Easter Island: Wow! What a lot of dirt and grass!
Saskatchewan: Wow! What a lot of salt and water!
Easter Island: You can see miles and miles!
Saskatchewan: Do I have to climb this damn statue for a better view? You do know, I'm a little bit afraid of heights ...
Easter Island: But you're 3000 feet higher up already!
Saskatchewan: Come to think of it, I did once climb to the top of a giant snow hummock behind the skating rink. You get much snow here? Maybe I'll just wait for winter, and then check out the 360 degree ocean observatory.
Easter Island: Well, there's always nuclear winter, but I don't think nuclear winter will improve the view.
is not bad for you then?
That is good to know. Thanks Ars!
Ima quit cycling and watch more TV.
See, the cola drink isn't bad for you it's the sitting still for a long time, so don't ban drinks, ban sitting!!!!
Scientifically, the paper is bad because the method is bad, and that is the case whether the study got it right or wrong.
Trolls aren't people that are tired of you or call you out on lies. Even with minimal effort you'd have lost at least 1500 lbs in the 30 years you've claimed to be working on your weight.
You could claim your body is somehow special but that would negate the claim that you're also considered perfectly healthy. There is no way a human body could operate so far outside the norm and return normal results on a physical.
That's not an assumption in science--the rule is you write the paper so an undergrad in the field should be able to understand it with some work, and you, the reader are expected to educate your own sorry ass. Expecting readers to be capable of obtaining the background information for themselves is not and should not be a 'horrible assumption,' especially now when the internet makes it eminently easy for somebody to learn a good amount of the background they might need on their own if they care to do so.
Marketing and political activists will believe whatever they want, regardless of the research, so there's really no point in trying to do anything about this beyond encouraging people to be properly skeptical of the claims those two groups make. As for reporters, well, you're not going to improve the quality of science journalism until you start insisting that science journalists know the field they're reporting on sufficiently well to do good work.
The first step in that? Do not click the clickbait.
Bahaha, we are going to correlate one week of your activity with whether or not you died in the next 5 years. These studies are almost always ridiculous.
Does anyone know if this covers the current 'fad' of providing people with expensive, adjustable 'sit-stand' desks?
It's irrelevant at the "true or not" stage who funded it. It should not be heavily implied that just because someone funds a study that accrues to their interests it is ipso facto a worthless one. Truth pivots on reality, not who is saying it.
Guilt by association is not a good way to reason through things. Even if it later turns out to be of concern after actually taking the time to put emotions aside and apply logic to its findings.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Mean age was 75, very short sample size measured in a week, possibly two?
Scientifically that's useless for something like this. Might work for the life of a mealworm, flies, things with a very short life span. Not people, and people about ready to die shouldn't be used.
will post the study results well in advance of the research of the actual study/study group itself. Then after everyone believes it there will be a little retracted article a year later that probably 1% of the original readers will even see/hear of.
Adding in exercise to ones life is probably the best thing someone can do for their health. What always amazes me is that it seems that people will do whatever they can in order to try to be healthier without having to move.