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The Most Important Study of the Mediterranean Diet Has Been Retracted (qz.com)
Zorro shares a report from Quartz: In 2013, the New England Journal of Medicine published a landmark study that found that people put on a Mediterranean diet had a 30% lower chance of heart attack, stroke, or death from cardiovascular disease than people on a low-fat diet. It received massive media and public attention when released, and since has been cited by 3,268 other scientific papers. The study had tremendous impact on the field of nutrition and health science. Yesterday (June 13), however, the journal retracted the study -- providing a new reason for skepticism about how effective the now-popular Mediterranean diet really is.
The reasons for the withdrawal are complicated, having to do with the methodology of the study. As Alison McCook of the Retraction Watch blog writes for NPR, this retraction is the result of the work of John Carlisle, a British anesthesiologist and self-taught statistician. Carlisle has spent recent years analyzing over 5,000 published randomized controlled trials (the gold standard of medical science research) to see how likely they were to have actually been properly randomized. In 2017, he reported his results: at least 2% of the studies were problematic. One was the 2013 NEJM article on the Mediterranean diet.
The reasons for the withdrawal are complicated, having to do with the methodology of the study. As Alison McCook of the Retraction Watch blog writes for NPR, this retraction is the result of the work of John Carlisle, a British anesthesiologist and self-taught statistician. Carlisle has spent recent years analyzing over 5,000 published randomized controlled trials (the gold standard of medical science research) to see how likely they were to have actually been properly randomized. In 2017, he reported his results: at least 2% of the studies were problematic. One was the 2013 NEJM article on the Mediterranean diet.
There are many animals in this world in that if you give them an unlimited supply of food, they will keep on eating until they die; often in very short order.
I grew up on a dairy farm and I'd see this happen. I personally didn't see a cow eat itself to death but I have seen cows eat until they got sick and had heard stories of people having to dispose of cows that had eaten until they died. This seems to only be true of corn feed though, a cow will know enough to stop eating grass/alfalfa/haylage eventually. I do remember a calf that didn't know enough to not eat the straw. That calf got bloated and sick constantly until it learned that straw is not good food.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
And yet, our noble MSM is reporting only that the study was retracted, comparing it to 50-ish other studies that were similarly flawed.
Did you read the links? The NPR link says basically what you're saying here: the diet still has good evidence behind it, but they softened the language in the conclusion as a result of this. The Quartz article is more one-sided, but... are you really calling Quartz "MSM"?
Let's see... Here's the New York Times coverage. I'll quote:
That Huge Mediterranean Diet Study Was Flawed. But Was It Wrong?
A highly publicized trial in Spain found that the Mediterranean diet protects against heart disease. Now the original work has been retracted and re-analyzed, with the same result.
The next link from my search is USA Today, I'll quote:
He stressed this flaw only affected a small part of the trial (about 10 percent of participants) and that the conclusions remain the same: A Mediterranean diet can decrease risk of heart attacks and strokes by about 30 percent among those who are at high risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
So the answer to your exercise appears to be: Yes, the MSM are responsible journalists and the random news blog is not.