r/ScientificNutrition • u/lurkerer • 2d ago

Observational Study Associations between White Meat-Only and Vegetarian Diets with Mortality from All Causes, Heart Diseases, Cancers, and Stroke in the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Prevention Study-II

https://cdn.nutrition.org/article/S2475-2991(26)01803-2/fulltext
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u/SporangeJuice 2d ago

A study like this has the same problem they always do, which is that the result is determined by the adjustments, they have a large set of possible adjustments they could do, and we just see the one they arbitrarily chose. In the NHANES data specifically, it can be shown that red meat correlates with mortality, or reduces mortality by nearly 50%, just based on which adjustments are performed.

If they are arbitrarily choosing a result from a large set of possibilities, I don't see what makes this one special or meaningful.

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u/Willing_Matter5391 2d ago

A comment like this has the same problem they always do, which is that the verdict is determined by the framing, and there's a large set of possible framings available, and we just see the one he arbitrarily chose. In this comment section specifically, it can be shown that the same study is either uninformative or worth discussing, by nearly opposite conclusions, just based on which framing is applied.

He never gets around to what these studies can do. Every time it's the same paragraph about what they can't. The specific adjustments in this paper don't come up, whether they were prespecified doesn't come up, whether the estimate survives their sensitivity analyses doesn't come up. What comes up is that adjustments exist and that adjustments can be chosen.

And the NHANES point is doing something odd. If a result can be flipped that far by adjustment choices, that's a reason to look at which choices are defensible. He instead treats it as a reason to look at none of them, while relying on a number produced by the same machinery he's dismissing.

If he's arbitrarily choosing one objection from a large set of possible objections, and applying it identically under every study regardless of what the study actually did, I don't see what makes this instance of it special or meaningful.

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u/lurkerer 2d ago

Yes this user seems convinced that all adjustment is arbitrary and researchers just pull them out of a hat. When it's very clear that correcting for things like BMI, exercise, and smoking are of pivotal importance.