The Blue Zones, Second Edition – by Dan Buettner
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Eat beans & greens, take walks, have a purpose; you can probably list off the top of your head some of the “advices from Blue Zones”, so what makes this book stand out?
This is perhaps one of the most thoughtful investigations; the author (a National Geographic researcher) toured and researched all the Blue Zones, took many many notes (we get details), and asked a lot of questions that others skipped.
For example, a lot of books about the Blue Zones mention the importance of community—but they don’t go into much detail of what that looks like… And they certainly don’t tend to explain what we should do about it.
And that’s because community is often viewed as environmental in a way that we can’t control. If we want to take supplements, eat a certain way, exercise, etc, we can do all those things alone if we want. But if we want community? We’re reliant on other people—and that’s a taboo in the US, and US-influenced places.
So, one way this book excels is in describing how exactly people foster community in the Blue Zones (hint: the big picture—the form of the community—is different in each place, but the individual actions taken are similar), with particular attention to the roles actively taken on by the community elders.
In a similar vein, “reduce stress” is good, but what mindsets and mechanisms do they use that are still reproducible if we are not, for example, Okinawan farmers? Again, Buettner delivers in spades.
Bottom line: this is the Blue Zones book that digs deeper than others, and makes the advices much more applicable no matter where we live.
Click here to check out The Blue Zones, and build these 9 things into your life!
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Figs vs Plums – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing figs to plums, we picked the figs.
Why?
In terms of macros, figs have more protein, carbs, and fiber; the glycemic index is about equal so we’ll call this category either a tie, or a nominal win for figs (as the “more food per food” option).
In the category of vitamins, figs have more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, and choline, while plums have more of vitamins A, C, E, and K. We may subjectively prefer one set of vitamins or the other (depending on the rest of our diet, for example), but by the numbers, this is a 7:4 victory for figs.
When it comes to minerals, figs have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while plums are not higher in any minerals. An easy win for figs here.
Of course, enjoy either or both, but if you’re going to pick one for nutritional density, we say it’s figs, as illustrated scientifically below:
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Take care!
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The China Study – by Dr. T Colin Campbell and Dr. Thomas M. Campbell
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This is not the newest book we’ve reviewed (originally published 2005; this revised and expanded edition 2016), but it is a seminal one.
You’ve probably heard it referenced, and maybe you’ve wondered what the fuss is about. Now you can know!
The titular study itself was huge. We tend to think “oh there was one study” and look to discount it, but it literally looked at the population of China. That’s a large study.
And because China is relatively ethnically homogenous, especially per region, it was easier to isolate what dietary factors made what differences to health. Of course, that did also create a limitation: follow-up studies would be needed to see if the results were the same for non-Chinese people. But even for the rest of us (this reviewer is not Chinese), it already pointed science in the right direction. And sure enough, smaller follow-up studies elsewhere found the same.
But enough about the research; what about the book? This is a book review, not a research review, after all.
The book itself is easy for a lay reader to understand. It explains how the study was conducted (no small feat), and how the data was examined. It also discusses the results, and the conclusions drawn from those results.
In light of all this, it also offers simple actionable advices, on how to eat to avoid disease in general, and cancer in particular. In especially that latter case, one take-home conclusion was: get more of your protein from plants for a big reduction in cancer risk, for example.
Bottom line: this book is an incredible blend of “comprehensive” and “readable” that we don’t often find in the same book! It contains not just a lot of science, but also an insight into how the science works, on a research level. And, of course, its results and conclusions have strong implications for all our lives.
Click here to check out The China Study, to know more about it!
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What Are The “Bright Lines” Of Bright Line Eating?
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This is Dr. Susan Thompson. She’s a cognitive neuroscientist who has turned her hand to helping people to lose weight and maintain it at a lower level, using psychology to combat overeating. She is the founder of “Bright Line Eating”.
We’ll say up front: it’s not without some controversy, and we’ll address that as we go, but we do believe the ideas are worth examining, and then we can apply them or not as befits our personal lives.
What does she want us to know?
Bright Line Eating’s general goal
Dr. Thompson’s mission statement is to help people be “happy, thin, and free”.
You will note that this presupposes thinness as desirable, and presumes it to be healthy, which frankly, it’s not for everyone. Indeed, for people over a certain age, having a BMI that’s slightly into the “overweight” category is a protective factor against mortality (which is partly a flaw of the BMI system, but is an interesting observation nonetheless):
When BMI Doesn’t Quite Measure Up
Nevertheless, Dr. Thompson makes the case for the three items (happy, thin, free) coming together, which means that any miserable or unhealthy thinness is not what the approach is valuing, since it is important for “thin” to be bookended by “happy” and “free”.
What are these “bright lines”?
Bright Line Eating comes with 4 rules:
- No flour (no, not even wholegrain flour; enjoy whole grains themselves yes, but flour, no)
- No sugar (and as a tag-along to this, no alcohol) (sugars naturally found in whole foods, e.g. the sugar in an apple if eating an apple, is ok, but other kinds are not, e.g. foods with apple juice concentrate as a sweetener; no “natural raw cane sugar” etc is not allowed either; despite the name, it certainly doesn’t grow on the plant like that)
- No snacking, just three meals per day(not even eating the ingredients while cooking—which also means no taste-testing while cooking)
- Weigh all your food (have fun in restaurants—but more seriously, the idea here is to plan each day’s 3 meals to deliver a healthy macronutrient balance and a capped calorie total).
You may be thinking: “that sounds dismal, and not at all bright and cheerful, and certainly not happy and free”
The name comes from the idea that these rules are lines that one does not cross. They are “bright” lines because they should be observed with a bright and cheery demeanour, for they are the rules that, Dr. Thompson says, will make you “happy, thin, and free”.
You will note that this is completely in opposition to the expert opinion we hosted last week:
What Flexible Dieting Really Means
Dr. Thompson’s position on “freedom” is that Bright Line Eating is “very structured and takes a liberating stand against moderation”
Which may sound a bit of an oxymoron—is she really saying that we are going to be made free from freedom?
But there is some logic to it, and it’s about the freedom from having to make many food-related decisions at times when we’re likely to make bad ones:
Where does the psychology come in?
Dr. Thompson’s position is that willpower is a finite, expendable resource, and therefore we should use it judiciously.
So, much like Steve Jobs famously wore the same clothes every day because he had enough decisions to make later in the day that he didn’t want unnecessary extra decisions to make… Bright Line Eating proposes that we make certain clear decisions up front about our eating, so then we don’t have to make so many decisions (and potentially the wrong decisions) later when hungry.
You may be wondering: ”doesn’t sticking to what we decided still require willpower?”
And… Potentially. But the key here is shutting down self-negotiation.
Without clear lines drawn in advance, one must decide, “shall I have this cake or not?”, perhaps reflecting on the pros and cons, the context of the situation, the kind of day we’re having, how hungry we are, what else there is available to eat, what else we have eaten already, etc etc.
In short, there are lots of opportunities to rationalize the decision to eat the cake.
With clear lines drawn in advance, one must decide, “shall I have this cake or not?” and the answer is “no”.
So while sticking to that pre-decided “no” still may require some willpower, it no longer comes with a slew of tempting opportunities to rationalize a “yes”.
Which means a much greater success rate, both in adherence and outcomes. Here’s an 8-week interventional study and 2-year follow-up:
Bright Line Eating | Research Publications
Counterpoint: pick your own “bright lines”
Dr. Thompson is very keen on her 4 rules that have worked for her and many people, but she recognizes that they may not be a perfect fit for everyone.
So, it is possible to pick and choose our own “bright lines”; it is after all a dietary approach, not a religion. Here’s her response to someone who adopted the first 3 rules, but not the 4th:
Bright Lines as Guidelines for Weight Loss
The most important thing for Bright Line Eating, therefore, is perhaps the action of making clear decisions in advance and sticking to them, rather than seat-of-the-pantsing our diet, and with it, our health.
Want to know more from Dr. Thompson?
You might like her book, which we reviewed a while ago:
Bright Line Eating – by Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson
Enjoy!
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Stop The World…
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Some news highlights from this week:
“US vs Them”?
With the US now set to lose its WHO membership, what does that mean for Americans? For most, the consequences will be indirect:
- the nation’s scientists and institutions will be somewhat “left out in the cold” when it comes to international scientific collaboration in the field of health
- the US will no longer enjoy a position of influence and power within the WHO, which organization’s reports and position statements have a lot of sway over the world’s health practices
Are there any benefits (of leaving the WHO) for Americans? Yes, there is one: the US will no longer be paying into the WHO’s budget, which means:
- the US will save the 0.006% of the Federal budget that it was paying into the WHO annually
- for the average American’s monthly budget, that means (if the saving is passed on) you’ll have an extra dime
However, since US scientific institutions will still need access to international data, likely that access will need to be paid separately, at a higher rate than US membership in WHO cost.
In short: it seems likely to go the way that Brexit did: “saving” on membership fees and then paying more for access to less.
Why is the US leaving again? The stated reasons were mainly twofold:
- the cost of US membership (the US’s contribution constituted 15% of the the overall WHO budget)
- holding the US’s disproportionately high COVID death rate (especially compared to countries such as China) to be a case of WHO mismanagement
Read in full: What losing WHO membership means for the U.S.
Related: What Would a Second Trump Presidency Look Like for Health Care? ← this was a speculative post by KFF Health News, last year
Halt, You’re Under A Breast
More seriously, this is about halting the metastasis of cancerous tumors in the breast. It is reasonable to expect the same principle and thus treatment may apply to other cancers too, but this is where the research is at for now (breast cancer research gets a lot of funding).
And, what principle and treatment is this, you ask? It’s about the foxglove-derived drug digoxin, and how it stops cancerous cells from forming clusters, and even actively dissolves clusters that have already formed. No clusters means no new tumors, which means no metastasis. No metastasis, in turn, means the cancer becomes much more treatable because it’s no longer a game of whack-a-mole; instead of spreading to other places, it’s a much more manageable case of “here’s the tumor, now let’s kill it with something”.
Note: yes, that does mean the tumor still needs killing by some other means—digoxin won’t do that, it “just” stops it from spreading while treatment is undertaken.
Read in full: Proof-of-concept study dissolves clusters of breast cancer cells to prevent metastases
Related: The Hormone Therapy That Reduces Breast Cancer Risk & More
Force Of Habit
“It takes 21 days to make a habit”, says popular lore. Popular is not, however, evidence-based:
❝This systematic review of 20 studies involving 2601 participants challenges the prevailing notion of rapid habit formation, revealing that health-related habits typically require 2–5 months to develop, with substantial individual variability ranging from 4 to 335 days. The meta-analysis demonstrated significant improvements in habit scores across various health behaviours, with key determinants including morning practices, personal choice, and behavioural characteristics❞
So, this is not a lottery, “maybe it will take until Tuesday, maybe it will take nearly a year”, so much as “there are important factors that seriously change how long a habit takes to become engrained, and here is what those factors are”.
Read in full: Study reveals healthy habits take longer than 21 days to set in
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Buckwheat vs Bulgur Wheat – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing buckwheat to bulgur, we picked the buckwheat.
Why?
First, some things to know up front:
- Bulgur wheat is a kind of cracked wheat product. As such, it contains wheat, and yes, gluten.
- Buckwheat is not a wheat, nor even a grass, but a flowering plant. Buckwheat is as related to wheat as a lionfish is to a lion. It does not contain gluten.
- Buckwheat can be purchased whole or hulled. We went with whole. If you go with hulled, the percentages of vitamins and minerals will be relatively higher, and/but this will be because you lost the fibrous husk, so they’ll be commensurately lower in fiber. If you were to go with hulled, we’d still pick it over bulgur wheat though, just for a different reason (as in that case, the vitamin and mineral contents would be more overwhelmingly in buckwheat’s favor, even though it’d have less fiber).
Ok, now that those things are covered…
Looking at the macronutrients, there’s not a lot between them, except that buckwheat has the much lower glycemic index (this is only the case if you got whole, not hulled—if you got hulled, the glycemic index would be about the same).
In terms of vitamins, buckwheat has more of vitamins B2, B5, B9, E, K, and choline, while bulgur wheat technically has more vitamin A, but the numbers are tiny; a cup of bulgur wheat will give you 0.12% of the RDA. So, an easy win (functionally: 5:0) for buckwheat.
When it comes to minerals, buckwheat has more copper, magnesium, potassium, and selenium, while bulgur wheat has more calcium and manganese. They’re equal on iron and phosphorus, making this a 4:2 win for buckwheat.
Adding up the categories makes this a clear win for buckwheat!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
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How do science journalists decide whether a psychology study is worth covering?
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Complex research papers and data flood academic journals daily, and science journalists play a pivotal role in disseminating that information to the public. This can be a daunting task, requiring a keen understanding of the subject matter and the ability to translate dense academic language into narratives that resonate with the general public.
Several resources and tip sheets, including the Know Your Research section here at The Journalist’s Resource, aim to help journalists hone their skills in reporting on academic research.
But what factors do science journalists look for to decide whether a social science research study is trustworthy and newsworthy? That’s the question researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Melbourne in Australia examine in a recent study, “How Do Science Journalists Evaluate Psychology Research?” published in September in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.
Their online survey of 181 mostly U.S.-based science journalists looked at how and whether they were influenced by four factors in fictitious research summaries: the sample size (number of participants in the study), sample representativeness (whether the participants in the study were from a convenience sample or a more representative sample), the statistical significance level of the result (just barely statistically significant or well below the significance threshold), and the prestige of a researcher’s university.
The researchers found that sample size was the only factor that had a robust influence on journalists’ ratings of how trustworthy and newsworthy a study finding was.
University prestige had no effect, while the effects of sample representativeness and statistical significance were inconclusive.
But there’s nuance to the findings, the authors note.
“I don’t want people to think that science journalists aren’t paying attention to other things, and are only paying attention to sample size,” says Julia Bottesini, an independent researcher, a recent Ph.D. graduate from the Psychology Department at UC Davis, and the first author of the study.
Overall, the results show that “these journalists are doing a very decent job” vetting research findings, Bottesini says.
Also, the findings from the study are not generalizable to all science journalists or other fields of research, the authors note.
“Instead, our conclusions should be circumscribed to U.S.-based science journalists who are at least somewhat familiar with the statistical and replication challenges facing science,” they write. (Over the past decade a series of projects have found that the results of many studies in psychology and other fields can’t be reproduced, leading to what has been called a ‘replication crisis.’)
“This [study] is just one tiny brick in the wall and I hope other people get excited about this topic and do more research on it,” Bottesini says.
More on the study’s findings
The study’s findings can be useful for researchers who want to better understand how science journalists read their research and what kind of intervention — such as teaching journalists about statistics — can help journalists better understand research papers.
“As an academic, I take away the idea that journalists are a great population to try to study because they’re doing something really important and it’s important to know more about what they’re doing,” says Ellen Peters, director of Center for Science Communication Research at the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. Peters, who was not involved in the study, is also a psychologist who studies human judgment and decision-making.
Peters says the study was “overall terrific.” She adds that understanding how journalists do their work “is an incredibly important thing to do because journalists are who reach the majority of the U.S. with science news, so understanding how they’re reading some of our scientific studies and then choosing whether to write about them or not is important.”
The study, conducted between December 2020 and March 2021, is based on an online survey of journalists who said they at least sometimes covered science or other topics related to health, medicine, psychology, social sciences, or well-being. They were offered a $25 Amazon gift card as compensation.
Among the participants, 77% were women, 19% were men, 3% were nonbinary and 1% preferred not to say. About 62% said they had studied physical or natural sciences at the undergraduate level, and 24% at the graduate level. Also, 48% reported having a journalism degree. The study did not include the journalists’ news reporting experience level.
Participants were recruited through the professional network of Christie Aschwanden, an independent journalist and consultant on the study, which could be a source of bias, the authors note.
“Although the size of the sample we obtained (N = 181) suggests we were able to collect a range of perspectives, we suspect this sample is biased by an ‘Aschwanden effect’: that science journalists in the same professional network as C. Aschwanden will be more familiar with issues related to the replication crisis in psychology and subsequent methodological reform, a topic C. Aschwanden has covered extensively in her work,” they write.
Participants were randomly presented with eight of 22 one-paragraph fictitious social and personality psychology research summaries with fictitious authors. The summaries are posted on Open Science Framework, a free and open-source project management tool for researchers by the Center for Open Science, with a mission to increase openness, integrity and reproducibility of research.
For instance, one of the vignettes reads:
“Scientists at Harvard University announced today the results of a study exploring whether introspection can improve cooperation. 550 undergraduates at the university were randomly assigned to either do a breathing exercise or reflect on a series of questions designed to promote introspective thoughts for 5 minutes. Participants then engaged in a cooperative decision-making game, where cooperation resulted in better outcomes. People who spent time on introspection performed significantly better at these cooperative games (t (548) = 3.21, p = 0.001). ‘Introspection seems to promote better cooperation between people,’ says Dr. Quinn, the lead author on the paper.”
In addition to answering multiple-choice survey questions, participants were given the opportunity to answer open-ended questions, such as “What characteristics do you [typically] consider when evaluating the trustworthiness of a scientific finding?”
Bottesini says those responses illuminated how science journalists analyze a research study. Participants often mentioned the prestige of the journal in which it was published or whether the study had been peer-reviewed. Many also seemed to value experimental research designs over observational studies.
Considering statistical significance
When it came to considering p-values, “some answers suggested that journalists do take statistical significance into account, but only very few included explanations that suggested they made any distinction between higher or lower p values; instead, most mentions of p values suggest journalists focused on whether the key result was statistically significant,” the authors write.
Also, many participants mentioned that it was very important to talk to outside experts or researchers in the same field to get a better understanding of the finding and whether it could be trusted, the authors write.
“Journalists also expressed that it was important to understand who funded the study and whether the researchers or funders had any conflicts of interest,” they write.
Participants also “indicated that making claims that were calibrated to the evidence was also important and expressed misgivings about studies for which the conclusions do not follow from the evidence,” the authors write.
In response to the open-ended question, “What characteristics do you [typically] consider when evaluating the trustworthiness of a scientific finding?” some journalists wrote they checked whether the study was overstating conclusions or claims. Below are some of their written responses:
- “Is the researcher adamant that this study of 40 college kids is representative? If so, that’s a red flag.”
- “Whether authors make sweeping generalizations based on the study or take a more measured approach to sharing and promoting it.”
- “Another major point for me is how ‘certain’ the scientists appear to be when commenting on their findings. If a researcher makes claims which I consider to be over-the-top about the validity or impact of their findings, I often won’t cover.”
- “I also look at the difference between what an experiment actually shows versus the conclusion researchers draw from it — if there’s a big gap, that’s a huge red flag.”
Peters says the study’s findings show that “not only are journalists smart, but they have also gone out of their way to get educated about things that should matter.”
What other research shows about science journalists
A 2023 study, published in the International Journal of Communication, based on an online survey of 82 U.S. science journalists, aims to understand what they know and think about open-access research, including peer-reviewed journals and articles that don’t have a paywall, and preprints. Data was collected between October 2021 and February 2022. Preprints are scientific studies that have yet to be peer-reviewed and are shared on open repositories such as medRxiv and bioRxiv. The study finds that its respondents “are aware of OA and related issues and make conscious decisions around which OA scholarly articles they use as sources.”
A 2021 study, published in the Journal of Science Communication, looks at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the work of science journalists. Based on an online survey of 633 science journalists from 77 countries, it finds that the pandemic somewhat brought scientists and science journalists closer together. “For most respondents, scientists were more available and more talkative,” the authors write. The pandemic has also provided an opportunity to explain the scientific process to the public, and remind them that “science is not a finished enterprise,” the authors write.
More than a decade ago, a 2008 study, published in PLOS Medicine, and based on an analysis of 500 health news stories, found that “journalists usually fail to discuss costs, the quality of the evidence, the existence of alternative options, and the absolute magnitude of potential benefits and harms,” when reporting on research studies. Giving time to journalists to research and understand the studies, giving them space for publication and broadcasting of the stories, and training them in understanding academic research are some of the solutions to fill the gaps, writes Gary Schwitzer, the study author.
Advice for journalists
We asked Bottesini, Peters, Aschwanden and Tamar Wilner, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas, who was not involved in the study, to share advice for journalists who cover research studies. Wilner is conducting a study on how journalism research informs the practice of journalism. Here are their tips:
1. Examine the study before reporting it.
Does the study claim match the evidence? “One thing that makes me trust the paper more is if their interpretation of the findings is very calibrated to the kind of evidence that they have,” says Bottesini. In other words, if the study makes a claim in its results that’s far-fetched, the authors should present a lot of evidence to back that claim.
Not all surprising results are newsworthy. If you come across a surprising finding from a single study, Peters advises you to step back and remember Carl Sagan’s quote: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
How transparent are the authors about their data? For instance, are the authors posting information such as their data and the computer codes they use to analyze the data on platforms such as Open Science Framework, AsPredicted, or The Dataverse Project? Some researchers ‘preregister’ their studies, which means they share how they’re planning to analyze the data before they see them. “Transparency doesn’t automatically mean that a study is trustworthy,” but it gives others the chance to double-check the findings, Bottesini says.
Look at the study design. Is it an experimental study or an observational study? Observational studies can show correlations but not causation.
“Observational studies can be very important for suggesting hypotheses and pointing us towards relationships and associations,” Aschwanden says.
Experimental studies can provide stronger evidence toward a cause, but journalists must still be cautious when reporting the results, she advises. “If we end up implying causality, then once it’s published and people see it, it can really take hold,” she says.
Know the difference between preprints and peer-reviewed, published studies. Peer-reviewed papers tend to be of higher quality than those that are not peer-reviewed. Read our tip sheet on the difference between preprints and journal articles.
Beware of predatory journals. Predatory journals are journals that “claim to be legitimate scholarly journals, but misrepresent their publishing practices,” according to a 2020 journal article, published in the journal Toxicologic Pathology, “Predatory Journals: What They Are and How to Avoid Them.”
2. Zoom in on data.
Read the methods section of the study. The methods section of the study usually appears after the introduction and background section. “To me, the methods section is almost the most important part of any scientific paper,” says Aschwanden. “It’s amazing to me how often you read the design and the methods section, and anyone can see that it’s a flawed design. So just giving things a gut-level check can be really important.”
What’s the sample size? Not all good studies have large numbers of participants but pay attention to the claims a study makes with a small sample size. “If you have a small sample, you calibrate your claims to the things you can tell about those people and don’t make big claims based on a little bit of evidence,” says Bottesini.
But also remember that factors such as sample size and p-value are not “as clear cut as some journalists might assume,” says Wilner.
How representative of a population is the study sample? “If the study has a non-representative sample of, say, undergraduate students, and they’re making claims about the general population, that’s kind of a red flag,” says Bottesini. Aschwanden points to the acronym WEIRD, which stands for “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic,” and is used to highlight a lack of diversity in a sample. Studies based on such samples may not be generalizable to the entire population, she says.
Look at the p-value. Statistical significance is both confusing and controversial, but it’s important to consider. Read our tip sheet, “5 Things Journalists Need to Know About Statistical Significance,” to better understand it.
3. Talk to scientists not involved in the study.
If you’re not sure about the quality of a study, ask for help. “Talk to someone who is an expert in study design or statistics to make sure that [the study authors] use the appropriate statistics and that methods they use are appropriate because it’s amazing to me how often they’re not,” says Aschwanden.
Get an opinion from an outside expert. It’s always a good idea to present the study to other researchers in the field, who have no conflicts of interest and are not involved in the research you’re covering and get their opinion. “Don’t take scientists at their word. Look into it. Ask other scientists, preferably the ones who don’t have a conflict of interest with the research,” says Bottesini.
4. Remember that a single study is simply one piece of a growing body of evidence.
“I have a general rule that a single study doesn’t tell us very much; it just gives us proof of concept,” says Peters. “It gives us interesting ideas. It should be retested. We need an accumulation of evidence.”
Aschwanden says as a practice, she tries to avoid reporting stories about individual studies, with some exceptions such as very large, randomized controlled studies that have been underway for a long time and have a large number of participants. “I don’t want to say you never want to write a single-study story, but it always needs to be placed in the context of the rest of the evidence that we have available,” she says.
Wilner advises journalists to spend some time looking at the scope of research on the study’s specific topic and learn how it has been written about and studied up to that point.
“We would want science journalists to be reporting balance of evidence, and not focusing unduly on the findings that are just in front of them in a most recent study,” Wilner says. “And that’s a very difficult thing to as journalists to do because they’re being asked to make their article very newsy, so it’s a difficult balancing act, but we can try and push journalists to do more of that.”
5. Remind readers that science is always changing.
“Science is always two steps forward, one step back,” says Peters. Give the public a notion of uncertainty, she advises. “This is what we know today. It may change tomorrow, but this is the best science that we know of today.”
Aschwanden echoes the sentiment. “All scientific results are provisional, and we need to keep that in mind,” she says. “It doesn’t mean that we can’t know anything, but it’s very important that we don’t overstate things.”
Authors of a study published in PNAS in January analyzed more than 14,000 psychology papers and found that replication success rates differ widely by psychology subfields. That study also found that papers that could not be replicated received more initial press coverage than those that could.
The authors note that the media “plays a significant role in creating the public’s image of science and democratizing knowledge, but it is often incentivized to report on counterintuitive and eye-catching results.”
Ideally, the news media would have a positive relationship with replication success rates in psychology, the authors of the PNAS study write. “Contrary to this ideal, however, we found a negative association between media coverage of a paper and the paper’s likelihood of replication success,” they write. “Therefore, deciding a paper’s merit based on its media coverage is unwise. It would be valuable for the media to remind the audience that new and novel scientific results are only food for thought before future replication confirms their robustness.”
Additional reading
Uncovering the Research Behaviors of Reporters: A Conceptual Framework for Information Literacy in Journalism
Katerine E. Boss, et al. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, October 2022.The Problem with Psychological Research in the Media
Steven Stosny. Psychology Today, September 2022.Critically Evaluating Claims
Megha Satyanarayana, The Open Notebook, January 2022.How Should Journalists Report a Scientific Study?
Charles Binkley and Subramaniam Vincent. Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, September 2020.What Journalists Get Wrong About Social Science: Full Responses
Brian Resnick. Vox, January 2016.From The Journalist’s Resource
8 Ways Journalists Can Access Academic Research for Free
5 Things Journalists Need to Know About Statistical Significance
5 Common Research Designs: A Quick Primer for Journalists
5 Tips for Using PubPeer to Investigate Scientific Research Errors and Misconduct
What’s Standard Deviation? 4 Things Journalists Need to Know
This article first appeared on The Journalist’s Resource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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