Asher Meir points us to this article by Katherine Flegal, who writes:
A naïve researcher [Flegal] published a scientific article in a respectable journal. She thought her article was straightforward and defensible. It used only publicly available data, and her findings were consistent with much of the literature on the topic. Her coauthors included two distinguished statisticians. To her surprise her publication was met with unusual attacks from some unexpected sources within the research community. These attacks were by and large not pursued through normal channels of scientific discussion. Her research became the target of an aggressive campaign that included insults, errors, misinformation, social media posts, behind-the-scenes gossip and maneuvers, and complaints to her employer. The goal appeared to be to undermine and discredit her work. The controversy was something deliberately manufactured, and the attacks primarily consisted of repeated assertions of preconceived opinions. She learned first-hand the antagonism that could be provoked by inconvenient scientific findings. . . .
Wow. It’s good to see a researcher be open about this sort of thing. There’s a lot of incentive not to rock the boat or to be known as a complainer: after all, you want to be known for your work, not for being victimized. So I appreciate that Flegal just lays it all out. It’s just her perspective, but that’s fine. She gives details and references.
I was curious if this Flegal et al. (2005) paper had ever come up on our blog, so I googled, and . . . yes:
From 2007: Being Overweight Isn’t All Bad, Study Says
From 2013: Thin scientists say it’s unhealthy to be fat
At no point did I try to evaluate the claims or the scientific debate. That would take work!
But, yeah, thin people are the worst.
I will repeat an earlier comment I made that academia is one of the most competitive and unfriendly environments I know of (https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/11/17/an-economist-and-his-lonely-belief/#comments). Andrew replied that he finds it very collaborative – which, of course, I do as well when considering joint work. Sure, within your tribe there is a cooperative spirit, but the surrounding atmosphere is poisonous. If only this story was the rare exception, but it is all too common.
Paraphrasing a common refrain: the politics are so bad because the stakes are so low.
Although the dynamics described in that article may not be all that rare, and the article illustrated an important phenomenon, it may well be that the phenomenon isn’t all that generalizable.
Some topics are more polarizing than others. A better understanding of what explains which topics are polarized, it seems to me, is a worthwhile goal.
Dan Kahan explored that question a bit. What happened to him?
In order to see what this controversy is about, I scrolled through some of the references. Along the way, I found a word I had never heard of: “paltering.” So, off to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paltering
———————————————————————————————–
Paltering is the active use of selective truthful statements to mislead.
The term as applied in psychology and mediation studies was developed by researchers at the John F. Kennedy School of Government in the late 2000s.[5][6][7] The first known use of palter to describe acting insincerely or deceitfully was in the 1580s.
————————————————————————————————
Before giving in to temptation, note this sage advice from Wikipedia,
“But the practice is risky, because when it is caught, it causes conflict, reduces trust and undermines relationships.”
Wow. Paltering, then, appears to be the practice of all politicians and most researchers. The last statement about it being “risky,” though appears to be outdated (unfortunately). It does contribute to conflict, reduces trust, and undermines relationships, but where is the risk? It is a collective risk, but not borne by those responsible for the practice.
See http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/ for many interesting and contrarian views on diets and healthy weight.
The site is still available, but no new articles.
Possible that fat accumulation is the body’s response to attack? Fat might be a function, a dynamic system powered by the body? Maybe an ineffective response viewed when it is outside boundary conditions? Considering a body a dynamic system which responds deterministically to energy inputs is too much for bio-med?
Whether probable or not is less interesting to me is why the question is not seriously pursued and maybe deliberately so.
My post below was supposed to be a reply here.
I think that Dean Ornish MD, Caldwell Esselstyn MD, and Neal Barnard MD have conducted many fine studies. All recommend plant-based diets, with as little oil consumption as possible. Meat, dairy, and saturated fats translate to arterial plaque. Plant-based diet far less to do so. Diabetes and heart disease are correlated with meat and dairy consumption. Not to mention increased hormones as a factor in cancer development.
We have increased our consumption of calories over the last 100 years.
Now David Longo has written some interesting books on Longevity. He advises more fish as people get older. He too recommends largely a plant-based diet. I think he has written a fair amount on fasting too.
I’m not saying that being ‘thin’ is better or worse healthwise. I don’t know. But I sure as heck look a lot better without a bulging tummy and large butt.
In autumn, sweet fruits are ripe, and the body suspends its intake-output equilibrium to overeat, with sugar activating receptors that can also be dtimulated by recreational drugs. In winter, we starve, and equilibrium is restored.
In a civilized supermarket, it’s always autumn and never winter.
(There’s a book by Robert H. Lustig on this.)
I skimmed through the article. Can someone explain why these people were so up in arms about Flegal’s paper? Seems more than a bit extreme, given the results of the paper. Were they concerned about the ‘obesity epidemic’ becoming less of a concern and losing out on grant money or what? If all of this is true, their response seems way out of proportion. What’s in it for her critics? Why go to this extent?
“Public health” has been sick for awhile. Look into the widespread campaigns to wear sunscreen that only blocked UV-B for decades, based on studies that showed it blocked sunburn. It turned out that leads to more UV-A exposure, which is about 95% of the UV that your body is exposed to and has longer wavelength so hits deeper levels of the skin. Essentially the warning signs of too much UV exposure (the burn) and natural protection due to tanning were lost.
We now have a skin cancer pandemic. No one was ever held accountable for the mass suffering caused, “broad-spectrum” sunscreen simply quietly replaced the UV-B-only type in the 2010s.
I’m happy to see that the strongest statement you made in previous posts, which could possibly be construed as supportive of Flegal’s critics is, “Post-publication peer review is a good thing.” This is especially insightful now, given how diligently and effectively Flegal has been wielding PPPR a) in defense of her work, and b) in criticism of bad work related to hers. Given the struggles she narrates, and the fact that she’s encapsulated them for others to learn from, someone should put together a Flegal Award for Persistence in PPPR.
That said, I’d like to think that the Andrew Gelman of 2021, as opposed to the Andrew of 2007, would call out Seth for his “all studies are anecdotal in some sense” comment to that original post.
It’s always interesting to me how rapidly the topic seems to get shifted from ‘is it okay to bully and insult someone because you don’t like their results’ to ‘is there some other explanation for Flegal’s results’ as though the issue was our results, not someone else’s bad behavior. It’s like saying if there’s something wrong with our results, then it’s okay to call us names and insult us.
Katherine:
Thanks for commenting. I think you did a valuable service in writing that article. As I wrote in the above post, there’s a lot of incentive not to rock the boat or to be known as a complainer, and the result is that we’re kinda trained to sit and take it when we are subject to behind-the-scenes gossip and maneuvers.
Can you clarify whether this a general comment, or a comment about the discussion in this particular post/comment thread? If the latter, I think you’ve misinterpreted our tone–I don’t see anyone trying to explain away your results or excuse your assailants. If we haven’t dwelled on the topic “is it okay to bully and insult someone because you don’t like their results,” it’s probably because, within this community, that’s a rhetorical question, not a matter to debate. The awfulness of scientists who also happen to be wrong, whether they’re insulting the strong work of others or defending their own weak work, has long been a major theme of posts here. The most famous example (perhaps) being the case of someone referring to legitimate, civil critics of methodology as “Stasi.” We do have your back!
(And if it’s a general comment, never mind!)
Katherine,
You won’t catch me flagellating anyone. I am actually astounded by the name-calling and refusal to engage in substantive conversations.
Some academics behave immaturely. Brilliant or not brilliant. Hyper-competition is obviously one major factor for such bad behavior.
I have a different take on the obesity wars and Flegal’s article. While I am not sympathetic to what her critics did (assuming her account is true), I am a little sympathetic whose take on her study is that it is misleading. The problem in the obesity wars is framing. For some reason, the medical community has defined what a normal BMI is and then studied the question of whether being “overweight”, i.e., higher than some arbitrary BMI, increases mortality. Normal BMI is not normal in the sense of being average or in the sense of being optimal for health. But, any none specialist is going to assume “normal BMI” is one of those things, and then either the public will conclude being fatter than average is fine or the public will just be confused about how it can it be better to worse than the optimal weigh. Instead, had the medical community just framed the question differently as what BMI range is unhealthy, the entire problem would go away. I don’t mean that Flegal is being misleading. This is how the question is framed by everyone.
Almost exactly right. The other problem is that BMI is a junk measurement, which doesn’t seem to correlate tightly with “problem” weight. There should be a recommended range of healthy weights based on height, gender, build, etc. but there isn’t really; nobody’s properly developed that.
There’s strong evidence that there’s no problem with being somewhat “overweight”.
There’s strong evidence that when too much weight starts causing joint problems, circulation problems, etc. that it is a problem. The medical establishment doesn’t even have a good measurement for when it gets to that problem level, since BMI is a junk measurement.
Many public health schools promote the ethos that researchers must also be advocates for better public health. So if being fat is bad for you, how could Flegal’s analysis be right? I remember the discussions of Flegal’s first paper from 20 years ago, people were looking for any and every flaw just to be able to dismiss its findings. It was a bit surreal. I am not surprised by her personal account of the ordeal.
Thomas –
> It was a bit surreal.
I dunno. It feels pretty banal to me. Understandable based on human nature.
The idea that overweight doesn’t cause health problems creates cognitive dissonance. It’s work, hard work, to counter that reflexive reaction.
That’s NOT an excuse for vitriol or bad science in response. But this is such a common pattern, I think it’s important to also fight against the reaction that it’s somehow surreal.
Maybe you’re right.
I still remember when overweight was defined as BMI>27. The current definition as 25 to <30 appeared in the 1990s in some WHO consensus statement, it was never based on hard evidence. To me the zone of 25-30 always seemed a bit muddy, I wouldn't have been surprised if mortality went either way. So the zeal of some people did seem unreasonable.
Surreal is a good word for this. Just bizarre behavior by Public Health researchers.
Wow these are terrible. She should be mad. I’ve seen some horrible behavior among academics but these are on a whole different level. Here are the most egregious bits for me:
The falsehoods are obviously horrible, but there’s also something really disturbing about the use of the religiously loaded “recant”. That and the fact that the paper containing the falsehood was hilariously titled “Trust in Scientific Experts on Obesity”.
I’m trying to imagine what I would do if I were in her place and I honestly have no idea. I also wonder if working for the federal government kind of made it harder to fight back. My impression is that scientists in govt are less “prickly”, perhaps because of the relative security in funding and positions. I’m digressing so I’ll stop now.
Just to clarify my comment, it wasn’t directed to people here. I do notice that the discussion of our papers in various contexts tends to focus away from the issue of whether our papers should be called “rubbish” and instead pivot to the topic of whether our results are wrong or can be explained away, as though then insults would be okay. As to the question of why our 2005 paper generated such furor, I don’t really know the answer, but I can say that I was blindsided by what happened.