Research 101 – Research Says This Is One Of The Most Important Articles
by Leigh Peele

(The following article is a spinet from what was a written section in Body By Eats. As most of you know, Body By Eats is now cookbooks only. I have decided the written material works best in the upcoming new edition of FLTS. I hope you enjoy this material and allow it some time to really digest. It could easily be one of the most important articles you read and change the way you look at other articles you read in the future.)
Research 101

I want to give you a brief look at how you can integrate research into your own life with more nuance than, “It’s in your fridge and it could be killing you. Film at 11:00.” If you’re new to analyzing research, this can be a huge headache. I speak from personal experience.
Everything Has A Deeper Layer

Nothing resides solely on the surface. Right now you’re probably reading this at a computer. In order to type something yourself, you’d have to take your fingers and make them move on the keyboard attached to your computer. That simple act has so many layers — from how your brain commands your fingers to move to how your computer commands letters to appear onscreen. I can tell you my understanding of this only to a point.

Your finger strikes the key, the key hits a switch that is on something called a “key matrix.” That causes a vibration or a bounce. A processor then uses something called a “character map” to figure out which letter you typed, whether it was lower- or upper-case, etc. From there my knowledge breaks down, but then I’m not a computer researcher. I am, however, a health and nutrition researcher.

Some researchers plumb depths beyond where even the smartest among us can go. Those geniuses then report to other people with a lower level of intelligence, and as that knowledge gets passed down the grapevine, it gets dumbed down until the whole process looks like a game of Chinese Whispers. By the end of the process, the original information can look quite different.


How To Read A Study

Most of you will never look this closely at research, and even if you do, you’ll probably land in a bowl of confusion because it’s not light reading. Still, let’s say you want to dive in anyway. Well, there are a few basic things you need to know that can help you on your way. Below I’ll outline a few basic steps on how to take what you see in the media and look deeper.
Step One: Finding The Study

Maybe you’re reading a book or just read an article online that delivers a conclusion you’d like to examine more closely. For example, Yahoo News recently posted an article with the headline, “Exercise found to cause weight gain!” The article cited a university study that indicated that those who exercise actually gained more weight than they lost. Within hours, that article spawned dozens of imitators. Websites do this for topic rankings. Whoever gets it the fastest and with the most views wins the highest ranking in search engines. They don’t really care what the study details are, they just want their news and traffic.

But just because a bunch of websites say something doesn’t mean you have to believe it. It’s now up to you to find where the study is, what it says, and to some degree what it didn’t say.

Journalists and bloggers don’t always highlight or properly link their articles about studies. Sometimes they don’t even bother to properly source their articles. I am guilty of this myself. For example, an article might say “A recent study in the AJCN said …” leaving you nothing more than that to go on. The AJCN stands for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. This is just one of many journals that publishes house studies. A large amount of studies done are never reported by a journal or make it through submissions for various reasons ranging from politics, bad data, or too many hoops. If you’re diligent enough to figure out the name of the journal behind the study, you still might have to cross your fingers and hope the full study is in a recent edition.


Step Two: At First Look

Once you find the study name, you can then go to the site PubMed.com. PubMed is the Google of studies, having indexed millions of studies and abstracts.

Let’s pause to define a few terms, starting with “abstract.”

An abstract is the summary of the study. Usually an abstract follows the same format of the study so readers can easily find what areas they want summarized. But an abstract isn’t the full study, and neither is it automatically true. You can’t use it like Cliff’s Notes. Reading an abstract should simply tell you whether you want to read the full text.

Here are the standard sections of an abstract.

Introduction: What is the purpose of this paper? What are they asking?
Method: A short description of how they went about asking or answering the question.

Result: What was the result? What did the data tell us?
Discussion/Conclusions: What did this study tell us, and what does it mean? How does this relate to other information we already have?

Not all abstracts are written this way. Sometimes it’s all one long flowing paragraph that feels like you dropped into the middle of an intricate conversation. Sometimes there’s nothing, just a title. Once you’ve read the abstract, then you have to decide whether you want to read more or simply move on.


Step Three: A Deeper Look

Next, move on to the full text of the study. Sometimes it can be hard to find the full text, and here I usually recommend plain old Googling to find it. Most of the time, this is not the case. Unless you are a member of an organization that has free study access (college, hospitals, etc.) then you would have to pay (usually hefty) fees for that study, and sometimes you just have to know the right person. I personally believe that this is one of the biggest problems with research in general. Anyone should be able to easily access a study. /End rant.


Step Four: What It Says, And What It Doesn’t Say

If you can find the full study, now it’s time to read it. The flow of the study is basically the same as the abstract. There of course can be variations and more section titles, but that’s the basis of how all studies are written. There are also different types of studies and research. Instead of diving into types like “double-blind or case-controlled” I want to appeal to the simplicity of asking your own questions in the situation.

I’m not trying to be flippant about the importance of structure and terminology in a research paper. That said, you’re going to take a casual walk into a deep minefield of terms, and you need previous knowledge on a lot of subjects. Reading research is not something that happens overnight, and there is always going to be a limit to how much someone can grasp. That said, no matter how green you are to reading research, the following section is universal to all research papers regardless of their type.

When you’re reading a paper, your job is to not only read what they did, but also to read what they didn’t do, and what has come before them. I am going to give you an example of a study and its conclusion, and you need to determine the following:

* Did they arrive at a conclusion?
* Do you agree with their methodology?
* Did they cover all the possible variables of the situation? If they didn’t cover all variables, were those variables taken into account?
* How does this study compare to other studies that have already been covered on this topic?
* Is there a hidden agenda and should that be taken into consideration when determining the validity of the study?
* How many hoops were jumped through successfully and how confident do you feel that the topic was covered?

If you’re thinking that this is a lot to go through for one study, you’d be right. This is the very point I raise with people who refer to isolated studies to prove a point or to make a claim. There are way too many variables and differences that can occur through each research point that could have brought about a completely different outcome.

Now I want to show you how to go through this process yourself, step by step. I don’t expect people to go through this themselves, but the next time you consider the validity of a news article, ask yourself, did they go through these steps?


Farmers, pesticides and diabetes

In a recent best-selling diet book, a section was devoted to how pesticides can cause diabetes and obesity. They backed up their claim with a link to a study that has appeared in many books as the sole evidence that pesticides apparently cause diabetes and keep you from losing fat.

We’re going to examine this study in detail. We’ll point out the pros and cons. Then you’ll decide for yourself whether you want to alter your entire diet and daily life based on this one study. I invite you to find your own conclusion, but I’ll also offer my own.


I chose this study because:

1.) It’s available as a full text online (at this time) for all of you to read in full. Incident Diabetes and Pesticide Exposure among Licensed Pesticide Applicators: Agricultural Health Study, 1993

2.) It’s relatively easy to understand.

3.) It demonstrates the need for common logic and variable reasoning.

Study Title:
Incident diabetes and pesticide exposure among licensed pesticide applicators: Agricultural Health Study, 1993-2003.

Study Authors:

Montgomery MP, Kamel F, Saldana TM, Alavanja MC, Sandler DP.

Supported or Performed By:

Epidemiology Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA.

Abstract:

Exposure to certain environmental toxicants may be associated with increased risk of developing diabetes. The authors’ aim was to investigate the relation between lifetime exposure to specific agricultural pesticides and diabetes incidence among pesticide applicators. The study included 33,457 licensed applicators, predominantly non-Hispanic White males, enrolled in the Agricultural Health Study. Incident diabetes was self-reported in a 5-year follow-up interview (1999-2003), giving 1,176 diabetics and 30,611 nondiabetics for analysis. Lifetime exposure to pesticides and covariate information were reported by participants at enrollment (1993-1997). Using logistic regression, the authors considered two primary measures of pesticide exposure: ever use and cumulative lifetime days of use. They found seven specific pesticides (aldrin, chlordane, heptachlor, dichlorvos, trichlorfon, alachlor, and cyanazine) for which the odds of diabetes incidence increased with both ever use and cumulative days of use. Applicators who had used the organochlorine insecticides aldrin, chlordane, and heptachlor more than 100 lifetime days had 51%, 63%, and 94% increased odds of diabetes, respectively. The observed association of organochlorine and organophosphate insecticides with diabetes is consistent with results from previous human and animal studies. Long-term exposure from handling certain pesticides, in particular, organochlorine and organophosphate insecticides, may be associated with increased risk of diabetes.

–

The abstract may seem a little scary, but don’t worry, it essentially says this:

33,457 people, mostly white male farmers, took part in this survey between 1993-1997 and then in follow-up interviews between 1999-2003. There were 30,611 non-diabetics and 1,176 diabetics. Every day these farmers dealt with a higher exposure and application of various pesticides. The farmers who used certain kind of pesticides seemed to have a higher incidence of diabetes. This study asserts that pesticides could be named as a possible risk for diabetes.

Full Study: Incident Diabetes and Pesticide Exposure among Licensed Pesticide Applicators: Agricultural Health Study, 1993

If you read the actual study, you’ll see the following.

* The whole study was done via take-home or contact surveys.
* No blood work was done and diabetes/BMI/smoking/general health were only verified through the applicant’s personal testimony.
* The applicants were asked what kind of contact and how much they had with varying pesticides, but no steps were taken to verify these statements
* Exercise and diet were not controlled or accounted for.
* Some of the applicants smoked and some did not.
* They also lived in different states (Iowa and North Carolina).
* Some of the pesticides were no longer in use and others are more popular in use, so there was a higher contact with some pesticides over others.
* Many previous studies that showed this link only dealt with animals or cases of extreme exposure to the pesticides. They had no real relevance to this situation with the farmers.
* The majority of the applicants came from a lower income bracket and education level, which on their own have been strongly linked to these very health problems as well as a general attitude toward unhealthy eating.

Based on just what I listed above and what you read yourself, can you see the many flaws and holes in this study?

Looking at all of those variables, do you really think you could say pesticides have anything to do with why those farmers developed diabetes?

What would have been a better way to go about it? How could you improve upon this study?

* Isolate different groups of pesticide exposure and do blood work on the workers.
* Have them check with the researchers in person for physicals and weigh-ins.
* Have a day-in and -out log taken of foods they ate and activity expended.
* Do not include smokers, drug users or alcoholics in the tests.

Although taking these steps would be a good start, how expensive would it be to involve 33,000 people? Is a half-cocked study better than nothing? No, I don’t think it is. In my opinion, all this study did was underline the need to weed out variables. There are so many ways that the test subjects could have contracted diabetes. To assert that there is even a possible link between pesticides and diabetes suggests at best a lack of common sense, and at worst a lack of ethics.
Screw The Facts, Bring Us The Story!

When this study was released, here are a few of the headlines it spawned. Keep in mind that these articles appeared on major news outlets and top-ranking websites, all while climbing to the top of search-engine rankings.

“Pesticides make us fat!”
“New study shows that pesticides could cause diabetes.”
“Think eating vegetables are good for you? Think again!”
“Pesticides linked to obesity and poor health.”
“Pesticides are making you fat.”
“Could pesticides be why you aren’t losing weight?”

This is just a small fraction of the hundreds of articles and book chapters published because of this one study. Having seen all this, let me ask two questions.

1. These farmers work in an environment where they’re surrounded by pesticides every day. Do you think that has anything to do with your home life?

2. Do you see a link between the health of these farmers and the act of washing fruits and vegetables before eating them?
Take Home Point

These are the kinds of questions you have to ask yourself while reading anything — a news report, a study, this article, anything.

Think critically. Think rationally. Ignore fear. Follow a track of critical thought. Fear paralyzes us, but dissecting and questioning cause movement.

Research 101 - Research Says This Is One Of The Most Important Articles You Can Read | Leigh Peele