Research Roundup

One of the main goals of this newsletter is to combat misinformation online. We are constantly refining and reworking how we talk about this stuff to get ideas across in a more succinct and clear manner.

The number one problem we see on a daily basis is this:

Confusing mechanistic hypotheses with actual human outcomes.

Said another way, falling in love with a sexy narrative at the expense of real world evidence.

This can explain nearly every single issue we have with scientific misinformation today:

• Seed Oil Infatuation

• The Aspartame Debate

• COVID Vaccine Hesitation

In the case of Seed Oils, the grifters online will post link after link to “studies” in rats, petri dishes, and papers hypothesizing a proposed mechanism for how seed oils could be a problem.

But they do this at the expense of real world data like RCTs (Randomized Control Trials) where they give one group seed oils & one group saturated fat and compare the outcomes. The participants don’t know which they’re getting (A Blind RCT) and often the researchers don’t know either (A Double Blind RCT).

These are considered the gold standard of scientific research because you can control for other variables that might confound the outcomes.

These studies over and over again show either a neutral or positive impact for the seed oil groups.

Epidemiological studies track the real world health outcomes of people over time while routinely checking in on how they’re eating. These consistently show people who eat more seed oils (compared to saturated fats like butter and fat from meat) live longer, have less heart disease, and cancer.

Citation: The largest study ever done on the topic
- Showed seed oils are actually protective compared to saturated fat

The Bottom Line:

If seed oils, aspartame, & vaccines were harmful, we would see this bear out in population studies. The people who ate more seed oils/drank more diet pop/received the most vaccines would have the most death & disease. But the data CONSISTENTLY & OVERWHELMINGLY shows the exact opposite.

In the example of vaccines it would be incredibly easy to show that vaccines caused autism if they in fact did do that. You would look at the population of people who have been vaccinated vs those who weren’t. You’d then compare the incidence of autism in those two populations.

It’s become trendy today to ask the question:

“What about the Amish?”

Well, about that…

A 2011 study found that only 14% of Amish children are unvaccinated. The narrative that they don’t take vaccines and are therefor healthier is flawed from the beginning.

However, they have been much slower than the wider public to take the COVID vaccine so we have some solid data on that.

A newly released study from July found excess death rates among Amish groups rose at a similar pace as the nation during the early phase of the pandemic, and then outpaced it as death rates otherwise dropped nationwide.

An older study from 1988 found that while lung cancer is nearly nonexistent there, the Amish actually have unusually high rates of both breast cancer and juvenile leukemia.

If vaccines caused autism, you’d see a step increase across the data. Meaning the more vaccines people get, the more autism diagnoses there would be compared to the non vaccinated group.

But the data does not in fact show this. There is no relationship with doses & diagnosis. Some studies have even shown a lower incidence in vaccinated children.

Citation: This 2015 Study of over 95,000 Children

Citation: This review of nearly every study done on the subject
Actually worth the read if you have time.

Pointing to the increase of vaccines over time and the increase of autism over time is as lazy and inaccurate as pointing to the rise in seed oils used in our food supply and the rise in obesity.

Both are akin to pointing to the spike in murder rates over the summer and the parallel spike in ice cream sales and arguing that eating more ice cream makes one more likely to murder/get murdered.

We all want easy answers to complex problems. That is absolutely understandable. Unfortunately, reality doesn’t align with these hypotheses or the proposed solutions & clinging to these beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence is dangerous.

It is also an incredible waste of resources when scientists are compelled to study this same thing again and again even though we already know the answer.

Scientific illiteracy is a very scary problem.