h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It says so in the newspaper, so it must be true.

On page 7 of Tuesday's edition of Dublin's free Metro newspaper there is a report that cured meat will damage the lungs.

Consuming cured meats twice a week almost doubles your chances of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a common lung condition, according to the referenced study. Not that the title and publication details of the study are actually referenced, as such, of course. But we are told that it was led by Dr Rui Jang of Columbia University Medical Centre in New York. A short quote from the doctor indicates that high nitrate levels in cured meats could damage lung tissue.

The only statistics in the article are these:
Number of individuals studied: 7,352.
Average age: 64.5.
Those who eat cured meats 14+ x per month are 1.93 x more likely to develop COPD than are those who eat none.

They also quote nutritionist Carina Norris. She's a nutritionist, so we'll ignore her.

http://badscience.net

At around this point, various alam bells start to ring softly in the back of my head. I've spent too much time on Dr Ben Goldacre's site to trust newspaper science stories, especially health scares. And I can see for myself some of the problems in this one. "Non-interventionist study," I mutter under my breath.

And then we get to the last paragraph: "Researchers found high consumers of cured meats were more likely to be male smokers, of lower socio-economic status, and not eat fruit and vegetables regularly." Bizzare! They are fully aware of the problems with the study, but still go for the scare headline. And they mention the problems in the final sentence without even aknowledging that they are problems. Dishonesty or stupidity?

(And I don't eat fruit regularly either. But I do eat it frequently.)

TRiG.

I've just spent a few minutes finding a similar column in the Guardian's 'Bad science' column that I thought you'd enjoy at http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0,,2036274,00.html

Then I realised that it's written by the people responsible for badscience.net, so you've probably already read it. Oh well...

Trig, when did the press ever let facts and/or proper statistical practice and/or analysis get in the way of a good headline and/or story?

I read that first posting and couldn't see anything in it that broke the house rules!

Neither could I. I hope it will be back opnce the moderators have looked at it.

Or rather once TRiG has replied to the email and they reconsidered, because I've only just seen that it's not hidden but removed.

Ummm... I dundid miss it!!

That's a bit mystifying. Are posts being yikesed for being interesting now?

I have no idea. I never found out why my post was removed, I never got the email telling me the reason, because my provider - who floods me with spam- must have identified all h2g2 mails as spam and deleted it. You know me, so you can trust me when I say that there wasn't any offensive material in my post, either.

You seem very defensive about it

I've sent in an appeal. They felt I'd violated copyright. I quoted only one sentence. I'm fairly hopeful that it'll reappear.

TRiG.

You're allowed to quote a few sentences for illustrative purposes.

Hmm. It's back. Were you asked to reword it, Trig?

W

It looks unchanged to me, Wilma.

Unchanged.

Oh! for a toasted bacon buttie smothered in rich brown sauce and a piping hot mug of that milky brown stuff that monkeys drink