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(Fifo) wrote:
> Figuring out the various studies that come out on the health effects of
> this and that food is practically impossible. There are also many
> contradicting studies. A lot of that has to do with the methodology of
> comperative studies.
>
> Generally, what they do is to solicit a group of people to participate
> and then over a period of time they feed half of them with say cabbage
> and the other half ("the control group") don't eat cabbage. Then after
> a period of time they measure either the incidents of heart deasease or
> some auxilliary factor (blood pressure, etc.) and using statistical
> sampling theory conclude that there is a significant difference in the
> two populations.
>
> Obviously the conclusiveness of such studies will be all over the place
> and you probably want to see more than one study before you stop eating
> cabbage or load up on sauerkraut. Many factors can influence the
> outcome of a study and not all of those can be controlled.
>
> In addition, statistical sampling theory does come with its own
> limitations on conclusiveness. Namely there will always be some
> non-zero probability that the result was strictly random. Most studies
> keep this probability under 5% but in calculating the significance of
> the study, any researcher will have to use a number of assumptions that
> may or may not be correct. There are well known examples of meaningless
> statistically conclusive data such as the fact that the length of the
> right and left foot are not statistically correlated.
>
> Finally, many of these studies are sponsored by manufacturers of this
> and that and even if the study was done by a third party research unit,
> you still have to wonder.
>

Did you (or do you) have anything to say about _this particular study_?

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