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ciantic comments on Open Thread: September 2009 - Less Wrong
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Does this http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090831130751.htm suffer same problem as:
12 healthy male volunteers were chosen to study what is "just right" amount of beer for driving car. These men consumed doses of beer at 2 bottles, 4 bottles, 8 bottles, and 16 bottles per day for two weeks for each dose amount, with beer being the only alcohol in their diet. Surely the 2 bottles would win, but it definitely ain't the "just right" amount.
Am I missing something in the sciencedaily news, or did they really end up to that conclusion, of 200mg from that test?
Well, the article abstract isn't consistent with the description you linked to. One of the dangers of paraphrasing science.
From the abstract: "Twelve healthy male volunteers (aged 53–65 yr) were assigned to consume an intake of successively 200, 400, 800, and 1600 mg/d DHA, as the only {omega}-3 fatty acid, for 2 wk each dose."
I don't know what inconsistency you noticed between the news article and the abstract, but it seems the abstract itself describes a study that is missing the control group that gets a dosage of 0.
The following sounds like a control measurement was taken:
"Blood and urine samples were collected before and after each dose of DHA and at 8 wk after arrest of supplementation."
Also note, that the abstract doesn't say that 200mg is ideal as the science daily description does it says:
"It is concluded that low consumption of DHA could be an effective and nonpharmacological way to protect healthy men from platelet-related cardiovascular events."
Taking measurements before and after the treatment is good, but that is not the same as having a separate control group, which could filter out effects of timing, taking the dose with food or water, etc.
The abstract also claims "Therefore, supplementation with only 200 mg/d DHA for 2 wk induced an antioxidant effect." It is likely that there was a more complete conclusion in the full article.
But the abstract does not make any "just right" claims, unlike the summary on science daily. Which is what you where complaining about.
The abstract reads - we did an incremental test, and even at the lowest dosage we found an effect. This suggest that low dosages could be effective. I don't see anything wrong with that reasoning.
The science daily summary is simply misrepresenting it. So, the original commenter isn't missing something in the science news, it is science daily who made the error.
The news article was not based on the abstract. It was based on the journal article (which is available with a subscription) that the abstract summarized. It is not reasonable to expect that every point in the news article be supported by the abstract.
extremely implausible, as a general rule.
ETA:
So, perhaps the news article was based on press release that was based on the journal article. My point was that it was not produced solely from the abstract.
While the article is more reliable than the abstract, the abstract is more reliable than the press release and the news coverage, because there is better policing of its claims. And the abstract is more policed than the article, so though it may be less reliable because of compression, it is not biased towards sensationalism.
I don't see why this is your point? In the very least it doesn't present counter evidence to my claim that the abstract contains information not present in the news article which mitigates or negates the concerns of the original comment.