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PhilGoetz comments on Even if you have a nail, not all hammers are the same - Less Wrong
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Thanks Phil. I am suitably outraged at both that both the authors and the journal published this.
I'm not sure whether 'benefit of the doubt' in this instance suggests 'political motivation' or 'incompetence'. I'll give them whichever benefit of the doubt they prefer. The most basic knowledge of the field suggests a prior probability that a fat soluble vitamin has a linear response with dosage is negligible.
I think the simplest hypothesis is that this was a case of pushbutton statistics - get a statistics package, read the documentation, and feed it numbers until it gives you numbers back.
The papers overwhelm the reader with so many details about how to categorize and treat the different samples in the meta-study, that it's easy to feel like they've "done enough" and just wave the math through.
It might be that, in order to pay more attention to statistical correctness, you've got to pay less attention to other details. A person has only so much mental energy! So it may reflect not poor statistics skills so much as poor priorities. Doctors want to hear all the clinical details; but there's little time and mental energy left for anything else.
You seem to have a mild case of pushbutton statistics
Negligence hurts people. In this case it hurts people at the margin, where nutritional advice from misinformed doctors tips the scales. Yet while negligence in surgery is a PR nightmare, there is still a net benefit of prestige to having papers published, read and referenced even when it can be shown that the research is flawed. If only negligent publications came with a commensurate penalty to the credibility of the author and journal, even if only until they published a suitable retraction.