Taking research with a grain of salt

Periodically you'll read the newspaper article about some study that has been conducted and be told that, as a result of the study, you should act in a certain way. The most common articles about research that I've read our about food and exercise. This article make some points about research on those topics to help us think more clearly about what researchers tell us.

Main points:

• The correlation between inputs (food, exercise) and results (disease, longevity, weight) tends to be much lower than the correlation between things like smoking and lung cancer.
• Much of the research has not yet been reproduced to see if the same results show up.
• Sometimes the way things are measured is not the most accurate. For example, participants may be asked to keep a diary of what they eat. It would be easy to say that people may not keep the most accurate diaries.

One team of researchers reviewed studies on the links of particular foods and cancer, and found studies linked just about everything we eat to cancer. Depending on the study, foods were either linked to cancer or had no link.

So the next time see an article in the newspaper breathlessly stating that something will help you live forever or will kill you, take it with a grain of salt (no doubt, salt is just fine, or is it?)