Absence, and future posts!

Well, I know it has been a long time since I have done significant posting, I have been pretty busy since Thanksgiving with projects, tests, and just general wrapping up of the semester.  However, I completed the last final of my undergraduate career this morning, so regular posting will continue soon.  Some topics to look forward to in the coming weeks include:

• Vitamin D
• Antioxidants
• Fructose
• More on cooking
• Clock genes

And many more!  As always, if you have a good idea for a post, or would like to learn more about a topic send me an email or write it in the comments!  One of the hardest parts is coming up with good topics to write about, so suggestions are always welcome.

The Signal and the Noise: What does it mean for science?

I just finished reading Nate Silver's excellent book The Signal and the Noise.  This book is all about statistics, and how often misguided we are when hear statistics get thrown out for everything from weather predictions, to earthquakes, even baseball.  It is very well written and engaging, he has quite the sense of humor, and gives funny descriptions of the people he met to interview for the book (to the reader at least, I doubt some of these scientists appreciated how he depicted them!).

In the book he talks about his own personal journey.  He began as an economist for a big accounting firm, but developed a baseball sabermetric program that he sold to another company and struck it big.  From there he turned to political forecasting, and has done quite well, he correctly predicted the results of the presidential election in all 50 states!  They guy is what I would call a "genius"  so the book is a must read.

However, this blog is about science, and what can a scientist take away from this book?  Well, I think there is quite a bit for us, especially since statistics are the basis of our profession (statistically significant anyone?).

The main thing I would like to discuss here is this paper by John P Ioannidis.  Nate talks about this in his book, and the title of it is "Why most published research findings are false".  Woah, that's quite the mouthful for any scientist to swallow.  How does he come to these conclusions?  Well he uses a lot of statistics that, to be honest with you, mostly went over my head.  I was able to understand most of the article when the numbers were absent and he used words, though!  What I got out of the article was that most of our published research findings are suffering from some of the most basic problems that the scientific method is supposed to sort out.

The first, and obviously most occurring problem, is bias.  Ioannidis uses math to show that as bias increases the probability of a research finding being actually true goes down.  I feel like bias is definitely as issue in a lot of journal articles, and we see it all the time.  I think many people will remember an article published not long ago that said that eggs were just as deadly as cigarettes?  Well, it turned out these guys had connections to the cholesterol drug market, obviously they are going to find that the high cholesterol eggs are very bad for you.

This is just one type of bias though.  Another type would be purposely designing an experiment to get a result you want.  This can be done in many ways, by how you ask the question, to the statistical methods you use to present your data.  Ioannidis talks about many studies that will use statistics to develop results that have a p<.05 (the standard in most scientific literature) when they previously did not meet that criteria.  This is obviously poor science, if you modify your data so it looks how you want.

Another way we introduce error into our scientific studies is by saying that just because a difference is small, but statistically significant, it is a meaningful finding.  I struggled with this principle myself when I was writing the How to build muscle post.  There were many studies that showed certain associations, but they were so very small.  However, the study said it had a statistically significant finding, so I assumed it was true and used it as a source to back my claim.  Significant or not, are these small gains enough to say something is important enough to publish a paper about it?  Maybe we just need to be more selective about what gets published these days.

The most funny problem that Ioannidis points out is the competition between groups that can lead to exaggerated findings.  If one group doing similar research to yours publishes a finding,  one that is "statistically significant, and you can make the opposite finding in a "statistically significant" way, you should publish your finding immediately!  Why?  Well, mainly its just to be a dick, and say you're wrong!  This great for you and your career, and can help grab headlines for your field, but is very damaging to science as a whole, where consensus needs to be found on topics.  If you have opposite finding you need to work together to find and modify your experiments so that you can reach a consensus answer that benefits science.

Nate talks about this consensus view at length, and recommends that "Bayesian" thinking is the solution to this problem.  He throws out the situation where you are in a world where all your predictions are depicted on a sandwich board, and when you meet someone with a differing prediction, you must either make a bet with them about who is right, or come to a consensus.  This type of bayesian thinking is the core of Nate's book, and is quite the insight for those of who might have differing views, especially us scientists who seem to be rarely trained in this bayesian thinking.

All in all, I think both Nate's book and Ioannidis' paper are very good reads, I would recommend both of them to anyone.  I think the main thing we get out of both of these is that we need to be better at critically analyze the data.  We need to be sure we are finding signals, and not just noise.

Competition Culture: What have we done?

Wow, what a sad,sad story coming out of Kansas City this weekend.  My thoughts and prayers go out to anyone affected by this tragedy.

An event like this makes me call into question our competitive culture.  Now, obviously this young guy must have had some problems.  And I'm sure stuff like this happens to people all the time and it doesn't get as much notice because they are in the position this kid is.  But, my question would be, do you think this would have happened to this kid if he had not been a pro football player?

Most of these players a essentially just kids, from the time they reach about sophomore year in high school they begin to come under intense scrutiny.  They are immediately thrust into the spotlight, and many of them continue to stay there through college ball, and into the pros.

Cam Newton is 23, and is almost exactly one year older than I am.  He regularly has articles published about him on a national level that call into question every aspect of his character.  Can you imagine being that young and having have those things read about you?  I can't, in fact I'm right up there with the other people saying they hate him most of the time.  I'm 22, and I spend most of my time wondering why my funny facebook status didn't get more likes, not thinking about whether or not all of my basic values are right or not.

Nathan Scheelhaase (for those of you who don't know who this is, he is/was the quarterback for the University of Illinois. Go Illini!)  is 22, in fact, he is about 7 months younger than I am.  He regularly is referred to as talentless on certain sites around the web.  What?  Can you imagine what that would be like?  I get stressed out when I have two exams in one week, I can't imagine how would feel if I could also pick one of a number of sites to read why random people think I have no worth.

The pressure most of these kids are under by choosing to be stars in this culture of competition that we have is just unreal.  It is not just the injuries these athletes are sustaining that will have lifelong side effects, it the emotional and phychological damage that comes from this culture as well.

I am reminded of Peter Gray's talk from AHS this year in times like these.  He talked about how in most traditional societies around the world there is very little competition.  One thing that really stuck with me was when he said that if you give kids a soccer ball in these societies they don't play a competitive game with it, they play something like seeing how long they can collectively keep it up in the air.

This competition culture isn't just present in athletics though.  It can be seen in almost any industry in America these days.  Who can get promoted faster, who can publish more papers, who can earn more money.  All the time we are constantly bombarded with competition, and it just doesn't seem natural to me.

Stress also plays a big role in this.  When you are in an intense competition like this all the time you are under quite a bit of stress.  Not only are these kids under stress during actual games that millions of people watch, but their actions throughout their lives are more stressful than ours. I think play can be a great way to reduce stress, and everyone should have multiple different stress reduction strategies they can turn to when things start to build up.

I think we could all benefit from some extra play in our lives.  Even if that play comes in the form of a competitive, taking the competition element out if it can make it that much more enjoyable.  For instance, one of my roommates and I enjoy playing racquetball, or course someone ends up winning, but we don't go out there with the intention of winning or losing, we just play a couple games so we have something more to do than just hit the ball for 45 minutes.

When you look at the multitude of factors that are contributing to our current health epidemics, both physical health and mental health, I think it is hard to say that our competitive culture is not helping to cause it.  Through the stress this competition causes we are slowly broken down, and stress reduction strategies need to be implemented to help us reclaim our health.

How to Build Muscle

Alright guys, I’ll admit it.  I’m vain.  I would like to be bigger.  Maybe not Arnold big, but I would like to add a few more pounds to my 5’ 10” frame.  However, many people struggle with the herculean task of adding muscle mass, and for many there doesn’t seem to be any solution.  Any one who has looked into the topic knows that there are a few basics you need to follow: Lift heavy weights often, and EAT!  These two things will get people on the right track, and they should be able to add a considerable amount of muscle, especially if they are new to weight training. 

Yet, these two suggestions are somewhat vague, especially the eating part.  Some people will tell you just to eat everything in sight, and gain as much weight as possible then after the weight is put on you can look at cutting down on the fat you have gained.  Who really wants to get fat like that though? 

Another question people have about the eating part is how much protein should they eat?  While getting in enough energy to grow through healthy fats and whole food carbohydrate sources such as potatoes is certainly needed, protein remains kind of an anomaly in the diet for many.  If we follow what the body builders have been preaching for half a century or more we would think that the way to put on weight is to consume massive amounts of protein 8 times a day or more!  Another question mark is when to consume this protein, especially around a workout.  Well the science in this particular area has come a long a way in the past decade or so, and since a friend asked me many of these questions and more a week ago, I thought I should dig into the research to see if my own thoughts on the subject were valid, or if I needed to revise some of them.

The Central Problem of Gaining Muscle: Net Protein Balance

Ummm, that was a hoax, right?

Well people are talking, so I'll talk back.  Have your heard about these Raspberry ketones that Dr. Oz is making famous?  Someone in my 400 level nutrition class asked about these today, and I had already looked into them this week after first hearing about them on Monday or Tuesday.

They are supposedly a "magical" fat burner, and Dr. Oz is apparently pretty high on them.  Also, stores can't keep these bad boys in stock!  But is there really any science to back this holy grail of fat burning up?

No.

Brain evolution: Was it all cooking?

I have seen this new article about how metabolism affected brain evolution emerge in several places this week (1).  I think it is, for the most part, a great article, and would recommend it to any one with interest in this area.  Anything with math usually gets my attention, and this article uses math to support its hypothesis in an easy to understand way.  However, I am not sure that I can fully support the conclusions the authors, and many others, have come to about how their data relates to cooking.

If we take a closer look at the article we can see that the main point being made is that there is simply not enough time in a day to take in enough energy to support both a large body and a large brain.  They make the point that the human brain accounts for only 2% of body weight, but consumes 20% of our energy.  Another interesting fact they have is that for every billion neurons we have we need to consume about 6kcal to fuel them.  Using this data they hypothesize that if we were to eat the same diet as our great ape relatives, we would have to spend over 9 hours every day eating to get enough energy to support our brains and body.  Do any of you spend  9 hours eating?  I didn't think so.

This eating constraint is the real result of the paper, and not the ways we overcame it.  It is in the discussion they discuss reasons why we, as early humans, were able to overcome the constraint and develop our large brains.  To quote the authors:

"such a metabolic limitation was overcome in the human lineage by the advent of cooking food, which greatly increases the caloric yield of the diet, as a result of the greater ease of chewing, digestion, and absorption of foods"

However, I think a lot of other adaptations were taking place in early humans that allowed us to develop our brains. I have written before about how important fat is a brain fuel, and when we switched from the herbivorous diet of our great ape relatives into one that included more animal products we also started consuming more fat.  Let's review our basic nutrition facts quick: Carbohydrate=4 kcal/g Fat=9 kcal/g.  For every one hour we spend eating fat we gain over twice the amount of energy.

I think our reliance on fat as a primary source of energy was probably more important than our adoption of cooking.  This doesn't mean we can throw out cooking, I do believe that cooking played an important role in making us distinctly human.  I just don't think that it was the sole, or even largest, factor in our transformation like these authors seem too.  Again, I think I think this is a great article, I just wanted to provide some food for thought for those of you who have read this article or have seen it popping up around the web!

Cholesterol Esters: The Real "Bad" Cholesterol?

Ah cholesterol, the much vilified nutrient!  If we listen to most of the traditional nutrition and health information out there we are forced to think that cholesterol is extremely bad for us and should be avoided at all costs.  However, as many of you may know already, cholesterol is essential for human life.  It is a major component of all of our cellular membranes and is the precursor to many hormones we need (1).

Also frequently mentioned are the different types of cholesterol, the so-called “bad” cholesterol, LDL, and the “good” cholesterol HDL.  However, calling these two transport molecules cholesterol is really a misnomer, as they are complexes containing many different types of proteins, fatty acids, and only a portion of it is actual cholesterol.  These two molecules have different functions in our body, and can come in a variety of sizes.  However, labeling them “good” and “bad” cholesterol is incorrect and misleading.

So is there actually a “bad” form of cholesterol?  I have already said that cholesterol is essential for life, but there is a type of cholesterol that does appear to be bad for us.  This type of cholesterol is cholesterol esters, which is just a cholesterol molecule attached (esterified) to a fatty acid. Not all cholesterol esters are equal though, ones that are attached to polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) appear to be the most dangerous.