When I started my doctoral dissertation and the associated research, I was absolutely full of love toward what I was doing. I worked on understanding how specific hormones in the brain (neuropeptides) modify human decision-making. I ran clinical trials and published several articles. Here is chapter 2 of my dissertation published in PLOS One. It is one of their top papers in terms of citations. Great stuff! But then the troubles start. You get your PhD and you are on your own.

Publish or Perish

When you are in academia, you need to publish as well as teach. This is not an easy combination, because teaching itself is a full time job and when you are just starting out, you are hit with a bigger teaching load than once you become an “accepted” member of academia. So academics publish and publish and publish, and here comes trouble!

Most research is in teams and team members come from different locations, different fields, and often with conflicting opinions. For example, when I worked at the Max Planck Institute in Germany as a postdoc visiting scholar, I teamed up with several people to run an experiment. The idea was mine, I worked with a Max Planck researcher on setting the research up, and several other people joined us: a statistician graduate student to help with the statistics, the radiologist that helped us use the fMRI machine, the lead at Max Planck Institute where I was working at the time, and a professor from the University that had the student body form the volunteer group. The actual experiment ran in 2008. Today, in 2022, we still don’t have a publication because every time I get the paper and try to help, I am shot down by the professor at the university. I don’t think that this research paper will ever be published because it is very poorly written but there is this one person that won’t let me get in there and make any changes. I think you understand where I am going with this. But there is another problem.

The Main Problem

I bumped into this video the other day and though I am really not a fan of the DietDoctor for much fake information on their website, I decided to watch this video because it was short and the topic was of interest to me. The topic is associated with my experience in scientific research.

You can find the video here if you prefer to watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYLrMq240xk

In this video one of the authors of a recent study explains why the recent study they published misleads completely those who read the abstract and why even the newsflash was also completely wrong! The paper they wrote can be found here.

The paper summary (the abstract) suggests that while the ketogenic diet beat the Mediterranean diet in most aspects, since it increased LDL, the so called “bad cholesterol”, the Mediterranean diet won and keto failed. Yet, if you read the paper all the way through, you will find that they actually found the exact opposite! The ketogenic diet won over the Mediterranean diet in every aspect of the study, even in the case of increased LDL, because when placed into the context of its effect on metabolic health markers, the increased LDL ended up with metabolically healthier people ==> better outcome.

Why Was the Paper Misleading?

You will see in the video that of the many authors, the lead author and 4 more authors are plant-based dieters, and so the findings actually disagreed with their biases. They could not stomach that the ketogenic diet worked better than the Mediterranean, and so they “twisted” the story toward their bias.

In addition, the speaker in the video was in charge of writing the paper but the part that explained why the increased LDL was a benefit, was removed by the lead author. With this, the lead author changed the entire meaning of the paper and has basically falsified the research by misrepresenting the findings.

Unfortunately, as this is also my experience, this happens more often than not.

Is Peer Review The Hallmark?

While most scientists (and the public especially) will always want to see only peer reviewed papers considered, my experience with peer review, both as a reviewer and also as an academic submitting articles for peer review has been a challenging one, and one I no longer trust.

When I was a peer reviewer, there were always 3 reviewers per paper and two had to agree on what will happen. In nearly every case, my statistical knowledge forced me to reject over 95% of the papers but they still published because the other two reviewers had weaker statistical experiences and simply didn’t catch the problems.

And when I was the author and submitted to peer review, I could pick and choose who I did not want on the peer review committee and I could also recommend any reviewers I preferred. This alone is already a form of “cheating”. And in some cases when I didn’t see any familiar names and the paper went to whoever, they had the right to request that I cite their paper, even if it was not appropriate to do so, given my topic.

Academic Publications Have Serious Problems

The attached video will help you understand why studies are often completely taken out of context by the abstract and why the headlines are often reported to present the exact opposite of what the study found. This also means that if you aren’t a scientist and don’t understand academic papers or have no access to them, and you only listen to the headlines and what is reported in the news, you will completely be misguided and will believe the opposite of what was in the actual research article.

Conclusion

Don’t listen to newsflashes! Don’t believe an article reported by the Media! If you are really interested in the topic, get the original article and if you don’t understand it, ask an academic friend to help you understand it. Life is full of traps where money can be made! Don’t fall into the trap!

Comments are welcome, as always, and are moderated for appropriateness,

Angela