Bad Study On Antioxidants And RA Misleading, Dumb

Science stubbed its toe again today, as researchers leapt to an incorrect conclusion on the basis of vague data concerning how effective antioxdiants are in helping folks with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

This is an unfortunately common occurence, my friends. Everyone seems to be in such a rush to get published, that they’re willing to shout out a “finding” from a poorly designed or flawed study.

The study in question is the Nurses’ Health Study, which tracks a humongous number of nurses (over 100,000) over the last several decades.  Now, that may sound pretty cool (and it really is), but big giant studies like that can have a number of problems, the biggest of which is that they’re typically very vague.

It’s hard to figure out specific reasons or mechanisms with that many numbers, so these studies are usually mostly effective in identifying general trends that smaller, tighter studies can follow up on in more detail.

Yeah.  These researchers didn’t do that.  They just announced that antioxidant intake didn’t help RA, which isn’t what they found at all.

You see, the biggest problem was this.  “Antioxidant intake” wasn’t actually measured.  They guessed.  They guessed how much antoxidants were in someone’s diet, based on self-report.  If there’s one thing I learned through a bazillion classes on psychological research design (that was my undergrad degree) it’s this: YOU CANNOT TRUST SELF-REPORT.

People lie.  They forget.  They embellish.  They’re just plain wrong sometimes.  So asking someone to tell you how much antioxidants they think they took or ate, reeeeeeeeally isn’t all that accurate.

Plus, they only included four of the basic antioxidants (A, C, E, and selenium), none of which belong to the powerful polyphenol class of antioxidants.  Browse through the articles I’ve written in the “Antioxidants” section of the “Supplements” category, and you’ll see that a lot of the antioxidants that have the most dramatic effects are the polyphenols like resveratrol and pycnogenol.  These antioxidants weren’t even checked.

So, a vague guess at intake of a partial list of antioxidants led researchers to believe that antioxidants don’t help RA.  Gee.  Thanks, guys.  How about the next time you go to the doctor, he forms a diagnosis on partial blood work he thinks he remembers reading a few weeks ago?

Go back to the drawing board, Science, and let me know when you’ve got something better for me.

Source:http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/nm/us_health_antioxidants