609 - Why 'Nothing' Matters in Nutrition Research

Nutrition Diva

Macmillan Holdings, LLC

Health & Fitness, Education, Arts, Nutrition, Food

4.3 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We tend to pay more attention to research studies when they find something that works. But we learn just as much from what doesn't work. Greg Lopez of Examine.com joins me to explain how to understand null results and why they matter. Read the transcript. Check out all the Quick and Dirty Tips shows. Subscribe to the newsletter for regular updates. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Links: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/science/null-effects-nutrition-research https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/podcasts https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/subscribe https://www.facebook.com/QDTNutrition/ https://twitter.com/NutritionDiva

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva Podcast. I'm your host Monica Reinegel and today
0:10.2	I want to talk about why nothing matters. Most nutrition research studies are designed
0:16.1	to see what will happen if we change something. What happens to muscle synthesis if we add
0:21.4	more protein to the diet? What happens to cholesterol levels if we increase vitamin E intake?
0:27.4	What happens to blood sugar levels if we decrease carbohydrate intake or what happens to our
0:32.4	immune function if we add more vitamin D? Well sometimes of course we run these experiments
0:38.5	and nothing happens and we often refer to that as a null result. Now it's easy to see that
0:45.8	as a failed experiment but actually it's not. Joining me today to talk about null results
0:52.7	is Greg Lopez. Greg is the lead scientific editor at examin.com where he and his team collect
0:59.8	assess and summarize a staggering amount of nutrition research. Welcome back to the podcast.
1:05.3	Greg. Thanks for having me back. Greg I find the work that you do at examin.com extraordinarily
1:11.7	helpful and it's one of my go to resources and not long ago I noticed that you added a new
1:17.8	section to the nutrition examination research digest affectionately known to us as nerd and this
1:25.6	section is dedicated to reporting null results or research where nothing happens. Why did you feel
1:33.1	that this was important to shine a light on? Well I think the first reason to shine a light on it
1:39.0	is just to bring more attention to null results more generally. A lot of people and a lot of buzz on
1:45.0	social media and stuff in the world of nutrition focuses on what is happening, what people are seeing,
1:51.7	what effects are and what we want to do is just kind of bring attention to the idea that
1:57.9	null results are out there and also we wanted to help people more subtly learn how to interpret
2:04.5	these because they are a bit tricky. Our nerd nulls are just basics bullet point summaries of
2:12.9	null results but we have a final bullet point that asks how null the result was and that's where
2:18.2	some of our interpretation comes in and by repeating that and having readers repeatedly read it
	...

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