Any chance the BBC web page editor is a vegetarian with this story being the BBC’s top story (Never mind more possible deaths in NHS hospital):
Processed meat ‘early death’ link
Sausages, ham, bacon and other processed meats appear to increase the risk of dying young.
Diets high in processed meats were linked to cardiovascular disease, cancer and early deaths.
Related Stories
- Red meat ‘increases health risks’
- Processed meat ‘linked to cancer’
- Vegetarians ‘cut heart risk by 32%’
Scary stuff.
Oh wait…..there’s a qualifying statement:
Lifestyle factors
It showed people who ate a lot of processed meat were also more likely to smoke, be obese and have other behaviours known to damage health.
oh…qualifying that….just so you don’t get complacent:
‘After adjusting for smoking, obesity and other confounders we think there is a risk of eating processed meat.’
‘We think‘…but we don’t know for sure. We need more grant money for more research.
Any possibility that one trawl over their data and a completely different picture would emerge?
The BBC tells us that ‘One in every 17 people followed in the study died.’..but that includes deaths from all causes including car crashes and murder and falling off ladders.
That misleads because the death rate due to cancer, heart disease or respiratory problems was a ratio of 1 in 27. There were 450,000 people in the study….. 5,556 people died from heart and artery disease, 9,861 from cancer, and 1,068 from respiratory diseases….and of that 1 in 27 how many are due to processed meat?
The study says we can save 3% of deaths if we cut out eating processed meat….which by my calculation is under 500 people of those dying from the associated diseases.
So from out of 450,000 people across Europe 500 died possibly caused or partially caused by processed meat….
There was around a total of 1.28 million deaths from cancer across the EU in 2011….so maybe 1400 deaths could be possibly linked to processed meat by this study….3000 die every year in the UK alone in car crashes.
It seems there is a higher death rate if you go in for surgery:
New research finds that as many as four out of every 100 people undergoing surgery die after the procedure, with wide variations across Europe – a problem that requires more than just extra resources to solve, writes the president of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine….The European Surgical Outcomes study, published in The Lancet,
So stop going in for surgery and live!
No sense of proportion…. the death rate is declining in Europe and people live longer. It just seems that this is scientists seeking the limelight and banging the drum for their own pet area of inquiry and the BBC gives it the highest prominence for some reason.
Not only does the BBC swallow this piece of junk food science whole it doesn’t examine the ingredients too hard….
My suggestion would be that listening to scientists processed by the BBC machine does more damage to your health than eating a bacon sandwich every day….especially as we know that the BBC is more than ready to link land use and livestock farming to climate change.
It’s not just the bbc spouting this rubbish, today. ITV and Sky are doing it too. I can’t help wondering why and why now.
Since ITV, Sky etc are all, basically, manned by the Islington mafia, I’m surprised you’re surprised (if you are!). As any disinterested observer of the MSM finds, the paper and broadcasting press (with very few exceptions) preach from the same hymn-book. For instance, although sort-of deploring the EU assault on the City, only (I think) Booker in the Sunday Telegraph noted that the EU has no legal competence to legislate or direct the limitation of bank bonuses or, indeed, control pay generally.
The rest of the press commentariat plough on regardless about this nonsense. Sure, on this issue, their hearts are probably in the right place but they conspicuously fail their readership by not disclosing (as in respect of minimum prices for alcohol) what the power of the EU actually is or isn’t. Maybe they don’t know or, more to the point, are too lazy to find out. The BBC is twice guilty: first for its general journalistic incompetence and second its overlay of taxpayer-funded bias. It bears repeating (again!) that I don’t have to pay for Sky or the Telegraph or the Times and AFAIAA the Times and Telegraph are not legally required to be impartial or, indeed, competent.
Because all the Main Stream Media are bought & paid for complicit in the UN Agenda 21 contention that middle class meat eating lifestyles are “Unsustainable”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GykzQWlxJs
The best expose of UN Agenda 21 that I’ve seen.
Well worth the 1hr 23mins. 🙂
Since 2004, when it published a dubious (to say the least) guesstimate of civilian deaths in Iraq, the Lancet has been one of the must-go-to, formerly respectable, previously “learned” publications used by the BBC to propagate, well, any fashionable enthusiasm of the chattering classes. This piece of junk research was not just regurgitated by the BBC (as part of the “do what’s good for you – or else” programmes designed in Islington), it was, apparently, so important it formed a significant part of the BBC Radio 4 flagship news at 8:00 this morning. Together with the continuation of reports that some deranged South American dictator has (to general left-wing dismay) hung up his boots having been failed by the “envy of the world” Cuban medical system and that Labour was preparing to murmur something which sounded like “sorry” for not “listening” on immigration during the period 1997-2010, it was a feature item of the
10-minute hate“news”.What’s the fixation with trying to live as long as possible anyway ? Dying of old age is a really shitty way to go, especially if it is in a nursing home surrounded by retired finger wagging doctors and BBC types being spoon fed puréed carrots.
I’ve seen a few nursing homes recently, & Alzheimers is 1 way I do not want to go. Defo.
I might treat myself to another bull run in Pamplona for my birthday again, & go out on a high. 🙂
exactly
live longer – die from Alzheimers in an NHS deathcamp
or eat, drink and be merry and two fingers up at the establishment.
It’s getting slaughtered in the comments for the mix of very dubious (littered with caveats despite the headline) scaremongering and nanny state propagandising.
I predict a closing before most get home tonight.
Sadly for them, it seems some truckers dine at internet-enabled greasy spoons during the day.
‘I predict a closing before most get home tonight
Pulled at 4.30pm.
They ‘speak for the nation’, you know.
Uniquely.
All I can say to this is, they can keep their grubby mitts off my bacon butty, I get to have one on a Sunday if I’m lucky so to quote Charlton Heston “From my cold dead hands” also this maybe a good thing in that we may see the end of that prat dick bacon on 5 dead, I don’t know about 20 grams, 20 seconds is to much of him a day.
Perhaps the real message is that you shouldn’t eat bacon 😉
…as in “allahu akhbar”.
So what they’re basically saying is that if you have a Full English every day for 20,000 years, you’ll still be safer than having surgery at Mid Staffs?
Dear Alan
I suggest you stop wading in on subjects you know nothing about.
“There were 450,000 people in the study….. 5,556 people died from heart and artery disease, 9,861 from cancer, and 1,068 from respiratory diseases….and of that 1 in 27 how many are due to processed meat?”
Do you understand what a control is? Your post suggests you don’t. This study is interesting because there was an unusual level of detail available about other health problems and lifestyle factors, which makes it possible to control for these things and identify to what degree eating meat constitutes an *additional* risk factor. This is basic epidemiology.
As it happens – and having read every word of the paper, which I doubt you have – I have several reservations about what has been reported today. Firstly, it’s based on a preliminary version of the paper. Secondly, the authors’ conclusion is that there is only a *moderate* (my emphasis) positive association between processed meat consumption and mortality. The way this has been reported is unmerited by what’s actually been written.
Not forgetting, of course, that ischemic heart diesease is has a genetic source – you are more likely to die from it if a close relative did. Is it possible that people who don’t eat meat are genetically prone to dislike it? Could they be part of a different genetic group to those at risk from ischemic heart disease?
We’ll never know if we listen to the BBC will we ?
I’m intrigued by this compulsion to pick holes in research for no other apparent reason than that you disagree with its conclusions. And as if these potentially fatal flaws in the methodology hadn’t already occurred to the researchers. If anybody would like to read the paper and make a specific objection to the science, rather than floating possibilities with a phony air of authority, please be my guest.
“I’m intrigued by this compulsion to pick holes in research…”
Time was, if you heard this on the BBC you wouldn’t question it, assuming that it was rigorous research and that a BBC journalist with some knowledge in the field had cast a sceptical eye over it to make sure it stood up to basic scrutiny.
Nowadays there’s been so much bull from the BBC masquerading as science, it’s reasonable to make a default assumption that it’s a load of hee-haw by someone angling for further grants or with an axe to grind. Or frequently both. And that the BBC won’t have done much hole-picking.
And this justifies picking holes in a piece of research you haven’t read? And presuming guilt without a shred of evidence to back your case? What a feeble argument – intellectually bankrupt.
Sorry, where did I say I hadn’t read it? In fact, where have I picked holes? You asked a question, I gave my theory. You don’t have to agree with it, but you might like to dismount from your high horse.
As for presuming guilt, well, the BBC has form when it comes to unquestioning regurgitation of research, so it’s hardly a presumption without a shred of evidence. You yourself have said you have reservations about the reporting.
‘where did I say I hadn’t read it?’
Oops.
That’s a question needing an answer, and unlike the BBC, when the answer is awkward, there’s no plug to pull.
I suspect the good Dr. may be headed back to Mid-Staffs to work his statistical magic there again.
I’m intrigued by your assumption that I disagree with the reports conclusions; just because, well what exactly? Because I pointed out something that is not or at least has not been reported in the study? Could it be that I agree with you but your arrogance won’t allow it?
A ‘phoney air of authority’ ? Eh? Where does anyone claim authority or are you one of those doctors (let’s assume you aren’t being economic with the truth there) who finds it difficult to accept that not everyone falls for their snake oil? The medical profession is not exactly known for its ability to take criticism lightly – even when they are killing thousands through incompetance.
The media, and the BBC in particular, have an unhappy habit of falsely reporting such studies to fit their own moribund agenda. That is where I start to get pissed off. I don’t presume to speak for others.
Well, my reading of your intervention was ‘here’s another thing those researchers might not have thought of’, which to the neutral observer might look like scepticism of their results. If that’s not what you intended, I apologise. But I was making the point that it’s really meaningless to object to a study’s methodology unless you know what that methodology is and how it compares to the minimum acceptable standards of such a study. Some basic competence in statistics and epidemiology helps; not having read the research in the first place positively disqualifies you from commenting on its conclusions.
But what if one is commenting on the reporting of the research? What then?
Such sweeping generalities, so little time …
‘my reading of your intervention’
He probably does Tarot, too.
Funny, that’s the second time today a posh word has been spun up as part of a ‘I can chip in any time and it is legitimate, but if anyone else has a view it isn’t’ attempt.
With luck, no one will notice.
You mustn’t criticise MMR either…
Good idea -the anti MMR movement is, rightly, a dead duck
“which to the neutral observer might look like scepticism of their results.”
But your comments indicate that you are not a neutral observer.
While research never confirms a set of underlying preconceptions on the part of the researchers?
Now, that’s a ‘compulsion’ I find quite interesting and at least as common.
That’s a perfectly valid observation. Not a great objection to these findings, however, unless you can prove confirmation bias in the study, which actually requires some statistical competence. As I have observed elsewhere on this thread, the findings are pretty unsurprising: high-sodium diets are well known to be a killer, so eating large amounts of cured meat – high in sodium – ought to have the same sort of effect. I do have my reservations about the way this was reported (as I’ve acknowledged already) but it wasn’t just the reporting that commenters here were objecting to.
‘it wasn’t just the reporting that commenters here were objecting to.’
Naughty.
A bit too all inclusive for accuracy.
I for one was very much objecting to the reporting, from a ratings gold headline ‘supported’ by paragraphs littered with caveats.
You appear to be guilty of equal selectivity to serve an equally skewed agenda based more on creating heat than spreading light.
Unbelievable Dr F that you are saying we should just take what the study says without question and not pick at it because you agree with it’s findings ? if it is good then it can stand up to scrutiny if it isn’t then why shouldn’t we say so ?
The work of Dr. Ioannidis who in his his 2005 essay called “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” and remains the most downloaded technical paper that the journal PLoS Medicine has ever published seems to me to be a bloody good reason not to roll over and play dumb!
Look at what I wrote. If you have an informed objection to the research, make it. So far nobody on this thread has. I disagree with how this paper has been reported. I haven’t seen anything in the paper that looks untoward, however.
The non-so-scientific Dr Foster ignores the fact that “residual confounding cannot be excluded”.
Interestingly, the research suggests (but no more than that) that veggies aren’t to healthy after all – “a small amount of red meat appeared to be beneficial”.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/257332.php
“Strong Link Between Processed Meat And Premature Death”
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/257332.php
As a matter of interest, why so much hostility to this research? Is it because you don’t like the result? To find that eating large amounts of cured meats leads to increased mortality is hardly counterintuitive – cured meats are typically much saltier than unprocessed red meat, and excess sodium in the diet has long been known as a killer.
Set aside, for the moment, the strength or weakness of this research, it’s instructive that, as you write, “the way this has been reported is unmerited by what’s actually been written”. Since this website concerns itself with the bias of the BBC, I wonder why the BBC chose to make this research its main item of news this morning and to produce a misleading report of what the researchers actually concluded. As Roland Deschain remarks, we get so much crapola from the BBC on “science” that it’s become reasonable – when a piece of research which, on the face of it, is being used to underpin a BBC “do what’s good for you – or else!” piece of reportage – to question not only the report (which you have done) but the research itself.
On a broader point: the result of the corruption in much scientific reportage and programming at the BBC (not least in climate “science” generally and the more or less unchallenged relaying of cod-research and dubious statistics used to justify, for instance, minimum prices for alcohol and the sale of cigarettes in plain packets) is the default reaction of doubt and suspicion concerning scientific research as reported by the BBC and much of the MSM. The provoking of such reactions can only end in undermining the practice of science itself.
It’s a bit rich for you to talk about ‘undermining the practice of science itself’ when in your first post above you refer to ‘this piece of junk research’ without providing a shred of evidence that there’s anything wrong with it. If you can prove that assertion you have a right to start pontificating about coverage of science. Not otherwise.
Given…
‘…appear to increase .. a study suggests… may damage health’
Do you think the headline and story has been reported as a sober reflection of the research so far?
And why do you think the BBC has only offered the opportunity to comment to those national licence fee payers able to comment freely when the vast majority are at work?
Rich indeed.
Why don’t you try engaging with what I actually said, rather than picking a fight with what I didn’t?
‘Why don’t you try engaging with what I actually said, rather than picking a fight with what I didn’t?’
I am; simply not on the terms you are seeking to define, which appear to be on the basis of ‘I can chip in where, when and how I like, but you can’t unless it is to agree with me’.
You appear, generously, to be confusing, but more likely deliberately trying to conflate a forum that discusses BBC professional integrity with one that debates the intricacies of niche science research validity.
I have asked some simple questions, politely, on the nature of the BBC reporting, which you have side-stepped like Helen Boaden on gardening leave, and tried to smokescreen with accusations of picking a fight.
Your appearances here are rare, but what they pick seldom appear in the spirit of light over heat and more in distraction to spin off down avenues that may indeed be of interest and often value to any with a science inclination, but are not on topic.
And by expecting to do so unchallenged when you do, and often with less than amiable asides on your own count, simply makes you Scott with a more impressive-sounding title (sadly, what you choose to share as what you are may or may not be as valid as some who trumpet what they are not on a BBC ‘it is because we say it is’ basis).
I am struck, repeatedly, by the paranoid delusions displayed any time somebody cares to offer an opinion even slightly at odds with the groupthink prevalent here. I disagree (mildly), therefore I must be a) a BBC employee in disguise; b) another poster in disguise; c) acting in bad faith or according to some suspect agenda. I am none of these things.
As I have now explained several times, I posted in order to protest at the cavalier manner in which Alan, and some subsequent posters, dismissed research without offering any evidence to back up their insinuations. Pointing out bias, or misrepresentation, in media coverage is fair enough, but if somebody has a go at a research document without any justification I’m going to challenge it. It is you who is wilfully conflating two different arguments; I have been completely clear about the nature of my objections.
‘the paranoid delusions displayed’
You’ll be a big hit when those Skype diagnoses go online.
That’s the nth time you’ve avoided answering the actual question on BBC reporting quality.
This is a site about that. You have chosen it to create a whole other issue, refused to budge from it and done so in about as patronising and condescending a manner it’s hard to imagine Nicked Emus & Jim Dandy were not spliced by a Mega City Judge Janus tech.
‘I’m going to challenge it.’
Bully.
That you still won’t answer but demand the right to sound off only on what you wish and be spared any challenge back makes this spectacle spin on its axis.
What you are or are not, as with anyone, is impossible to know. But what you write sets out your agenda clear as day.
And I make no apology for finding it depressingly familiar in structure and intent.
“That’s the nth time you’ve avoided answering the actual question on BBC reporting quality.”
M’lud, the prosecution offers in evidence the following statements, all made during the course of this thread.
Exhibit A: “I have several reservations about what has been reported today. Firstly, it’s based on a preliminary version of the paper. Secondly, the authors’ conclusion is that there is only a *moderate* (my emphasis) positive association between processed meat consumption and mortality. The way this has been reported is unmerited by what’s actually been written.”
Exhibit B: “I do have my reservations about the way this was reported”
Exhibit C: ” I disagree with how this paper has been reported.”
Exhibit D: ” I AGREE with much of what has been said about the BBC coverage, in particular the alarmist tone, given that the researchers themselves point only to a ‘moderate’ link between consumption of processed meat and mortality.”
Exhibit E: “don’t pick a fight with me about the BBC coverage – I’m not here to defend that.”
Exhibit F: “I thought the news report rather overstated the conclusions given the ‘moderate’ link found by the researchers.”
Given…
‘…appear to increase .. a study suggests… may damage health’
Do you think the headline and story has been reported as a sober reflection of the research so far?
And why do you think the BBC has only offered the opportunity to comment to those national licence fee payers able to comment freely when the vast majority are at work?
When you are ready, Doc. Me to you. You to me.
I asked two simple direct questions.
The first you appeared to feel can be avoided until now, and then by amalgamating vague references from within screeds posted elsewhere.
I fully endorse your right to correct inaccurate facts, and even take issue with views you may disagree with, but on a blog about BBC coverage, this is an interesting admission:
Exhibit E: “don’t pick a fight with me about the BBC coverage – I’m not here to defend that.”
But it’s OK for you to cherry pick fights on medical research on a blog about BBC coverage?
This is how you weighed in:
‘Dear Alan – I suggest you stop wading in on subjects you know nothing about.
And only later was there any concession that the reporting by the BBC sucked.
That does not read as the first salvo of a person concerned primarily with BBC coverage.
‘The way this has been reported is unmerited by what’s actually been written.’
Applicable in multiple intepretations of multiple pieces then?
The second question you avoided, I presume because it was not what you wanted to go near. Fair enough.
I remain intrigued as to why, when the majority of the population has no access to the internet, the BBC runs ‘we want your views’ efforts and pulls the plug when said views are not to their liking.
Maybe some ‘research’ could be carried out on that?
On matters of psychological diagnosis, might one ask if this was/is you, as it has framed much of how I have come to view posts under the name?:
Dr Foster says:
February 21, 2013 at 1:47 pm
I have a creative relationship with the truth.
It does not sound like the same person at all, suggesting a hack or shared account.
That comment was made by a prankster and not by me.
Those rude impersonations were done by a regular commenter here, who should be ashamed of himself. No more of that please. Don’t descend to the trolls’ level. (Not that Dr. Foster is one.)
David Preiser (USA)
‘(Not that Dr. Foster is one.)’
But, which one? And that’s Dr Foster; no period, for both.
As one with authorship rights, and a proven knowledge of matters IT, social media and this site, as I have already been diagnosed with paranoia by a person who has never met me, a bit of feedback if you will?
a) Are you saying that any new site guest could log on and post under David Preiser (USA) and we’d be none the wiser?
b) If so, if not paranoid at the prospect I admire your benign karma, but should the site tech whizzes not maybe act in prevention vs. tidying on a ‘please don’t’ basis, if not already on the case?
Much of my reaction to some posting efforts is based on the posting history behind the name being used (especially if being led up the garden path away from BBC accuracy or bias), and if not the same person I apologise for that, though it’s hard to see how I was supposed to know.
For the purposes of engaging with your comments I specifically set aside discussing the strengths or weaknesses of the research and addressed what is, after all, the raison d’etre of this site, the evident failure – which you pointed out – of the BBC to report accurately on this research (junk or otherwise). I also wrote that, given the BBC’s invidious record of reporting on science, it’s no wonder that viewers/listeners react with scepticism to the BBC’s reports and, possibly unjustifiably, to the underlying research reported on. However, since you are clearly unable to understand or, worse, deliberately misinterpret my (and others) comments, it’s evident that attempting to enter into an adult discussion with you is as much a time-waster as dealing with the BBC employees (and wannabees) who also appear here from time to time.
Losing the argument with someone who is debating reasonably, Umbongo plays the ‘hurt feelings’ card before launching an ad hom, picking up the ball and flouncing off on a high horse.
I would rather take my chances with a bacon sandwich than the almost certain death sentence of going into an NHS hospital.
Doctor Foster.
I take it that you`re a “proper” doctor, not one of those honorary PhD types like John Reid, Paisley etc!
You certainly come across as pompous and patronising enough to be a real doctor.
Here`s the point I guess….would the BBC be bothering their arses about say, processed cheese(Kraft ,Dairylea and the gorgoeus Galtee of Ireland!) in a similar way…or is it the damn proles with their pasties and sausage rolls at Iceland getting it in the neck as ever?
The European Union seem to be forever excluded from any blame for allowing junk meats into the food chain-horse, processed or whatever…now will you or your chums in research land be biting that hand that feeds you to pillory Kerry Katona, when the likes of Nick Brown, Margaret Beckett should be stood up in the dock?
If you want to mither the poor ad infinitum, keep doing so-they don`t give a flying f*** what the smug NHS Gauleiters and veggie compliance officers are saying, thank Buddha! But stop picking our pockets for your prepaid agendas and “research findings”, that make you so virtuous and well-padded.
We know it`s crap-but it`s cheap…and if we were all state rolled nannies on sinecures, we`d probably be equally smug and self-righteous.
Stop the nebbing, sell or buy something that the State isn`t featherbedding….and leave the reserch to independent experts and not the econaziveggie tendency that the BBC just love.
i.e…NOT the UEA please!
I notice that the Australian academic psychloogist (noted for his skill with stats as well as his general scepticism ) Dr John Ray is far from impressed.
http://john-ray.blogspot.co.uk/
“Studies show”?…wunderbar!
So it was this morning that we saw the rehabilitation of the UEA as begged for by their pals at the BBC!
Four years after their Climategate scandal of 2009…like Slim Shady…they`re back!
Nothing about global warming though…oh dear , no!
It`s about the need to kill deer…the UEA say that we should.
Which means that we must not…maybe cull a few freewheeling researchers and Profs on their unicycles!
But save the deer…even if it means eating them in Kerry Katonas “exclusive range” of pasties and pies!
Provisional report in pdf here so you can all be like our resident MD from Gloucester.
Click to access 1741-7015-11-63.pdf
In a nutshell: instead of 100 dying only 97 would die…
More interesting is that they suggest a zero meat intake is not as beneficial as a moderate meat intake. Totally logical but the veggies won’t like it.
Dr Foster – base at Imperial College? Hows your BSD people?
“Imperial’s President & Rector Sir Keith O’Nions showcased the centrepiece of the new campus, a £150 million Research and Translation Hub, and laid out the College’s vision for a £1 billion innovation eco-system where 3,000 researchers will work to solve the scientific challenges of the future.”
AKA total grant-sucking horseshit.
Surely the point here is less the validity of the research, than the alacrity with which the fashionable neo-puritanical media reports it?
I’ve consistently flagged on here the way the BBC has leaped to amplify the screechings of the anti-alcohol lobby but I might just as easily have pointed to its wall to wall publicity for the ‘fizzy drinks are made from satanspit’ fanatics.
The point at issue is the unlimited oxygen given to anyone who can purport to show that the diet most in this country grew up on is dangerous and that we should all start paying attention to the foodies, pretty damn quick!
And that is straight out of the Junior Gramsci kit for cub reporters, as any fule kno.
I seem to have got sucked into running battles all over this thread, so rather than pursue them all individually let me a bit clearer about where I’m coming from.
I’m a GP, now nearing retirement, and used to work in public health. I am a trained epidemiologist and know my way around a medical paper. I have no connection, personal or family, with the BBC, despite insinuations to the contrary. I read this study when the preprint became available and am familiar with its details. The first thing to say is that it’s a massive study, involving around half a million patients, which represents an unusually large cohort. This is, incidentally, why the paper has been given so much space by broadcasters and newspapers alike. This being the case, if the methodology is sound the conclusions are worth taking seriously. Secondly, the research has been conducted by a large number of scholars at major institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. This is no special interest group.
The results are actually pretty unsurprising. Processed meats, particularly cured meats, tend to be high in salt. High sodium diets tend to kill people.
Alan chose to attack not just the BBC coverage of this research but the paper itself, and in a manner which made it abundantly clear that he has no clue how evidence-based medicine works. Several commenters followed suit. I was attacking his ignorant broadside on the science, which was ill-informed and unjustified.
Ironically, I AGREE with much of what has been said about the BBC coverage, in particular the alarmist tone, given that the researchers themselves point only to a ‘moderate’ link between consumption of processed meat and mortality.
Let me repeat my challenge earlier: if anybody has any *substantive* objection to the paper, feel free to offer it. But don’t pick a fight with me about the BBC coverage – I’m not here to defend that.
Well argued good Doctor!
Like you, I have no objection to “proper science”…honestly!
It`s just that the usual suspects are always in the dock at the BBC…meat eating, fizzy pop drinking, booze swilling “lower orders”…as opposed to all those deaths at mid-Staffs,
I myself respect proper science-and obviously the dodgy meats etc are cheap for a reason…but the E.U get off scot-free as ever, whilst farmers can go hang themselves( quite literally , tragically all too often).
Similay no-go areas are media linked to violence against Jews, the dangers of cars and work ( bigger threats to health that a burger).
Nothing personal at all sir, I`ve not read the paper at all.
It`s just that (it being the BBC) if there was no pre-paid agenda, I doubt that the Beeb would have gleefully reported it ,had the results been different.
All too obvious to me-but that`s after years of BBC limewash, and am happy to defer to your genuine and (to me at least) honest and fair assessment.
Alan`s right to throw the bones, given that we`re due “alcoholic epidemics” next week…”obesity pandemic” the week after…Dignitas on demand to follow, etc etc.
Good post of yours!
Like ChrisH, I’m not opposed to the findings, per se, (I don’t pretend to have read the paper) it’s the way the media seized on them that bothers.
That said, I posted a link to Dr John Ray’s comment, earlier. He’s not much of a fan of epidemiology, it appears he has read the paper and he’s none too impressed.
Either way, when stories all flow in one direction, people of a sceptical persuasion are going to start mistrusting everything they read. Which is what has been happenng here.
If you prefer to trust the views of a polemical blogger who last worked in academia (in an unrelated field) more than thirty years ago, that’s your prerogative. Others, myself included, prefer to read the literature for ourselves and give more weight to the views of scholars active in the field, whose expertise is directly relevant to the study.
Dear Dr Foster – you comes across as an self-righteous, pompous windbag with an inflated opinion of your own superiority.
I am sure this is not a true picture of a hard working GP – so re-read your comments here and sit back and consider if you have done yourself justice. Personally I think you should call it quits and pay another visit to Gloucester.
Do you have a substantive objection to anything I’ve said, or are you just going to be insulting?
Not getting into what others think is acceptably robust commentary, as that between them and their opponents, and how it serves respective arguments, but just to check;
‘I suggest you stop wading in on subjects you know nothing about.
..floating possibilities with a phony air of authority, please be my guest.
What a feeble argument – intellectually bankrupt.’
Designed to engage on a substantive basis, or provoke?
As a much missed poster here used to say, I’d really like to know.
So far, your mission seems still to on the basis of ‘objection to the research, make it’.
Which is not… the point.
But I think you know that.
Perhaps. But on on the whole I think it’s useful to listen to a psychologist suspicious of the arrogance issues of some in the medical profession – and why they so often seem to rear-up like frightened snakes the moment they feel challenged.
There’s processed meat and processed meat. At the end of the day a good quality sausage is just minced pork, rusk, little salt and a natural casing, likewise, quality bacon is just pork and salt. With the exception of salt, all the other ingredients are completely benign and if our intrepid researchers are worth their salt they would have been able to single salt out as the common factor here.
One would imagine they aren’t quite as ignorant as they first appear and would have considered the salt connection, a natural ingredient which has been vilified to death already. It’s clear though that there is nothing wrong with good quality processed meat products so if any connection exists it exists with cheap processed meat products, products which are cheapened with the use of industrial processing techniques or contain preservatives which are less than natural. The common link though is not processed food it’s ‘cheap’ processed food and I’m sure it’s not beyond the wit of our illustrious ‘experts’ to he able to pin point which techniques and preservatives are the problem but that would probably open up a whole new can of worms as would trying to scare people about the dangers of eating cheap food.
Incidently, there is nothing new about this research, it made the news some time ago, its probably no coincidence that the BBC are bringing it up again to coincide with the horse meat scandal. One can only imagine that it’s good old auntie beeb coaxing us to model ourselves in their virtuous image.
There’s a whiff of ‘studies show’ about this article on their website. The Beeb, in their anxiety for us all to live longer has been wondering why the Italians manage to beat us in the longevity stakes by 18 months. Perhaps they’ve started going easy on the salami and parma ham.
“They also have more years of good health before disease and disability set in.”
Fergus Walsh, their medical correspondent, has found an academic, who among other things opines: “…. Alan Maryon-Davis, honorary Professor of Public Health at King’s College London suggests that Italy is a more cohesive and less divided society than ours. He said “There is a flatter social gradient – less difference between the haves and have-nots in Italy, and that is likely to play a role in health outcomes.”
In the end the Mediterranean diet and moderate wine consumption, seems to be the chief factor but the article ends without any hard or fast conclusions. The comments seem to contain a few somewhat candid observations about Italy and the Italians.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21690003
I wouldn’t get too excited about the ‘Mediterranean diet’ aspect. There are increasing holes being picked in that one.
The quote from Alan Maryon-Davies (no stranger to the broadcasting studio all these many years!) gives the key to understanding a lot of this twaddle.
I think the whole report should be taken with a pinch of salt…..
Oh no, that’s bad for me too.
Dr F just to ask with your veiw that we should not pick stuff apart if you support it very similar attitude to CRU’s P.Jones “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
Where did you stand on the MMR study that the press picked up and ran with causing all kinds of bad things ?
Just a wild stab but I bet you were upset that the ignorant public couldn’t pick it apart !
I’m not sure what your point is. I’m arguing that anybody is more than welcome to pick this study apart, but only if they a) have read it and understand it; b) actually have the requisite knowledge of how clinical trials and data analysis work. I’m all in favour of open data and your accusation that I’m not is inexplicable. As for MMR (which has nothing to do with the present case, incidentally) the original paper by Wakefield et al. was a shockingly bad piece of research, and the media were horrifically naive in falling for it. In fact, had all the data (not just his experimental data, but all the attendant information about his bad research practices) the scandal wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did.
“with your veiw that we should not pick stuff apart if you support it” – this is a bizarre assertion. I didn’t say that. I said that ‘picking stuff apart’ without a shred of evidence to back you up renders your opinion meaningless.
“In fact, had all the data (not just his experimental data, but all the attendant information about his bad research practices) the scandal wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did.”
Now there we can agree on something. It applies in many areas where the BBC seems curiously unwilling to delve.
Whether or not this study is junk or not, the BBC chose to run with it and Dr Foster confirmed that in his (expert?) opinion the BBC report of the research’s conclusion bears little relation to the actual conclusions of the researchers. My point – dismissed (or, rather, not addressed) by Dr Foster – is that, given the BBC’s record on its selection of research on which to report and the low standard of reportage on such research, it is not unreasonable to be highly sceptical of BBC reports on scientific research in general and for such scepticism to overflow into views concerning the research itself.
My further general point, also dismissed by Dr Foster, was that given the misreporting of scientific research for reasons of bias and/or incompetence by the BBC (and the rest of the MSM), there is a danger that even well-constituted research and thereby the practice of genuine science would be damaged in the eyes of the public.
The occasional sensationalist (mis)reporting of clinical studies is a reason for healthy scepticism about what is actually in a study. It is not justification for dismissing a study as ‘junk’, unless you then provide evidence to back up such an assertion. It is also not justification for dismissing all science reporting by a media outlet without bothering to examine the evidence.
I did NOT, incidentally, say this: “the BBC report of the research’s conclusion bears little relation to the actual conclusions of the researchers”, so please don’t try to claim otherwise. I actually said I thought the news report rather overstated the conclusions given the ‘moderate’ link found by the researchers. Since you are so determined to trash the motives and practice not just of one broadcaster but of the entire ‘MSN’ (an expression I loathe, used only in my experience by those of a dogmatic ‘outsider’ mindset who cannot take in that newspapers, at least, operate in a free market and so are at liberty to reflect the views not just of the mainstream but of any profitable constituency in existence), I suspect I’m not going to win you over.
You actually wrote “the way this has been reported is unmerited by what’s actually been written.” Now, forgive my lack of mind-reading power as to what you claim you really meant, but – to me – that statement clearly implies that you considered that the report bore a very limited relationship to what the researchers concluded.
Maybe – if you actually wanted to – you could “win me over” by explaining exactly where you disagree with the points I’ve made. Telling me that my references to the MSM (not MSN, by the way) irritate you as well as giving you an insight into my critical mindset, is not a knock-out debating point. Rather, it appears to be a way of avoiding discussion of BBC bias in deciding what research to report and bias and incompetence in its reporting.
Regardless of the quality of the study which sounds to me to be flawed for reasons I have mentioned above isn’t this or at least shouldn’t this be about how the BBC are presenting the case.
“Processed meat ‘early death’ link” OMG – All you meat eaters are going to f****ing die !!!!
There’s no indication whether the report has considered the quality or level of processing involved just that it says a little processed meat is OK.
They get some quotes from someone who should be an expert in these matters but they leave me more confused than ever, a sign that perhaps the beeboid who wrote this doesn’t really understand what’s going on but rather writes it with their own agenda.
We’re told by an expert that something has been done to enhance the shelf life of a processed product such as curing or salting (salting IS curing meat). We’re told that putting meat through a mincer doesn’t make it processed but that good quality sausages are classed as processed meat and hamburgers aren’t, when in essence there is little difference between a hamburger and the sausage other that shape and the fact that sausages are generally made of pork and hamburgers beef (or horse). (Of course I refer to the traditional English sausage, not the multicultural variety.)
If the problem is salt content they should say so directly and if there is a problem with other preservatives, likewise. But it seems that either they don’t know where the problem lies or they do know and realise that there is a much wider problem in the food industry because salt and preservatives are in virtually everything these days. My guess though is that it’s neither of the above they have just grasped at something that supports their own beliefs…but fair play, they did fall short of saying “don’t anything with a face”.
I wonder if they realise that their nightly glass of Chardonnay contains sulphites, a common additive used in the wine industry.
For Guest Who: are you so singularly unimaginative that you can fail to see the condemnation of BBC coverage I have repeatedly offered in my comments? Am I not allowed to take issue with a posting which is entirely lacking in scientific merit, when it concerns a subject in which I have a professional qualification? And if you want me to condemn the comments policy on a webpage I haven’t looked at in almost twelve hours I’m happy to do so, although it has precisely nothing to do with any of this.
To have written in controversy had been to cut off a hydra’s head, one begets another, so many duplications , triplications, and swarms of questions, that having once begun I should never make an end. One had much better, as Alexander, the sixth pope, long since observed, provoke a great prince than a begging friar, a Jesuit, or a seminary priest, I will add, that are an irrefragable society, they must and will have the last word; and that with such eagerness, impudence, abominable lying, falsifying and bitterness in their questions they proceed, that as he said, Blind fury, or error or rashness, or what it is that eggs them, I know not, I am sure many times, which Austin perceived long since, with this tempest of contention, the serenity of charity is overclouded, and there be too many spirits conjured up already in this kind in all sciences, and more than we can tell how to lay, which do so furiously rage, and keep such a racket, that as Fabius said, “It had been much better for some of them to have been born dumb, and altogether illiterate, than so far to dote to their own destruction.’Tis a general fault, so Severinus the Dane complains in physic, “unhappy men as we are, we spend our days in unprofitable questions and disputations,” intricate subtleties about moonshine in the water……
Robert Burton – The Anatomy of melancholy (Democritus to the reader)
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