Why Dont You Blog?

Now I have a bit of a moral quandry here. Normally I would be loathe to pass comment on research findings without having read the research in full but for some reason (well, I can think of lots) I have been unable to read the full JAMA article. Obviously I am not going to let this stop me though…

In the 10 Mar 07 edition of NewScientist the news section reports on a study into diets which is titled (in the magazine) The Atkins diet works - a bit. The news item begins:

Compared head-to-head against three other diet plans, the Atkins diet has come out on top. In one of the largest studies to date, overweight women lost most weight on the popular low-carbohydrate diet.

Now this seems reasonable enough. The item continues about how, during a 12 month study the sample on the Atkins diet lost more weight than those on the Zone, LEARN (low fat diet based on US government guidelines) or Ornish (lower fat) diets. 12 months is a long time for a study like this and it looked at 311 women between the ages of 20 and 50. The data should be great.

I have no intention of getting into an argument about which diet is the best, or even if the current western obsession with diet makes any sense at all (simple answer, I dont think it does). The thing which caught my eye was the science involved.

Without having read the study itself, I can only assume this was a properly constructed study to generate an unbiased result as to which diet was the most effective at weight loss. It strikes me, this is what the study found out as well.

You would think they would be happy about it…

Given the fact that the diet industry generates lots of money, even the most crackpot (”eat three ants a day”) diets will pretty much make their inventors rich (especially if a fat celeb signs up to it, gets surgery then claims it was your diet…) and you can see people will defend the cash cow.

The commentary about the study seems to think it has failed (which leads me to suspect they were trying to prove one of the other three diets was the best - I wonder who funded the study..) and Gardner (the author) is quoted in NS as saying:

“Was the slight benefit on Atkins due to the low carbs, or the high protein, or the eight glasses of water a day that may have replaced sweetened beverages? We don’t know.”

Is he saying his experiment construction is flawed? Were there so many uncontrolled variables that he can not explain the results? Was he expecting the LEAN (or Ornish or Zone) diet to come out best? (The Zone diet pretty much came out the worst, which is a blow for people who advocate the “equal proportions” approach.)

I am not convinced this is “bad science” as such. From what I can read, the study looks sound, but I am amazed at the unwillingness to accept the conclusions. Adding to the bad conclusions, if you are still curious, there is an entire website devoted to quotes about this study: “Best Quotes from Atkins, Ornish, Zone, LEARN Diet Study” and in here you can see some amazingly bad conclusions from people doing their utmost to ignore the results of this study and maintain their cash cow…

“This is the message of this article — focus on lifestyle and environmental factors and don’t worry about the macronutrient composition of the diet, particularly if you can achieve the NHLBI guidelines of a 5 to 10 percent weight loss,” says Dr. George Blackburn, chair in nutrition medicine at Harvard Medical School. “I think that was my message for the past 20 years.”

Call me old fashoned but I have no idea where he drew that conclusion from given the available information.

Still, have a look, see what you think and if anyone can get access to the full article I would love to know how it reads. (JAMA, vol 297, p969)

Popularity: 31% [?]

(a response to the previous post here)

Interestingly I somewhat agree with a ban on veils in schools and any other places in which there is a “dress code” or uniform to be worn.

Using schools as an initial example, there are a multitude of reasons behind saying “no” to a veil (not the least the fact most Islamic organisations agree with a ban).

IMHO the reason for being in School is to learn from your teachers and interact with your peers. This is pretty much the only reasons I can think of to “waste” 10 years of your life which could be much better spent cleaning chimneys.

By its very nature, the Islamic veil prohibits this interaction and creates a barrier between the teacher and student, as well as between students. Teaching is interactive and relies heavily on student participation. As humans we rely heavily on body language (including facial reactions) to judge how the person we are talking to is responding to what we say. When you speak to some one who is veiled this is gone.

At school, in the UK, “we” are trying to instil in the pupils a willingness to learn and  understand other cultures. Being veiled, while “showing a different culture” is a pretty blatant statement that the person is removed from the interaction. How are other school kids supposed to learn to talk and interact with what is effectively a talking, black, postbox? The argument that this exposure will teach kids about the different cultures is weak and it is very one sided.

The last point I am going to make for now is the nature of uniforms. The idea and concept behind school uniforms may be up for debate (and if so, is a new debate entirely) but where they are in place what on Earth is the justification for the veil?

There is no Koranic obligation for the veil and it is a fairly modern invention. I cant help but feel the children who are “demanding their human rights” are being used as pawns by others who seek to cause trouble and spread discord - both Islamic and non-Islamic.

This is not a “civil rights” issue any more than objecting to having to wear clothes in public is… The people are not being told they can not follow their religion of choice…

Popularity: 17% [?]

Sorry, couldn’t resist a lame veil pun. There’s something about the veil that brings it out. I defy you to find many newspaper articles about the latest veil story that aren’t going down that route for a headline, so I felt obliged to join in.

I don’t feel obliged to join in the nonsense debate about Muslim schoolgirls wearing the veil to school or not. See story on today’s BBC. It’s just more islamophobia as far as I can see.

What is about the veil that gets everyone’s backs up? OK, I find the whole belief system behind it to be dire and depressing. The combination of extreme sexism and religious fervour is always a winner.

However, it’s just an item of clothing. Teenage girls who choose to wear it are trying to establish some sort of identity, in the same way that the girls who dress as footballer’s wives, crack hos, goths or girls next door are. It’s part of being a teenager. The veil lets them annoy their schoolteachers (always a winner) while believing they have the moral high ground (different type of winner, but just as much a part of adolescence.) Is it really more offensive to people that soem girls choose to cover themselves in tents than any other things.

In most cases, people grow up and see things differently from the way they appeared to their teenage selves. You would think that a few years living in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia would probably quench the desire to be veiled as much as anything.

The only reason I can see for banning the veil in schools is that it would deprive those girls who want to resist cultural pressure to wear it of an unarguable excuse. This is the strongest argument for such a ban, indeed the only one worth considering.

The deeper problem is the issue of why veils stir up such passions in the non-Muslim population? Is it more in your face (really poor pun) than a Jesus loves you t-shirt. Do we have a problem with people wearing crosses?

Dare I say that it’s an ugly combination of sexism and religious prejudice that leads everyone to treat veiled women as somehow the representation of evil? (Women in the veil are now often considered to be really disguised male terrorists.) Jack Straw’s notorious rant about his constituents removing their veils was the Trojan Horse that allowed in a free-for-all demonising of muslim women.

(I wouldn’t argue about teachers, certainly not the teaching assistant who seems to have taken the job just to make some comedy political point about the veil and what would happen if a male teacher came in… Small children can’t be expected to understand instructions from someone when they can’t see their movements and expressions. Not to mention being a really poor role model for little girls.)

If we consider that women are often oppressed in Islam - and I certainly do, although Islam has no monopoly in this noble tradition - doesn’t that make us the worst type of bullies- picking on the already victimised.

In any case, how can suppressing the expression of belief advance the cause of rationality? Making martyrs always brings more converts to fanatical world views. Is this the objective?

Popularity: 17% [?]

Here’s a link to the BBC site for the Trap.

I hate things that say they might change your life, as one of the intro pages says. (I am sure your life changes pretty much all the time, but not very much change is set off by TV programmes. Though I suppose switching from Discovery Machinery +2 to BBC for an hour on a Sunday might consitute a change of something, I hope your life isn’t that circumscribed.)

Apart from that, the BBC2 site is a good coherent introduction to the issues in the programme. Even the best TV is better if it’s supported by something you can read and think about at your own pace. And the Trap certainly requires some serious thinking.

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This week’s programme was the second of the 3-part series. It was really well-argued. It wasn’t as engaging as the first one - the clips were a tad duller, but the logic was much clearer

Good points:
The way that public service targets have become straightjackets, undermining standards of service rather than improving them.
Blair and Brown have taken the Tories’ projects and run with them, taking them to levels that Major and even Thatcher would never have got away with.
Tranquilising the masses is creating a population who treat normal emotional variation as illness. (Surely the argument of the anti-psychiatrists who Curtis blames for the whole thing in the first place. Thoough I guess this argument is moreThomas Szasz than RD Laing)

There are apparently some clips on the BBC site, so you can catch up with the arguments even if you missed the shows.

Popularity: 19% [?]