Sugar-sweetened beverage study isn’t merely flawed. It’s pure data dredging

By Stan Young
A recent study linking sugary drinks to stomach cancer smelled fishy. It was. More so than we thought. The bigger problem is what happens when researchers have thousands of ways to analyze the same data. Statistical noise can become junk science masquerading as good science.
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In Czechoslovakia, there was a time when parents had to decide whether to tell a child that Russia was not your friend and that communism was a failed system. The parents had to judge when the child was ready. 

Now is the time to tell you that food frequency questionnaire studies are unreliable junk. Pay no attention to these studies. Do not tell the experts you are now a non-believer, just be a non-believer. Learn once to sharpen your critical thinking and be free of this nutrition junk science. 

Earlier this month, Josh Bloom, a good skeptic, voiced his suspicion that the results of a recent study on sugary drinks and stomach cancer were "questionable." He was dead on, but did not go far enough. In my opinion, the researchers behind the study are selling us nothing but statistical noise dressed up as science. They are part of a system where taxpayer money funds deeply flawed papers that enable unknowing bureaucrats to keep the system going.

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Stan Young

Dr. S. Stanley Young is a Ph.D. in Statistics and Genetics and a member of the American Council on Science and Health Board of Scientific Advisors. He has authored or co-authored over 50 papers, including six “best paper” awards, and a highly cited book, Resampling-Based Multiple Testing. 

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