The Biggest Research Study Scam

Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Dr. Eric Berg

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Eric Westman. Dr. Westman is an M.D. and a Master's-level statistician. He explains how researchers often manipulate data reports by misleadingly presenting information. He also explains the difference between absolute risk and relative risk and how it can be used for this purpose.

Observational studies can also misleadingly present information because they cannot prove causation. Many recent studies in the news demonizing red meat and fasting were observational self-reported studies. These studies involve a person recalling what they ate days, weeks, and even months ago!

What's the purpose of observational studies if they can't prove causation? Observational studies are known as “hypothesis-generating studies," so they generate a hypothesis for a formal experiment.

One of the most recent misleading studies, the Stanford twin experiment, gained popularity on Netflix. The study had several flaws and was funded by a plant-based organization to promote a plant-based diet.

The School of Public Health at Harvard University is researching nutritional epidemiology using observational studies involving diet recall. These studies result in misleading associations between things like red meat and heart disease and red meat and cancer. According to Dr. Westman, nutritional epidemiology only presents weak associations and should not be regarded as fact.

People come to Dr. Westman’s clinic for all sorts of health problems. His clinic has a reputation for everything from improving diabetes and obesity to eliminating chronic heartburn and IBS. Dr. Westman utilizes a low-carb keto diet to help reverse many chronic health conditions.

Dr. Westman aims not only to help his patients but to educate them as well! Dr. Westman created Adapt Your Life Academy, where people can take online courses on various health-related topics, including diabetes, cholesterol, protein, keto cooking, and cancer.

Subscribe to Dr. Eric Westman's YouTube Channel: @adaptyourlife

Check out Dr. Westman's website here: http://www.adaptyourlifeacademy.com/

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	In the following interview with Dr. Westman, I want to change your viewpoint as what you see in the news as research studies.
0:07.0	You know, the ones that say that ketogenic diet has now been linked to blah blah blah.
0:12.0	Interment fasting now increases the risk of heart attacks.
0:14.9	99.9% of the time they're BS. They're basically manufactured to degrade the ketogenic diet or related diets.
0:26.0	And this is all part of a PR campaign to dissuade you or to put doubt in your mind.
0:31.0	They can literally take a very tiny percentage and turn into a very large
0:36.8	percentage and still sort of not break the law and we're going to talk about that.
0:42.6	But I wanted to really increase your awareness
0:44.3	on these observational studies,
0:46.4	which were really not meant to prove causation at all.
0:50.6	So, with that said, let's dive right in check it out. So we have Dr. Eric
0:56.4	Westman here and I have some very interesting questions I want to ask him
1:01.5	related to research studies.
1:04.8	Hello Dr. Westman.
1:07.4	Hello Dr. Murrig.
1:08.9	Hey listen, a question I want to dive right into right off
1:11.4	at the very beginning is there's this term
1:15.9	relative risk versus absolute risk and I see a lot of this happening where you
1:21.4	you know research turns a very small percentage into a very
1:24.8	large percentage to make it look a lot better than it really is. Can you kind of just give
1:30.0	us the simplicity of what that means and where do people use that?
1:35.0	Yeah, so typically when a company or someone who's trying to sell something. They want the number of the change to be as large as possible.
	...

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