To good to be true? How to find “good facts”
The Health and Wellness industry is full of information, but how much of it is actually legit? Learning to arm yourself with some basic bull-honkey blasting weapons can save you a lot of pain, frustration, and money in your journey towards better health. We need to take seriously good science and treat it with respect, and we also need to understand it’s limitations and understand how to evaluate the difference.
Because health research is rightly limited by ethical constraints, many studies are observational in methodology and utilize surveys and self-reporting to gather information. This results in information that is often based on participants perceived behaviors, and therefore a lot of research on health is correlational, or relationship based, versus being causational. Or, more simply put, scientists may strongly suspect relationships because two things, but cannot prove cause and effect.
The quality of the research itself also needs to be evaluated. The first questions I would encourage you to ask are: who is providing this information, who performed the research, who funded it, and is there a conflict of interest? Health information and research coming from or backed by a nationally recognized and accredited association should have a heavier weight than that from a social media personality or influencer. There are systems in place to ensure credibility in the first and absolutely none in the last. If the source material is found in a peer-reviewed collection of literature, there is a system of reviewing the research that can give us confidence that other researchers and scientists approve of the way the research was carried out and the reasonable conclusions drawn from said research. Therefore if you hear it from a less credible source, take time to see if the theory or claims also have some reputable individuals and organizations that are in agreement.
The questions of who performed the research, who funded it, and is there a conflict of interest are interwoven and critical. A prime example of this is the infamous strategy of the tobacco industry to draw confusion into the well documented links between smoking and cancer. The tobacco industry, in an attempt to preserve its consumer base, paid for research to be performed by the scientific outliers who were the biggest skeptics of the link between smoking and cancer. It essentially manufactured research to further its own agenda and to sow confusion and distrust of the valid science. Much of the research carried out today needs to be digested with an understanding that big industry has a vested interest in promoting its products and therefore sinks many financial and public relations resources into growing it’s consumer base. If you are interested in gaining a deeper understanding of how and why this is important, a good place to start would be Dr. Allan Brandt’s article titled Inventing Conflicts of Interest: A History of Tobacco Industry Tactics which can be found on the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) website, which is a part of the United States National Library of Medicine.
When it comes to websites, blogs, infomercials...basically anything found in the media, some other things to explore are whether the source of the information is trying to convince you to buy a product or service, and if they are, are they clearly communicating that or are they trying to conceal that from the reader. If the source is trying to convince you to buy a product or service, it doesn’t mean that the information provided is necessarily faulty or untrue, but it should cause you to want to do a little more digging in other sources that are not motivated by sales. If the information is corroborated then it may be a reasonable nugget to hold on to, otherwise feel free to discard it as a sales tactic. Another facet to be aware of is the method by which the source is selling or advertising their product or service. If the source is openly conveying that it is a commercial agent who is selling a product that it believes in because of the evidence it is providing you, there is more transparency in this. However, if the source is hiding behind a veneer of a being a disinterested entity and is not clearly disclaiming affiliation links and financial self-interest, there is less transparency. Companies will twist facts and research to benefit themselves, you may want to consider whether that benefits you.
So, check the science. Is the claim true? Is it backed up by evidence or is it merely anecdotal? If there is evidence, are the original sources cited? Is the evidence credible, valid, reliable and relatively current? Is the research actually measuring what it says it is measuring, or is it inadvertently measuring something else? You can evaluate all of this by finding out if the research was replicable with good results and whether the research was well performed. If you are struggling to remember the basics of the scientific method, consider brushing up on your high school science and put that early education to good use! If you are looking for a quick and easy refresher, check out Steps of the Scientific Method on the Science Buddies website.
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. It is easy to sell the dream of a simple fix to all of your health woes, but the truth is not so sexy.
