Meta analysis is a great way to look at data that isn't actually showing what you want, and make it show what you want.
What we would want is access to both the meta study and all the studies it referenced, just to see if there actually was anything here at all. Assuming all of those studies were well done and from a reliable source, and assuming that they actually tried to disprove themselves and that there weren't any other studies that successfully disproved them... then we would look at the data.
Normally we can sorta fudge that because the claim doesn't sound illogical or controversial. But... 45% reduced cancer risk from eating a whole class of foods that just happen to fit well with ancient chinese medicine? Found on a chinese medicine website? The sniff test should fail from 3 miles away.
I wonder how much of this effect is because of the specific chemical action of mushrooms, and how much is caused by the fact that mushrooms are commonly used to replace meat in dishes.
I happen to have never liked mushrooms and don't eat them. I don't have cancer. At least not that I know off. Sample of 1, so obviously meaningless. And I might be wrong. Statistically, unless something else kills me first, I believe I have 100% chance of getting cancer and dying of it. Just to put the overall claim a little in perspective. It's more a matter of when than if.
45% sounds overly assertive; so does the very specific number of two mushrooms. Not one, not three: two! Reminds me a bit of a certain scene in Monty python and the holy grail. Anyway, what did they do to the poor control group that the cancer incidence (and I suppose mortality?) were so high? Were there other factors they did not consider? Etc. This article raises more questions than it answers. The answers are probably quite a long winded way of saying that generalizing these conclusions to the overall population of humanity would be premature based on the inevitably small subset of it that they had to work with. At best the conclusion should read as "mushrooms probably not horrible to add to your diet if you can stand them".
Who cares if you don't like mushrooms or not, how is it relevant? If you don't like them and this study were true, and even if it's not, I'm sure supplement makers will miracle-up a "mushroom life-extension" pill.
How do you know that you don't have cancer? Most of us have a few pre-cancerous and cancerous cells in our bodies most of the them, but our immune system kills them or the cells die because they're incompatible with continued survival. And, as we age, the rate of cancerous cells production increases and the immune system's ability to fight them decreases. Even with healthy lifestyles and barring no other major diseases, most of us, statistically, will die from either cardiopulmonary insufficiency, cardiorespiratory failure, pneumonia, or cancer. "100% chance of getting cancer and dying from it" is then an invalid assumption.
What does "overly-assertive" mean? Do you mean "overly-optimistic?" On what basis do you have any way to measure or judge the results of the study without any data?
Another couple of nits for future reference: "long winded" is hyphenated and "At best" needs a comma.
When we get to "experiment with large double-blind randomized sample shows that..." , then this will be interesting.
"study finds" means very little. You can quite easily make a "study" in all sorts of ways to "find" basically anything you want. It's so easy it often happens just by accident. Particularly in meta-studies like this article references. But that didn't stop them from coming up with a biochemical mechanism. Note to scientists - the theory comes before the conclusion. Otherwise we have Post hoc ergo proctor hoc.
But then why is an unlikely, unverified result put into an article? Who would do this?
"South China Morning Post" ... "For Centuries, Chinese Medicine Practitioners have used mushrooms...."
i bet 1$ that this is a psyops to convince people (residing in china) to eat more shrooms, since they are easy to grow in an industrial scale, so people will be less reliant on imports of food.
> There was evidence of a significant nonlinear dose–response association between mushroom consumption and the risk of total cancer (P-nonlinearity = 0.001; n = 7). Limitations included the potential for recall and selection bias in case-control designs, which comprised 11 out of the 17 studies included in this meta-analysis, and the large variation in the adjustment factors used in the final models from each study.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 39.6 ms ] threadSlow news day? Fatigue from everything else?
with the high rate of poor quality peer reviewed research out there I find it hard to trust anything without a lot of replication.
What we would want is access to both the meta study and all the studies it referenced, just to see if there actually was anything here at all. Assuming all of those studies were well done and from a reliable source, and assuming that they actually tried to disprove themselves and that there weren't any other studies that successfully disproved them... then we would look at the data.
Normally we can sorta fudge that because the claim doesn't sound illogical or controversial. But... 45% reduced cancer risk from eating a whole class of foods that just happen to fit well with ancient chinese medicine? Found on a chinese medicine website? The sniff test should fail from 3 miles away.
To me, these clickbaity headlines always say "do X, not Y, and live Z years longer or get W% less cancer."
PS: Mandatory - 2 mushrooms a day keeps the Goomba and oncologist away.
45% sounds overly assertive; so does the very specific number of two mushrooms. Not one, not three: two! Reminds me a bit of a certain scene in Monty python and the holy grail. Anyway, what did they do to the poor control group that the cancer incidence (and I suppose mortality?) were so high? Were there other factors they did not consider? Etc. This article raises more questions than it answers. The answers are probably quite a long winded way of saying that generalizing these conclusions to the overall population of humanity would be premature based on the inevitably small subset of it that they had to work with. At best the conclusion should read as "mushrooms probably not horrible to add to your diet if you can stand them".
How do you know that you don't have cancer? Most of us have a few pre-cancerous and cancerous cells in our bodies most of the them, but our immune system kills them or the cells die because they're incompatible with continued survival. And, as we age, the rate of cancerous cells production increases and the immune system's ability to fight them decreases. Even with healthy lifestyles and barring no other major diseases, most of us, statistically, will die from either cardiopulmonary insufficiency, cardiorespiratory failure, pneumonia, or cancer. "100% chance of getting cancer and dying from it" is then an invalid assumption.
What does "overly-assertive" mean? Do you mean "overly-optimistic?" On what basis do you have any way to measure or judge the results of the study without any data?
Another couple of nits for future reference: "long winded" is hyphenated and "At best" needs a comma.
"study finds" means very little. You can quite easily make a "study" in all sorts of ways to "find" basically anything you want. It's so easy it often happens just by accident. Particularly in meta-studies like this article references. But that didn't stop them from coming up with a biochemical mechanism. Note to scientists - the theory comes before the conclusion. Otherwise we have Post hoc ergo proctor hoc.
But then why is an unlikely, unverified result put into an article? Who would do this?
"South China Morning Post" ... "For Centuries, Chinese Medicine Practitioners have used mushrooms...."
This article can be safely thrown away.
2y ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDdG8mAm0bw
I can't find a free version of the full text.
> There was evidence of a significant nonlinear dose–response association between mushroom consumption and the risk of total cancer (P-nonlinearity = 0.001; n = 7). Limitations included the potential for recall and selection bias in case-control designs, which comprised 11 out of the 17 studies included in this meta-analysis, and the large variation in the adjustment factors used in the final models from each study.