Just to be sure it's clear: It was suspicious for a grant from General Mills, but wasn't funded by General Mills. It was funded by tax dollars via the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the authors didn't declare any potential conflicts of interest. I do not know who pushed the PR on this to get it out to the news outlets, but it doesn't look like the kind of thing a science-beat journalist would dig up and say "hey, this article in Circulation is big news!" Somebody has to push a minor blip like this to get it as widely reported as it has been. It could have been Harvard or Circulation, but it could also have been someone in the industry.
Aha! I did not know that! General Mills has been trying for years to scare people into thinking they need breakfast, ie: oats, toast, granola, corn, etc.
-Rick
--- In fast5@yahoogroups.com, Bert Herring <bherring@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks,
> The WebMD report on this article included one of the authors (Rimm) saying that stress could cause a person to tend to skip breakfast and have heart attacks, as well as other bad behaviors like smoking. Looks like this editor kinda left that part behind. I haven't tried to follow the money on this one, but even though Harvard tends to be independent, it looks suspicious for a grant from General Mills. In the AP source, it says that 7% of the breakfast skippers had heart attacks, and 6% of the breakfast eaters had heart attacks. How they get a 27% increase in risk from one percentage point difference, I don't know�it looks like it should be 14% at worst. it may be worth a look. Either way, it's classic "scary" presentation--who's going to think this is news when you say 7% of breakfast skippers have heart attacks and 6% of breakfast eaters do?
>
> Bert
>
>
> On Jul 23, 2013, at 6:06 PM, RickS <no3rdseat@...> wrote:
>
> > Okay Dr Bert... looks like you're making a difference. I see entirely too many of these moronic "studies" lately-
> >
> > http://now.msn.com/skipping-breakfast-increases-heart-attack-risk-harvard-study-suggests
> >
> > Rick Stewart
> > Silver Spring, MD
> >
> >
>
| Reply via web post | Reply to sender | Reply to group | Start a New Topic | Messages in this topic (8) |
No comments:
Post a Comment