10-23-2018, 08:45 AM
I have a Master of Science in a research field, and our graduate level methodology professors kept saying over and over, "Commonality does not imply causality." In other words, very exacting measures are required to determine whether two (or more) factors which occur together are caused by one or the other in tandem. For example, the simple fact that the "organic" group ate plenty of fruits and vegetables might be more important than whether those fruits and veggies were organic.
There are a number of red flags in the "Drawbacks of the Study" section at the end of the KTLA5 piece. These include socio-economic preselection, lumping all non-organic food consumers into a single group when there are extremely diverse non-organic options, not looking at what other things organic consumers might be doing to ward off cancer, and not looking more closely at what specific organic foods were eaten. I took a look at the actual published version of the study at:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaint...le/2707948 . The mathematical analysis models they use are pretty solid, so the real issues would appear to be the grouping and selection factors that I just mentioned.
A well-regarded Harvard reviewer says that while the study in question is important, the case isn't made: “At the current stage of research, the relationship between organic food consumption and cancer risk is still unclear,” Chavarro and his co-authors wrote in the commentary.
Having said all that and expressed my doubts, I'm pretty sure that eating organic isn't going to hurt anyone as long as they eat a varied diet.
There are a number of red flags in the "Drawbacks of the Study" section at the end of the KTLA5 piece. These include socio-economic preselection, lumping all non-organic food consumers into a single group when there are extremely diverse non-organic options, not looking at what other things organic consumers might be doing to ward off cancer, and not looking more closely at what specific organic foods were eaten. I took a look at the actual published version of the study at:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaint...le/2707948 . The mathematical analysis models they use are pretty solid, so the real issues would appear to be the grouping and selection factors that I just mentioned.
A well-regarded Harvard reviewer says that while the study in question is important, the case isn't made: “At the current stage of research, the relationship between organic food consumption and cancer risk is still unclear,” Chavarro and his co-authors wrote in the commentary.
Having said all that and expressed my doubts, I'm pretty sure that eating organic isn't going to hurt anyone as long as they eat a varied diet.