A recent “Controversy & Debate” series in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology suggests that the results and conclusions of nutrition epidemiologic research are both "pseudo-scientific" and “meaningless” (links below). This conclusion was based on the fact that FFQs and other memory-based dietary assessment methods (M-BMs) produce data that are “physiologically implausible” and have non-quantifiable (i.e., non-falsifiable) measurement error.
For example, there are myriad factors that render it impossible to ascertain if reported foods and beverages match the respondent’s actual consumption. These include reactivity, lying, false memories, forgetting, mis-estimation, pseudo-quantification, and invalid nutrient databases. Additionally, the use of M-BMs is based on multiple logical fallacies.
Thus, how can nutrition epidemiologic data be valid?
Article Controversy and Debate: Memory based Methods Paper 1: The Fa...
Article Controversy and Debate: Memory-Based Dietary Assessment Meth...
I appreciate your answers, thanks!
Carole, if you peruse my latest work, you will see that the "best papers" (as you called them) failed to cite or address the contrary evidence I presented in my last ~10+ publications on that issue (links to my most recent/relevant papers are below). As I wrote, reactivity, lying, false memories, forgetting, mis-estimation, pseudo-quantification, and invalid nutrient databases render data from FFQs and 24HRs meaningless.
More importantly, the evidence I presented were empirical, conceptual, and theoretical refutations of FFQs and other M-BMs and not mere limitations. I am sure you will agree that a refutation is much more than a mere "limitation". Thus, one cannot take "precautions" to ameliorate the effects of non-quantifiable errors and physiologically implausible data.
Frank, thanks for the reference. As I presented in my work below, there are many, many perspectives on why epidemiologic work in general, and the results and conclusions of nutrition epidemiologic research specifically, are "meaningless".
Article Controversy and Debate: Memory based Methods Paper 1: The Fa...
Article Controversy and Debate: Memory-Based Dietary Assessment Meth...
Article Validity of U.S. Nutritional Surveillance: National Health a...
Article The Inadmissibility of What We Eat in America and NHANES Die...
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