How business, doctors and journalists prey on your food anxieties I

scientific phenomenon
kno~%n as daca dredging, a
creature of the age of
huge databases <strong>and</strong> cheap
computing power .
Data dredgers can just
take 100 food items <strong>and</strong>
personal habits <strong>and</strong> compare
them with 100 dit£erent
ailments . If necessan,,
divide <strong>and</strong> subdivide diseases
',ike cancer according
to the organ it affects .
Now you have a matrix
with 10,000 cells . ENen if
there is no cause-<strong>and</strong>-cffect
relationship in any of
those cells, you are still
sure to find around 100
stunning correlations
about wluch vou can honesrlv
make this claim :
"The chance of this correlation
arising by chance is
less than 1 in 100 ." That's «hat rou publish .
Good science attempts to comprehend natutr in a
theon-, rhen to make predictions on the basis ofthe theon,
then to test the predictions against obscnation or ezperiment
. Firstvou set up the target, then eou shoot at it . Data
dredging turns this on its ear . It finds data, then tries to
build a dieon- around it . It looks for bullet holes, draws
circles around them <strong>and</strong> proclaims : bull's-e~e .
No, we're not saeing that all correlations benceen diet
<strong>and</strong> health are bunk . There's the connection between
cigarette smoking <strong>and</strong> lung cancer . Statistics \critied it
across social classes <strong>and</strong> nations . ilnimal studies <strong>and</strong> tissueculture
experiments provided a phcsiologic basis !or the
connection .
But too mana people
verc quick to jump tirom
this example to a broad
indictment of e~en, new
subStdnce introduced
since the industrial recolution
. Substances such as
alar, formaldehnde <strong>and</strong>
nEiT are often alleged to iie
behind the so-called explosion
in reported cancer
cases . But, as many epidemiologists
have pointed
out, there is no such epidemic
(except for lung
eancerl . tiVhr then is cur
cer increasing as industrialization
spreads? Because
industrialization general-
Iv raises living st<strong>and</strong>ards,
allowing ntore of us to live
long enough to de%elop
cancer <strong>and</strong> to allo«a
o«-gro«ing tumor to
sho%c itselE Indtutri .tlization
also imens <strong>and</strong> then
pn~'s for the high-tecS
tests that find cancers :hat
nouki Irare eluded the
best diagnosticians of a
seneration ago .
Whiic suroeNs like the
one going on in Framingham,
Jtass . for the past .7
vears can te!I tou tltatltieh
cholesterol correlates
with the derelopment of
heart disease, that doesn't
pro%e that lotcering cho-
Iesterul will do any good .
A correlated eariable mz
be a marker, not a cause .
Long hair correlates «ell
widt the female sex, but
cutting a %coman's l :.ur
%ron't tu :-n her into ;: man .
E\en ifcou coukd determine,
once <strong>and</strong> lor .tll, that a gi\ en diet reduces ~'our risk of
eetting or:e diseasc, vrou still cotdd not be sure that it
~% •ould not raise rour risk of gett~.ng another . Some
<strong>doctors</strong>-a small niinorirv, to be sure-belie%e that cholestcrol-loNxering
programs push n:an .~ patients into depression,
perhaps ibr reasons ofbrain chemisrt, . If thcr are
right, some <strong>doctors</strong> maN be drix ing people to suicide in dic
questionable name of reducing their risk of heart attack .
A certain consenatism is in order here . Resist the
temptation to ineoroorate a ncu :`Eiding into %our 1 .eaLth
regimen until it has beett examined thom mamattglos, for
manp years . Wait out the long-term studies that acrualh'
test theories under controlled conditions . Othentise Vou
may 2dopt a cure that's
o orse than the disease . To
steel }•om-self in resisting
such remptations, considcr
that h}'pocltondria itself
6 a disease, one that robs
%,ou not of life but of its
cnjolntent .
We're strange people,
ae ,-kmericans . Iu 1900
our life e .pectmur at
birth ~~-as 47 vcars . Aow,
thanks largelv to imvrrned
sanitation, rao
cines <strong>and</strong> better nourishmenr-all
made ~cidelv
aeailable b% our indrtctrial
econorrc-our life expectanc)'
is 76 ~'ears . Do
Wc rcjoice at our good
tbrtunei No, we ure con-
~inced a lot of people
out there arc awing to
paison u .s. M
Forbu a August 14, 1y95 . . 13,
2046673393
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/agf97d00/pdf