NUSCTX 10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Prostate Cancer, Saturated Fat, Model Organism
15 Nov 2016
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Document Summary
Nutrition recommendations are limited by what we know at the time. The scientific method: question, hypothesis (if, then) ->if somethingthen something: research experiments, send data to be peer-reviewed, follow-up experiments conducted, reject or accept hypothesis, as long as can reproduce data, then experiment successful. What makes a good experiment: quantifiable and reproducible data, appropriate experimental subjects, proper controls. Something that a lot of researchers fundamentally lack. Observational studies: data collection from a sample of the population at one point in time. Example: observing food journals for pregnant women to correlate with birth outcomes: data collection from same individuals followed over a long period of time. Lack of control over many factors can produce misleading associations. Example: coffee thought to increase cancer risk until it was realized that coffee drinkers are more likely to smoke cigarettes than non-coffee drinkers nowadays, shown that coffee prevents cancer to a certain extent.
