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New study links red meat to faster cognitive decline (www.psypost.org)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml to c/science@lemmy.ml

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N=133,000 over 40 year time period

Observational study so limitations may apply but the findings do hold after adjusting for a large list of factors I will quote here:

educational attainments, family history of dementia, menopausal status with hormone use status, total energy intake, regular antidepressant drug use, history of depression, BMI, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, neighborhood SES [socioeconomic status], marital status, living arrangement, smoking status, histories of hypertension, diabetes, and hypercholesterolemia and intakes of sugar-sweetened beverages, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, poultry, fish, eggs, nuts and legumes, low-fat dairy products, high-fat dairy products, and alcohol

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[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I can't actually access the full paper (either via university access, or Anna's Archive/sciDB), so I can't comment on specifics, but their extended abstract mentions that that they used "Cox proportional hazards models, general linear regression, and Poisson regression models were applied to assess the associations between red meat intake and different cognitive outcomes."

Speaking as a biochemist (i.e. someone well versed in reading scientific papers from the life sciences, but who does not have particular training or experience with the quite different context of clinical medicine research), it looks fairly legit, in that those statistical methods are typical of what I'd expect for something like this. That's vague, but it passes the sniff test, I suppose.

I was initially dubious of the journal/research on the basis of being unable to access the paper (and not knowing anything of this journal), but I feel comfortable in dismissing those concerns after have a wee gander at the journal itself (it seems fairly prominent and well respected). Having not read the paper (nor being familiar with this specific area of research), I am far less able to judge the paper itself, but at least it's not a case of dismissing the research outright because of the journal being sus.

Without knowing your background, it's hard to gauge whether this explainer on some of the stats methods mentioned above would be appreciated, but here you go, just in case.

[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 hours ago

Thanks, I appreciate the link. I'm a scientist by trade too, but not in a field where hazard ratios would be part of my repertoire.

My concern is not so much the quality of the publisher (though it's nice to know) or whether they used methods that are standard for these kinds of studies, but rather whether the general public is coming to the correct conclusions given what the researchers did.

So based on just this little excerpt, it seems that there's no casual relationship being established at all. They don't seem to claim any casual relationship either. On the other hand, the psypost article talks about it as if they did.