New Zealand Listener – August 24, 2019

AUGUST 24 2019 LISTENER

NUTRITION

Telling kids to “eat

your greens” will

win only a partial

vegies victory

36

PSYCHOLOGY

Don’t decry TV

sports watchers –

being an armchair

fan takes real effort

42

SPORT

A chronic lack of

discipline can be

blamed for the All

Blacks’ patchiness

44

K

lein thinks the growing use of fake data is

largely a result of the pressure on academics

to publish papers to advance their careers.

“When money is on the line, people change their

behaviour.”

And he says that, as with fake news, the use of

fake data ultimately undermines the credibility

of medical research. “It can be very difficult to

distinguish fake data from the truth – it’s the fake-

news scandal of medical publishing. If you think

everything is fake, then you believe nothing, and

science never advances.”

The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine

(NEJM) has now joined Anaesthesia in using the

Carlisle method to check all randomised control

trials submitted for publication. The NEJM was one

HEALTH BRIEFS

GE

TT

Y

IM

AG

ES

of several leading journals caught

out when Carlisle used the method

to detect suspicious data in 90 of

more than 5000 such trials published

over 16 years. As a result, the NEMJ

last year retracted a widely publi-

cised 2013 Spanish paper promoting

the benefits of the Mediterranean

diet because more than 1000 of the

study’s 7447 participants had not

been properly randomised.

Although there was no sugges-

tion of fraud, the paper’s authors

accepted they had made a mistake

and removed the erroneous data.

The paper was then republished with

similar conclusions.

Klein says the Carlisle method has

uncovered blatant fraud examples,

such as cases where data from a few

participants was repeated many times

to inflate study sample sizes.

This year, the World Health

Organisation revised a 2016 recom-

mendation on the use of oxygen

during surgery that was based on

a series of papers published by an

Italian anaesthetist, after the Carlisle

method found they may have

included fabricated data.

Klein says the sheer volume of

medical publishing can make the idea

of routinely checking for fake data

seem impossible. However, he

believes it’s vital that all

medical journals start

to follow the lead of

Anaesthesia and the

NEJM.

“If everyone worked

together on this problem,

we could eradicate it, one

discipline at a time.” l

“If the evidence on

which medical practice

is based is fabricated,

you could be putting

people at risk of harm.”

FRAILTY IS A THING

Australian researchers have

found that 4.3% of those aged

60-plus will become frail every

year, putting them at greater

risk of death, hospitalisation

and institutionalisation. Frailty

is often seen as part of old age,

but it’s a medical condition in its

own right. Symptoms include

low physical activity, weak

grip strength and low energy.

Researchers say regular screen-

ing of older people would allow

preventive measures to be put

in place.

MONITORING THE UNBORN

US researchers have developed

a lightweight monitor that they

say could be worn by women in

the last weeks of pregnancy to

track their baby’s heartbeat and

help prevent up to 2.6 million

stillbirths a year. The monitor

records vibrations sent through

a mother’s abdomen when her

baby’s heart beats or when it

squirms and kicks.

EARLY BIRDS ON THE RISE

At least one in every 300 adults

is genetically programmed to

go to bed very early and get up

very early, according to a study

in the journal Sleep. It found

that the incidence of so-called

advanced sleep phase is much

higher than previously thought

and that the condition tends to

run in families. These super-early

birds routinely fall asleep before

8.30pm and wake up fully

rested and ready to start

the day before 5.30am.