Food, health and disease: The evidence and reporting the evidence

Nutrition is the science of food, but we cannot reliably measure food intake. Dennis Bier believes this is a serious issue we must face when studying the effects of nutrition on health.  Nutrition research cannot move forward into mature science without finding a solution to the problem we face of no real evidence-based findings. 

His presentation puts the case that the principles of scientific research should be the same, whether studying physics or nutrition.  The challenge is to find evidence in a control fashion.  Randomized control trials have repeatedly failed to support implications from observational studies which has led to false discoveries because the initial data is biased.  Associations uncovered in observational studies are hypotheses. 

We may never have the interventional studies to test these hypotheses and thus we should demote the certainty of conclusions drawn.