From AGW to Obesity to “Recovered Memories” — it’s about quacks, charlatans, and demagogues with an agenda.

Wolf Howling: The Scientific Method and Its Limits – The Decline Effect
Money Quote:

But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology.

Also (no relation):
Coyoteblog: Great Idea — The Reproduciblity Project

I’m 5’11” and weigh about 190 lbs. This gives me a BMI score of about 26.5, putting me in the “overweight” range (BMI of 25 – 30). So far so good; I could stand to lose 10-15 lbs. But if you look closely at the “normal” range (BMI of 18.5 – 25), you start to see some very strange things: to make the low end of “normal,” I would have to weigh a mere 132.5 lbs! This is not “normal” for a 5’11” man (or woman). This is approaching “concentration camp survivor.” If we go to the middle of the “normal” range (BMI of 21.75), we get a weight of 155.8 lbs for a 5’11” man. Though not nearly so extreme, this number is still quite low. Through heroic dieting and exercise, I might be able to get down to 165, but probably no lower.

Anyway, my point is that about 65% of the “normal” category is actually skinny to quite emaciated, which is not healthy. So the study compared people who are a little overweight against the “normal” category and found that the former “have a 6 per cent lower rate of premature death from all causes.” No surprise at all: this is because their supposed ideal, the “normal” category, consists mostly of people who are too thin, many of whom are grossly underweight. The problem is that the BMI categories are stupid.

Below is a table showing the weight range corresponding to the bottom half (BMI of 18.5 – 21.75) of the “normal” BMI category for various heights:

5’2″ : 101.1 – 118.8 lbs
5’4″ : 107.7 – 126.6 lbs
5’6″ : 114.5 – 134.6 lbs
5’8″ : 121.6 – 142.9 lbs
5’10”: 128.8 – 151.4 lbs
6’0″ : 136.3 – 160.2 lbs
6’2″ : 144.0 – 169.3 lbs
6’4″ : 151.8 – 178.5 lbs

Does this look “normal” or “ideal” to you?

[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index%5D

I was just pointing out that the authors of the study did think of those issues, and attempted to address them.

Ironically, anyone disputing the conclusion of this paper would be validating my original proposition that biomedical research is inherently untrustworthy.

Also, note that “little support” no support. So, a modest proposal: if this paper turns out to be inherently flawed, which I think is more likely than not, we execute the authors. I, for one, would not offer them life insurance.

Do thinner people have a higher mortality rate because they are more likely to smoke or because they have lost weight due to illness? Flegal and her co-authors say the data “provide little support” for those explanations.

As are those dying of AIDS or cancer. Did they control for that? I’m betting “no.”

That could be a significant part of the answer right there. Smokers and drug abusers are often underweight.