Scientific Approaches to Strengthening Research Integrity in Nutrition and Energetics

Submitted by mkawai on Thu, 04/19/2012 - 16:29

Start: 08/07/2012 8:30 am

End: 08/08/2012 4:00 pm

Attendance:	Space is limited. If interested in attending email David B. Allison, PhD, dallison@uab.edu.
Dates:	Tuesday, August 7 – Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Location:	Mohonk Mountain House 1000 Mountain Rest Road New Paltz, New York, 12561
Overview:	Nutrition and obesity remain some of the most interesting and yet controversial topics in biomedical research. Many groups have "stakes" in the game, many people have strong philosophical predilections and beliefs, and the public has a thirst for information in this area. Because of this, there is a cacophony of voices on these topics, and it is sometimes difficult to separate the sensible and empirically validated information from opinion, conjecture, and patent nonsense. Science is our best tool to make such essential discriminations, but to use science for this requires that we have a research record that is made public with the utmost fidelity. Unfortunately, it is clear that extra-scientific biases exist that influence both which studies get reported and how they get reported in primary journal articles, in press releases, in the mass media, and in secondary citations in literature reviews. We now must go beyond recognizing that such biases exist to developing procedures grounded in science that minimize the influence of those biases to the greatest extent possible.