How useful is science for helping us take care of our health?

I’d love to say it’s vital, and it is, but with some qualification.

The point of scientific research is to gather evidence using objective methods to improve our knowledge of an area.

But humans aren’t always terribly objective, and there are a few things to be aware of as we try to filter that ocean of health information we’re exposed to.

The first thing to appreciate is that in recent decades the volume of research on health has exploded. Most is done in universities, and even in a relatively small country like Australia, the number of those has doubled since the 70s and 80s.

That’s had a couple of consequences.

One is that universities have become more reliant on industry for funding, and under the broad umbrella of the health sector are large, rich companies happy to provide this — as long as they get what they want in return.

That’s good for paying researchers’ salaries, but not so good for objectivity.

This mutual backscratching isn’t new though. A few years ago, correspondence was unearthed showing that in the 60s the sugar industry in the US was cosying up to Harvard researchers. For their part, the Harvard people produced studies showing that sugar wasn’t really a factor in chronic disease.

Researchers are supposed to declare their funding sources and conflicts of interest in the papers they publish, but increasingly it doesn’t happen.

Another consequence of this huge increase in research is that publishing it has become a lucrative industry. Globally, some five million research papers are published by around 50,000 journals each year.

Ideally, research articles are reviewed by experts in the area to assess the quality and merit of each article before it’s published.

But like conflict-of-interest declarations, that can go by the way or be done sloppily. So there’s no shortage of rubbish among those five million papers.

Having said that, more research also means more good work gets done. Two areas that have received far more attention in the last couple of decades are women’s health and ageing. Thank goodness.

The second issue is that not all research is equal. At the highest level are ‘randomised controlled trials’ in which participants are randomly allocated to different groups to test a hypothesis.

In the simplest version, if we have two groups, whatever we’re testing is applied to one but not the other. And because of the random allocation, we should be able to say that whatever changes show up between the two groups are due to what we’re testing.

If it’s a blood thinning drug, for example, and the group who takes it has far fewer clots than the group who doesn’t, we should be able to attribute that to the effect of the drug.

But this type of research is expensive, time-consuming, and hard, if not impossible, to do in some areas.

One of the popular subjects in health research is diet, but very little dietary research involves randomised controlled trials.

Instead, most uses surveys that with the help of statistics can show relationships between diet and health. But a relationship between A and B doesn’t tell us that A caused B or vice versa.

For example, there’s a relationship between firefighters and fires. They tend to show up together. But (hopefully) firefighters don’t cause fires.

Similarly, to use what’s now an old example, there’s a relationship between moderate wine consumption and heart health. Which doesn’t mean wine is good for our heart. We now know it means that (statistically at least) affluent, more educated people both drink in moderation and have better health.

It’s a perfectly valid style of research, as long as its limitations are acknowledged. But often the findings from these types of studies are dressed up and reported as though they’re fact.

A third issue is that human beings can be biased. Which mightn’t have anything to do with who’s paying their salary. Maybe it starts out as passionate belief, but entrenched ideas can lead to distortion of results.

For example, this is widely known to happen at a big, well-known American institution where research findings invariably claim that red meat causes heart disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia, you name it.

But their numbers often don’t add up and all sorts of assertions are made that aren’t backed by evidence.

Finally, a fourth issue is that even when research is done with accuracy and objectivity, we can only investigate within the limits of what we know. Over time, that’ll change.

I recently read a comment by a movement scientist from a West Australian University. He said: ‘As a scientist, I have been astounded by how often the things we thought we knew were wrong. I have spent most of my scientific career simply disproving things we all thought were true’.

Which, in the long run, is a good thing.

So what can we take away from all this?

In summary, science is the way we grow our knowledge. Hopefully, most of it is done well, but there are vested interests, and quality varies — especially in some areas.

Stating the bleeding obvious, don’t assume everything you read, see and hear is correct. The combination of some not-so-rigorous research, dubious interpretations of findings, social media, and AI-generated information makes it harder than ever. So keep your BS-detector finely tuned.

Remember too that the best scientific information won’t necessarily apply to everyone. There’s no food, drug, supplement, or even exercise that works well for all of us all of the time. So work with trusted practitioners, trust your own experience and instincts, and make the best decisions you can.

Appreciate that even medical and scientific experts disagree. That’s why we get second opinions.

And remember, as the West Australian scientist pointed out, eventually much of what we now think is true will eventually be proven wrong.

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