Back when I was at MIT, one of the world’s most famous microbiologists (Dr. Salvador Luria) added Drs. David Baltimore and Alice Huang to the faculty.  Dr. Luria had just been awarded the Nobel Prize. Dr. Baltimore was to obtain his very shortly.

Obviously, these folks were doing fantastic research.  But, that doesn’t always mean their teams or their associates were doing the same.   Which is exactly what transpired in the mid-1980s. 

Dr. Baltimore coauthored a paper with Dr. Thereza Imanishi-Kari concerned with immunology.   A paper that turned out to have doctored evidence.  But, Dr. Baltimore stood by Dr. Imanishi-Kari for the longest time and would not retract the paper.  And, that was about the time Dr. Baltimore was to assume the presidency of the Rockefeller University (after the tenure of Dr. Joshua Lederberg)- and many of the faculty were angry at his assuming the position, due to the doctored data publication.

(Dr. Baltimore was eventually exonerated of any transgressions.)

Why would I bring this up?   Because it seems that Dr. Brian Wansink of Cornell University has been found to have many data inconsistencies, errors, exaggerations- and mathematical impossibilities associated with his findings about food and nutrition.  Not just in one paper- but at least 50 of them.  And, these papers are heavily cited by others in their research publications.

One researcher, Dr. Tim Van Der Zee, published a blog (no longer available)- the Skeptical Scientist- the title of one post was the Wansink Dossier, which detailed many of these shortcomings.  Many publications are retracting the research publications of Dr. Wansink.

That’s a real problem, since Dr.  Wansink has been one of the folks the Smarter Lunchrooms Movement has been relying on for many of its recommendations.  One of the bigger recommendations he proposed was jazzing up the fruit or vegetable that is now part of school lunch using creative or imaginative names.  He claimed such branding would increase consumption of the foods by some 30% or more.  (He also claimed that kids would pick an apple- and not a cookie- if the apple pack was adorned with an Elmo sticker.)

Dr. Wansink established the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, wrote a bunch of best-selling books, and headed a panel at the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) when George Bush was president.  Except on 20 September of this year, Cornell accepted his resignation (due to “academic misconduct… misreporting of research data).   And, JAMA retracted six publications of his due to questions as to their “scientific validity”.  (7 other papers were also retracted from other journals.)

Many scientists worry about the quality of nutrition research.  (Kind of like my- and other folks’- complaints about social science research.)  Too many are misleading, lack scientific basis- or worse yet, are “manipulated” to evoke conclusions with no basis.  

One such manipulation is p-hacking, which involves running slews of statistical analyses on data, affording one the ability to claim breakthrough results that simply aren’t.  These really prevail in psychology research.

The other choice process by which data is manipulated is data dredging.  This is exactly the sort of problem against which I railed in the alcohol study, claiming no safe level existed.(Coffee consumption is another place where data dredging was used to create headlines with misleading results.)

And, why would I bring up the problems with Dr. Wansink’s research?  Because I wrote an article about getting kids to eat more apples in school– based upon his studies.  The implication of the paper was that offering kids sliced apples dramatically increased apple consumption.  Whole apples, on the other hand, were more often dumped into the trash uneaten.  As of now, this paper by Dr. Wansink is NOT among those being retracted. (I only have anecdotal evidence that the study is valid.)

Keep slicing those apples, then!