So we're in agreement that it is *not* the case that almost all respondents were from India?

I interpreted it as '23,268 adults, where adult is the given age range in the given countries.' I don't think it makes sense otherwise.

India was only one country of 29, contributing a bit under 10% of the total sample.

www.kcl.ac.uk/news/almost-...

Unveiling the correlation between dietary fiber intake and endometriosis: a cross-sectional analysis of NHANES data - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Unveiling the correlation between dietary fiber intake and endometriosis: a cross-sectional analysis of NHANES data

1. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

2. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fun finding: two studies on ostensibly the same research question using the same dataset published in the same journal a few months apart that find the opposite results (Fibre being associated with higher odds of endometriosis in one and lower odds in the other)

We've got ISSUES. Literally.

We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?

arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

A 🧵 1/n

Though I think there is actually a small issue with this meta-analysis that no one has noticed (but I doubt it would meaningfully change the conclusions).

2. As it was only on patients following laparoscopic surgery, this limits generalisability to other groups of endometriosis patients (which is true, but that's just what their research question was and it's clear throughout, so I don't see an issue with the actual methodology).

Lol yeah.

In fairness, I don't think the letter you linked is really interesting/damning to that meta-analysis. Their points are:

1 . There was high heterogeneity, so they think the authors should have done a meta-regression and subgroup analyses (but this isn't feasible with so few studies).

Ah, I see, thank you.

That's a different thing in a similarly-named but separate journal (Journal of Minimally Invasive Gynecology vs. Gynecology and Minimally Invasive Therapy).

Not to my knowledge...

Where are you seeing this? As far as I know, the journal hasn't published any letter or response.

Ambiguous DGAs & The Rancher's Pyramid Tame on the surface, more underneath

For anyone interested in the new Dietary Guidelines, here's a breakdown and my thoughts:
kcklatt.substack.com/p/ambiguous-...

What would say is the best evidence the following the recs in these guidelines increases risk of pancreatitis?

I haven't got around to listening to this yet but now I definitely need to!

Congrats on the new paper
@nataliaortega.bsky.social
@pwgtennant.bsky.social
@georgiatomova.bsky.social
@deirdretobias.bsky.social
@christinadahm.bsky.social

(I hope this is a faithful summary 😬)

E.g. instead of "the association between red meat and CHD was ...", one might use "the substitution of 50 g/day of fish in place of 50 g/day of red meat was associated with ... lower/higher risk of CHD."

...estimates that target the same research question, and clearly explaining what quantitative results are describing.

They provide recommendations for researchers conducting meta-analyses, such as clearly specifying in advance what causal effects you are interested in, identifying what adjustments will produce an estimate for this effect, only pooling...

This review found that most studies are implicitly estimating substitution effects, but this is rarely acknowledged or justified in the original studies or accounted for in meta-analyses. This means the meta-analyses are pooling data for a mix of different research questions, not a single one.

If one then combines estimates in a meta-analysis without considering whether total energy or other dietary components were adjusted for, you end up essentially pooling estimates for different effects (not good!)

Adjustment for other dietary components on top of total energy limits what the substitution can be (e.g. substitution of red meat for some combination of foods in the rest of the diet *excluding* fruits and vegetables).

...keeping the rest of the diet the same) to substitution (increasing intake of that food while decreasing some other component(s) of the diet).

Meta-analyses of dietary exposures must consider energy adjustment (preprint) 🧵
arxiv.org/abs/2512.07531

In observational studies, adjustment for energy intake changes the nature of the effect being estimated – from addition (increasing or decreasing intake of that food while...

Figure 1: The Rothman-Dahly Evidence Pyramid (original version) An equilateral triangle with a small blue section labelled "Thoughtful, well-conducted studies of any design" at the top, with the remaining space colored red and labelled "The other shit"

‪It has a name now 😜

Many thanks to Ken for agreeing to put his good name to my...artwork. The image is in the public domain (CC 0), but citations to the linked documents are warmly welcomed.

✅ zenodo.org/records/1808...

✅ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24452418/

This has been published and (supposedly) peer-reviewed.

journals.lww.com/gmit/fulltex...

@gidmk.bsky.social @elisabethbik.bsky.social @mumumouse2.bsky.social @academic-integrity.bsky.social @smutclyde.bsky.social @thatsregrettab1.bsky.social

Sorry if the tagging is annoying, but you all are cool people I follow who are into research integrity, so thought you might find it interesting.

A screenshot from Pubpeer of the following text, titled Summary. This is described as a meta-analysis of 9 RCTs comparing Dienogest to the Combined Oral Contraceptive Pill for treatment of dysmenorrhea, dyschezia, and dyspareunia in deep endometriosis. However, 4 of these studies are not RCTs. Only 4 are comparing Dienogest to any form of COCP. Of these, none are the form of COCP reported in the meta-analysis (and two are using a COCP that also contains Dienogest). Only 1 study is specifically on deep endometriosis - the others are instead on general endometriosis, endometrioma, or adenomyosis. None of the studies have the correct number of participants reported. None of the studies have the correct mean age reported. Of the 54 data points reported in the meta-analysis, only 1 (i.e. 2%) is verifiable as being accurately extracted from the original studies and accurately described. The rest do not appear in the included studies at all, or are measuring different things than what is claimed in the meta-analysis. Therefore, with none of the included studies meeting the authors' basic inclusion criteria, and with almost 100% of the data on study characteristics and results being incorrect, this meta-analysis is rendered nonsensical.

Interesting finding: A rather odd meta-analysis in which not a single study meets their inclusion criteria, and nearly 100% of the data presented is incorrect.

I have genuinely no idea how the heck you could end up with this (AI hallucinations? Something else?)

pubpeer.com/publications...

I hear diamond has similar properties.

Screenshot of title page including the following abstract: To minimise confounding bias and disentangle warranted from unwarranted disparities, researchers examining sentencing discrimination have traditionally sought to control for as many legal factors as possible. However, over the past decade, a growing number of scholars have questioned this strategy, noting that many legal factors are themselves subject to judicial discretion and that controlling for them can introduce post-treatment bias. Here, we use directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) to provide a formal and comprehensive assessment of the different types of bias that may arise from different choices of controls. In addition, we propose a new modelling framework to facilitate the selection of controls and reflect the model uncertainty created by the trade-off inherent in judicially-defined legal factors and other factors with a similar dual causal role. We apply this framework to examine race disparities in US federal courts and gender disparities in the England and Wales magistrates’ court. We find substantial model uncertainty for gender disparities and for race disparities affecting Hispanic offenders, rendering estimates of the latter inconclusive. Disparities against black offenders are more consistent and — under specific conditions — could be interpreted as evidence of direct discrimination.

Thrilled to share my latest paper entitled, "Estimating Discrimination in Sentencing: Distinguishing between Good and Bad Controls"

Led by @jpinasanchez.bsky.social, the paper introduces a framework for examining discrimination in criminal justice processes.

🧵 1/10

publicera.kb.se/ejels/articl...

Real