What do you cook with?

Hmm...that's a bit concerning. More research is needed, it's only in male mice and doesn't isolate the compounds in soybean oil that are causing these changes. The only time I use it is if I happen to eat fast food, which is pretty rare. We use primarily olive oil and sesame oil at home, except for Chanukah latkes, which probably have soybean oil in it due to the generic vegetable oil label. But that's once a year. But if you eat a lot of fast food, you may want to cut back on the fried foods.

America's most widely consumed oil causes genetic changes in the brain: Soybean oil linked to metabolic and neurological changes in mice

Hmmm...while the information is public, I'd have least liked to be asked if it was okay to use

I'm not sure if my profile and information made it into the dataset, but I agree that there are ethical considerations and rules that were violated in taking this sort of (even public) information through data scraping and publishing it without informed consent, a concept drilled into the lowest-ranks of researchers, as one of the basic tenets of post-Nuremburg Code research.

Researchers Publish Data Set of 70,000 OKCupid Users

"Yesterday morning I woke up to a Twitter friend pointing me to a release of OKCupid data, by Kirkegaard. Having now spent some time exploring the data, and reading both public statements on the work and the associated paper: this is without a doubt one of the most grossly unprofessional, unethical and reprehensible data releases I have ever seen," wrote Oliver Keyes, a research analyst at the Wikimedia Foundation, in a blog post.

"A fundamental underpinning of ethical and principled research - which is not just an ideal but a requirement in many nations and in many fields - is informed consent. The people you are studying or using as a source should know that you are doing so and why you are doing so," he added later.

It is also, of course, a reminder to users that we put a lot of our private information out on such sites (including this one, I agree I probably overshare), and that we should consider whether we'd like that information to be out there before posting.

I found this to be an interesting read

After 'The Biggest Loser,' Bodies Fight to Regain Weight

I never watched this show, partly because I thought it was terribly unhealthy in its approach to weight loss, and it reinforces the simplistic view that weight loss is just a matter of willpower, and there's the issue of fat shaming. Obesity and weight loss are actually quite complex issues. The study referenced by the Times was published online today in the journal Obesity: Persistent metabolic adaptation 6 years after “The Biggest Loser” competition. It's a little scary that six years after losing the weight, their metabolisms have slowed so much that to maintain their weight (and several have gained either part or all of the weight back, or even more), they have to significantly eat less than a person their size would need to. Strict dieting is not the answer, obviously. And I read something a year or two by one of the contestants (not sure who, or which season) about how the exercise had harmed her joints, going from inactive to major almost boot camp-style exercise hours per day in a short time. Why do people call this entertainment, anyway?

I'm not saying weight loss is inherently evil, or obesity is somehow good. What I am saying is that the factors involved are not entirely understood, the goal shouldn't be so much about weight loss as health and moderation in diet and exercise, and people shouldn't have horrible relationships with food--and should learn to embrace food as the staff of life, a basic necessity, enjoy flavours without gorging ourselves, and food should not be something that fulfills us emotionally, or causes us dread, or somehow makes us sick because of things we ascribe to it that aren't necessarily based in science. Food is not the adversary; our bodies are not the enemy. Making small changes, being mindful--those can help when they build up. Making good, healthy choices, can pay off. This doesn't say, 'just give up', it just says that the mindset we often have towards diet and exercise simply is not good for our bodies.

Why do doctors continue to believe studies funded by the very companies that produce the drugs?

And the article also has some interesting things to be said about examining the science and reproduciblity of results in general.

Paxil Isn’t Safe for Teens, According to Reanalysis of Old Study

he commonly prescribed antidepressant Paxil (paroxetine) is unsafe for teens, according to a new paper that reanalyzed data from a study published 14 years ago. The new paper, published Thursday in The BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal), contradicts the study’s original findings that the drug is “generally well tolerated and effective” for treating severe clinical depression in adolescents.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the maker of the drug, funded the original trial, Study 329, which compared the efficacy of paroxetine and imipramine, an antidepressant know to consumers as Tofranil, to a placebo. The study involved 275 adolescents, aged 12 to 18, with major depression. Each took one of the two drugs or a placebo for at least eight weeks. The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry published the original study in 2001.

I've taken Paxil, but only as an adult. If I were a parent with a child who had a mood disorder, I'd be very careful about putting him or her on any of the drugs with black box warnings. But GSK's practices really bother me. When news first broke that another GSK drug, Avandia (for diabetes), had an increased risk of heart-related problems, which has led to it be withdrawn from the market in several countries, I was on the drug and asked my doctor to take me off of it and prescribe something else. He handed me an information sheet from the manufacturer, touting its benefits. I love my doctor, but that was just wrong. I insisted, and was taken off it. I mean really, I know they schmooze and fund research and sponsor meetings, but when did Big Pharma really get to the point where it controls the decisions of the people who care for us?

Interesting on several levels

Study of Holocaust survivors finds trauma passed on to children's genes: New finding is clear example in humans of the theory of epigenetic inheritance: the idea that environmental factors can affect the genes of your children

Genetic changes stemming from the trauma suffered by Holocaust survivors are capable of being passed on to their children, the clearest sign yet that one person’s life experience can affect subsequent generations.

The conclusion from a research team at New York’s Mount Sinai hospital led by Rachel Yehuda stems from the genetic study of 32 Jewish men and women who had either been interned in a Nazi concentration camp, witnessed or experienced torture or who had had to hide during the second world war.

They also analysed the genes of their children, who are known to have increased likelihood of stress disorders, and compared the results with Jewish families who were living outside of Europe during the war. “The gene changes in the children could only be attributed to Holocaust exposure in the parents,” said Yehuda.

Her team’s work is the clearest example in humans of the transmission of trauma to a child via what is called “epigenetic inheritance” - the idea that environmental influences such as smoking, diet and stress can affect the genes of your children and possibly even grandchildren.

I may request this through interlibrary loan, assuming I can begin to understand it.

Good grief

Sexist Peer Reviewer Suggests Study Needs Male Authors

In woefully ironic turn of events, the reviewer of a rejected, solely female-authored manuscript examining gender bias in academia recommended that the scientists add in a couple of men to their team to make their research more scientifically robust.

“It would probably also be beneficial to find one or two male biologists to work with (or at least obtain internal peer review from, but better yet as active co-authors), in order to serve as a possible check against interpretations that may sometimes be drifting too far away from empirical evidence into ideologically biased assumptions,” the anonymous reviewer wrote.

Because, of course, the gender of an author matters more than the evidence or methodology.

UPDATE: PLOS ONE ousts reviewer, editor after sexist peer-review storm. Good.