White-Hat Bias Skews Obesity Research

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.Researchers at the University of Alabama (UAB) at Birmingham School of Public Health say a white-hat bias abounds in obesity research, and may skew reported results. White-hat bias is described as the tendency to distort information about products regardless of the facts, when the distortions are perceived to serve good ends.

In the case of obesity research, results may be misrepresented by scientists operating with particular biases on topics related to weight, nutrition and the food industry, as well as biases toward products like sugar-sweetened beverages, and practices like breastfeeding, according to the UAB study.

For the study, published in the International Journal of Obesity, UAB researchers examined ways in which scientists writing new research papers referenced two studies reporting the effects of sugar-sweetened beverages on body weight. They found that less than one-third of the papers that cited the beverage studies accurately reported the overall findings, and more than two-thirds exaggerated evidence that reducing sugar-sweetened drink consumption reduced weight or obesity. The UAB researchers also found several examples in breastfeeding studies in which the authors selectively included some data and discarded other research to support the theory that breastfeeding decreases the risk of obesity.

For both the beverage and breastfeeding research, the resulting data was more likely to be published when it showed statistically significant outcomes. Studies with outcomes that did not show sugar-sweetened drinks to be bad and breastfeeding to be good were less likely to be published.

White-hat bias is a slippery slope that science and medicine need to resist; hopefully our study sounds a warning bell, said David B. Allison, Ph.D., director of UAB's Nutrition and Obesity Research Center and co-author of the study. The field of obesity must be vigilant to minimize and remove these biases.