The relationship between telomere length and diet (2016)
I am extremely skeptical about the statistical analysis here.<p>It sounds like they tested nine food types, eight beverages and then even tried out different types of comparisons for each food&#x2F;beverage. And the best p-value they observed was p=0.02:<p>&quot;Among nine food types (cereal, fruits, vegetables, diary, red meat, poultry, fish, sweets and salty snacks) and eight beverages (juices, coffee, tea, mineral water, alcoholic- and sweetened carbonated beverages) only intake of red meat was related to T&#x2F;S ratio. Individuals with increased consumption of red meat have had higher T&#x2F;S ratio and the strongest significant differences were observed between consumer groups: “never” and “1–2 daily” (p = 0.02).&quot;<p>Nowhere in their methods do they mention adjusting for multiple testing. If we do that using the standard Bonferroni approach, the p-value would have to be multiplied by a factor of at least 17 x 2 to account for the number of options that they tried. So the adjusted p-value would be 0.02 x 17 x 2 = 0.68 and thus far from statistical significance.<p>In other words, this seems to be a real-life example of this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;882&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;882&#x2F;</a><p>Maybe I missed something, but if this is really the case then it&#x27;s embarrassing that this made it through peer review.