I'm a believer in the importance of the microbiome, but this study seems fishy:
* the authors have already started a company and pursued a patent on their ayurvedic-derived formulation
* the figure 1(a) in their paper (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-25382-z#Fig1) doesn't show a big difference from plain probiotics to their formulation, but does show some oddities in the Y-axis where, for the control group, there were clearly exactly just 10 flies' mortality measured (integer steps down), but apparently many, many more for other cases scaled to the 0-10 axis.
* it's unclear if the treatments/evaluations where blinded – the word 'blind' is not found in the Nature article
* the 1st comment on the Nature article wonders: "the control flies didn't live to their normal expected age or even close. What gives?"
(Perhaps the flies that lived longer just had more food in total?)
I'm glad someone else shares my skepticism. Looks like they may be guilty of P-hacking in those graphs.
I think this paper has value, in that it basically replicates the SCFA diet results others have seen. But the qPCR graphs are kinda hopeless.
>the authors have already started a company and pursued a patent on their ayurvedic-derived formulation
The fruit fly microbiome is exactly 2 organisms. The human microbiome is somewhat more complex - several hundred genera at least. It's pretty hard to draw a connection between the microbiomes of these two animals.
I would´t trust my nose to detect fishiness. These expermients simply need to be reproduced independently to be verified. Until then, it's anti-scientific to assume anything about fishiness. The reported facts do NOT PROVE that the results were forged.
Nobody is claiming that it does. They are indicating possible economic investment in the results and some questionable statistics. It is perfectly scientific to take these pieces of evidence and adjust the possibility of this study being fishy upwards.
Claiming the presented result as fishy based on the given argument is equivalent to claiming the data has been forged, the scientists are dishonnest and have unethical behavior. Unless the results are proven wrong, such claims of fishyness is defamatory. This is what I call judging by its nose. It's not because such behavior has become common place that it is correct and acceptable.
It would make a huge difference if the OP simply called to be cautious for the given reason. This preserves the status of unknown to the validity of the reported fact without taking position one way or the other.
It is very disapointing that people can't make the difference and I maintain that such behavior is anti-scientific. Claiming the opposit doesn't make your point true.
People who make claims like this fishyness are people who have a very high opinion on their ability to distinguish true from false facts just by guessing. That's monkey science.
The factors I mention – fast patenting/profit-seeking, odd axes/combinations to get a result, unclear blinding, inconsistency with other expected fly lifetimes – are all the kinds of things correlated with flimsy results. It's usually wishful thinking, not conscious forgery, that leads such authors to overlook the weaknesses in their setup when they get a publishable/profitable result.
I do have a high opinion of my ability to detect flimsy results from the details (or missing details!) of a scientific paper, from decades of reading and watching which results hold up, and which don't.
You're practicing scientism – sacralizing certain procedures, titles, or outlets – rather than science here. Science requires a high standard of proof, and recognizing patterns of misreporting. There's even a strong case to be made that "most published research findings are false":
Sure. I see 3 recurring issues with "nutritional research" I'm exposed to:
1. Wayyyyy too much industry involvement, much of it not properly disclosed (OP here is a classical and representative example).
2. Lots of research from relatively small and "less known" institutes, done by researchers with hard to verify credentials.
3. Low scientific standards. That'd include:
- Refusal to share data
- Refusal to share data analysis methods
- Not keeping the basics of a double-blinded test
- No reproduction, and not even the possibility of independent reproducibility, as the methods are described so vaguely.
- Refusal to share data
- Refusal to share data analysis methods
- Not keeping the basics of a double-blinded test
- No reproduction, and not even the possibility of independent reproducibility, as the methods are described so vaguely.
Can you link to a recent paper that doesnt run afoul of at least one of your criteria. Especially the last...
Something that takes only authors, publishers, and institutions into account sounds counterproductive.
I think it’d be better to have an agreement that only reporducible papers are credible. Ie data the paper is reported on (to include “cleaned” data) and any tools developed (software tools) must always be included. As well as funding for everything disclosed.
Ultimately though I think we may just be seeing the obsolescence of current statistical theory. Science needs hypotheses to be testable in “trustable” metrics. But there are too many loop holes if things like p-hacking are possible.
In a few years we might look back at this period and think: oh, it was at the time when we thought gut bacteria was the solution to every health problem known to mankind.
Maybe one day we'll realize that there is no single factor for good health. Maybe it's Vitamin D AND gut bacteria AND lot of other factors that are even individually different?
It turns out antibiotics are actually pretty awful - they wreak havoc on your microbiome, they modulate your immune system in weird ways, they cause some weird allergies.
But they are still way better than the diseases they cure, and definitely better than death!
Yep, antibiotics are the lesser evil. The only thing I really don't agree with is how easily and how much it is used in our food production.
Toxins move up the food chain, and with humans being pretty much the top of that chain we shouldn't be dumping medicine into livestock just to keep them from getting sick.
Worse, in China they are sold OTC and are as popular as you suggest (aside from being the thing that is prescribed on nearly every doctors visit to a health center). Even though anti-viral medicines (for what little good those do...) are also available OTC...
I think this is very different in that it's something we previously completely disregarded in health outcomes. We consume various things that we know wreak havoc on our gut biome including antibiotics and various residual herbicides, but it was felt that this was mostly harmless as the gut biome did not play a critical role in our physiological condition. Now it's seeming that it may indeed be quite a critical system in the human physiological condition and so it's more of an entirely new field of study than a miracle cure.
I feel as though there is some degree of ostrich-syndrome when it comes to the deterioration of American physical and mental health. Something is causing this change, and most convenient explanations (lethargic lifestyles, internet, etc) do not really work since that would imply a comparable decline in other areas that have also seen such changes, yet the correlations there are spotty at best.
As far as I know, the US is the only prosperous country where life expectancies are going down. Makes one sit back and think, no?
A lot of factors are probably involved as you say, but if I had to guess at the elephant-in-the-room dominant factor I'd say it's the US's model of what's euphemistically called "health care" and "health insurance." It's a complete no-brainer that people who can't afford medical treatment are dying earlier.
Look at the reasons that people are dying. It's been blamed on things like the opioid crisis but the numbers in no way support such 'hypothesis', which don't even really qualify as such.
Cardiovascular disease, heart failure, stroke, diabetic complications, etc are where the big increases are coming from. And nearly all the major causes of death that are increasing are strongly linked with obesity, which is skyrocketing out of control. This is what I was alluding to early when suggesting that this change is, in turn, blamed on lethargic lifestyles, the internet, etc yet such changes are also happening in other nations yet they are not experiencing such radical shifts in lack of healthfulness.
We should already know better that there most likely is no "secret". That is, it's probably more than one special variable we have to look at. Somehow many scientists are having a hard time to let go of one dimensional thinking.
I think there's been very little evolutionary pressure to increase lifespan in creatures like fruit flies since despite their short lifespan few of them die from age related causes.
I would assume it's pretty easy to increase the lifetime of short-lived creatures in a protected environment, and pretty unlikely that the methods which accomplish this would also extend the lives of long-lived creatures.
Looks silly at first glance, but I think it is a very interesting question. Asking Google I found a lot of "they die", but no good research about the cause (admittedly, I only spend a few minutes). Only one other - still open - question on Quora: https://www.quora.com/Has-anyone-tracked-the-cause-of-death-... -- The only answer says it has not been studied thoroughly, but it is from someone whose professional and job title ("Biomedical gerontologist, Chief Science Officer of SENS Foundation") sound like he would/should know.
I think it is implied that the cause of death is ageing? What else would it be (lab fruit flies don't have predators)?
> Scientists fed fruit flies with a combination of probiotics and an herbal supplement called Triphala that was able to prolong the flies' longevity by 60 percent and protect them against chronic diseases associated with aging.
For comparison, dietary restriction increases longevity in rats and mice by up to 45%, but this may only be in lab animals
* the authors have already started a company and pursued a patent on their ayurvedic-derived formulation
* the figure 1(a) in their paper (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-25382-z#Fig1) doesn't show a big difference from plain probiotics to their formulation, but does show some oddities in the Y-axis where, for the control group, there were clearly exactly just 10 flies' mortality measured (integer steps down), but apparently many, many more for other cases scaled to the 0-10 axis.
* it's unclear if the treatments/evaluations where blinded – the word 'blind' is not found in the Nature article
* the 1st comment on the Nature article wonders: "the control flies didn't live to their normal expected age or even close. What gives?"
(Perhaps the flies that lived longer just had more food in total?)