To further concur, when I was engineering my own body composition improvement plan I quickly learned to completely ignore any study that wasn’t performed in a controlled metabolic ward. Which is, essentially, a voluntary prison. Needless to say participant compensation is considerably more costly than the totally unscientific alternatives so such studies are rare.
I don't have any links handy, this was years ago and I didn't save them. Scholar search or something similar should find you plenty of hits though for metabolic ward. My interest was primarily in nutrient partitioning and thermic effects of food. I want to clarify that I don't claim that survey-based studies necessarily or even predominantly make incorrect claims, just that I am not satisfied with their basis for making such claims.